I should rather think that
he found poetical enjoyment in these supernatural themes, and that his
imagination delighted to people this gloomy and romantic pile with all
kinds of shadowy inhabitants. Certain it is, the aspect of the mansion
under the varying influence of twilight and moonlight, and cloud and
sunshine operating upon its halls, and galleries, and monkish
cloisters, is enough to breed all kinds of fancies in the minds of its
inmates, especially if poetically or superstitiously inclined.
I have already mentioned some of the fabled visitants of the Abbey. The
goblin friar, however, is the one to whom Lord Byron has given the
greatest importance. It walked the cloisters by night, and sometimes
glimpses of it were seen in other parts of the Abbey. Its appearance
was said to portend some impending evil to the master of the mansion.
Lord Byron pretended to have seen it about a month before he contracted
his ill-starred marriage with Miss Milbanke.
He has embodied this tradition in the following ballad, in which he
represents the friar as one of the ancient inmates of the Abbey,
maintaining by night a kind of spectral possession of it, in right of
the fraternity.
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