I had
in sooth, got lodged in another haunted apartment of the Abbey; for in
this chamber Lord Byron declared he had more than once been harassed at
midnight by a mysterious visitor. A black shapeless form would sit
cowering upon his bed, and after gazing at him for a time with glaring
eyes, would roll off and disappear. The same uncouth apparition is said
to have disturbed the slumbers of a newly married couple that once
passed their honeymoon in this apartment.
I would observe, that the access to the Rook Cell is by a spiral stone
staircase leading up into it, as into a turret, from, the long shadowy
corridor over the cloisters, one of the midnight walks of the Goblin
Friar. Indeed, to the fancies engendered in his brain in this remote
and lonely apartment, incorporated with the floating superstitions of
the Abbey, we are no doubt indebted for the spectral scene in "Don
Juan."
"Then as the night was clear, though cold, he threw
His chamber door wide open--and went forth
Into a gallery, of sombre hue,
Long furnish'd with old pictures of great worth,
Of knights and dames, heroic and chaste too,
As doubtless should be people of high birth.
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