context of past
tenses, as Coleridge does here, as if it were a weak preterit; and
Chaucer uses "rist up" in the same way several times (Sykes).

104--*The furrow followed free*. This was changed in "Sibylline
Leaves" to "The furrow streamed off free," because, Coleridge tells us,
"from the ship itself the _Wake_ appears like a brook flowing off from
the stern." In the case of modern steamboats at least it would be more
correct to say that the wake, as seen from the stern of the boat, looks
like a brook _following_ the boat. The original reading was restored in
the editions of 1828 and 1829.

7, 123--*The very deep did rot*, etc. The ship becalmed in tropic
seas, and the slimy things engendered there, were a vision in
Coleridge's mind before "The Ancient Mariner" was thought of. In the
lines contributed to Southey's "Joan of Arc" in 1796 (published, with
additions, as "The Destiny of Nations" in "Sibylline Leaves"), in an
allegoric passage on Chaos and Love, he wrote:

"As what time, after long and pestful calms,
With slimy shapes and miscreated life
Poisoning the vast Pacific, the fresh breeze
Wakens the merchant sail uprising."

The same subject had occupied Wordsworth's imagination before he and
Coleridge came together at Stowey; see Wordsworth's "The Borderers," Act
iv.

125--*slimy things*. Strange creatures, the spawn of the rotting sea,
for which the Mariner has no name.

131, marginal gloss--*Josephus, Michael Psellus*. The only "learned
Jew, Josephus," that we know of is the historian of that name who lived
in the first century of our era; but little has been found in his works
to justify this reference. The "Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael
Psellus," was a Byzantine teacher of the eleventh century who wrote a
dialogue in which demons are classified according to the element in
which they live (Cooper; Sykes).

8, 152--*I wist*. "Wist" is properly the past tense of an old verb
"wit," to know. But Coleridge seems to use "I wist" here as equivalent
to "I wis" (see "Christabel," l. 92), which is a form of "iwis," an
adverb meaning "certainly."

157--*with throats unslaked*, etc. A remarkable instance of
onomatopoeia.

9, 164--*gramercy*. An exclamation, meaning originally "much thanks"
(Old French _grand merci_), and so used by Shakespeare ("Merchant of
Venice" II., 2, 128, "Richard III" III., 2, 108). But in the ballads it
is often a mere exclamation of wonder and surprise, and so Coleridg