426. ~bandite or mountaineer~. 'Bandite' (in Shakespeare _bandetto_, and now _bandit_) is borrowed from the Italian _bandito_, outlawed or _banned_. 'Mountaineer,' here used in a bad sense. In modern English it has reverted to its original sense--a dweller in mountains. The dwellers in mountains are often fierce and readily become freebooters: hence the changes of meaning. See _Temp._ iii. 3. 44, "Who would believe that there were _mountaineers_ Dew-lapp'd like bulls"; also _Cym._ iv. 2. 120, "Who called me traitor, _mountaineer_." 428. ~very desolation~. Very (as an adj.) = true or real and may be traced to Lat. _verus_ = true: comp. l. 646. 429. ~shagged ... shades~. 'Shagged' is rugged or shaggy, and 'horrid' is probably used in the Latin sense of 'rough': see note, l. 38. 430. ~unblenched~, undaunted, unflinching. This word, sometimes confounded with 'unblanched,' is from _blench_, a causal of _blink_. 431. ~Be it not~: a conditional clause = on condition that it be not. 432. ~Some say~, etc. Compare _Hamlet_, i. 1. 158: "Some say that, ever against that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long: And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad." 433. ~In fog or fire~, etc. Comp. _Il Pens._ 93, "those demons that are found In fire, air, flood, or underground": an allusion to the different orders and powers of demons as accepted in the Middle Ages. Burton, in his _Anat. of Mel._, quotes from a writer who thus enumerates the kinds of sublunary spirits--"fiery, aerial, terrestrial, watery, and subterranean, besides fairies, satyrs, nymphs, etc." 434. ~meagre hag~, lean witch. _Hag_ is from A.S. _haegtesse_, a prophetess or witch. Comp. _Par. Lost_, ii. 662; _M. W. of W._ iv. 2. 188, "Come down, you witch, you _hag_." ~unlaid ghost~, unpacified or wandering spirit. It was a superstition that ghosts left the world of spirits and wandered on the earth from the hour of curfew (see _Temp._ v. 1. 40; _King Lear_, iii. 4. 120, "This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet; he begins at curfew," etc.) until "the first cock his matin rings" (_L'Alleg._ 14). 'Curfew' (Fr. _couvre-feu_ = fire-cover), the bell that was rung at eight or nine o'clock in the evening as a signal that all fires and lights were to be extinguished.