[13] Francis Hayes was in fact preparing these papers for publication (in a volume that would have been entitled The Book of Crystal: Representations of Stained Glass in the Lantern Poet’s Oeuvre). He ultimately abandoned the project during the years following his granddaughter’s disappearance.
[14] Hayes-Reyna’s fanciful description of this storm evinces some conflation with one of the Lantern Poet’s visions in Ballad XCII, in which he recalls his first glimpse of Damma Lundzolin:
The clouds above grew treacherous that night
And made the sky into a blackened veil
Upon the moon’s fair and shimmering sight.
I saw nothing, no trace of life or light,
Until her beacon breached the fog and hail.
(8-12)
(Note Hayes-Reyna’s effort to incorporate the Lantern Poet’s portrayal of the storm as “veil.”)
[15] Old Lanthornese for “poisonous honey” or a “sweet illusion” (the term dol is frequently used to describe a visual trick, or mirage in the mist, throughout Lanthorna). This particular compound is a hapax in the Elegy, appearing only in the final Ballad. Its significance in this context is not entirely clear, as the end of the Elegy remains highly fragmentary, in spite of various scholarly efforts to reconstruct it. Critics have consequently referred to the final Ballad as a miaegl-dol in its own right, given its tendency to distract and madden scholars with its gaps.
[16] Francis Hayes has proposed that MS. Lant. 1 may in fact represent an early draft of the Elegy. Many of the text’s more jarring lacunas are smoothed over in later manuscripts. However, Hayes’s theory does not explain the manuscript’s ornamental flourishes (such as the gold leaf Hayes-Reyna alludes to in this entry). See Hayes, F., “Erasure Aestheticized in The Elegy of the Lantern Poet,” The Lanthornese Review 15, no. 4 (ann. lxxxiii): 42-60.
[17] Ibid.
[18] This verse in accurate Old Lanthornese follows the appropriate octosyllabic meter and corresponds to the balladic rhyme scheme of the surrounding text. However, no scholar has been able to find a trace of this line in MS. Lant. 1. Accordingly, we conclude that this verse, and the experience of discovering it, are creative fabrications of Hayes-Reyna’s.
[19] A number of mystics have remarked upon “glimpses” of fireflies in the sepulcher; local legend has it that the space is haunted by Damma Lundzolin. Hayes-Reyna likely absorbed such tales during her childhood. As she herself notes, there are pictures of bees and fireflies among the mosaics, and it is quite plausible that such glittering artworks could confuse visitors into believing themselves recipients of such “visions.”
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