The Pirate
by Walter Scott · English · Gutenberg #42389 · 1,160,940 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Pirate
Author: Walter Scott
Editor: Andrew Lang
Release date: March 23, 2013 [eBook #42389]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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Transcriber's note:
[oe] represents the oe-ligature.
THE PIRATE.
Nothing in him----
But doth suffer a sea-change.
_Tempest._
Bibliophile Edition
This Edition of the Works of Sir Walter Scott,
Bart, is limited to One Thousand Numbered and
Signed Sets, of which this is
Number ...
University Library Association
[Illustration]
Bibliophile Edition
The Waverley Novels
With New Introductions, Notes and Glossaries by Andrew Lang
THE PIRATE
by
SIR WALTER SCOTT, Bart.
Illustrated
[Illustration]
University Library Association
Philadelphia
Copyright, 1893
By Estes & Lauriat
Andrew Lang Edition.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
THE PIRATE.
VOLUME I.
PAGE
MORDAUNT IN YELLOWLEY'S COTTAGE. _Frontispiece_
THE SWORD DANCE 234
VOLUME II.
MINNA ON THE CLIFF 103
THE PIRATE'S COUNCIL 208
MINNA TAKING THE PISTOL 250
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE PIRATE.
The circumstances in which "The Pirate" was composed have for the Editor
a peculiar interest. He has many times scribbled at the old bureau in
Chiefswood whereon Sir Walter worked at his novel, and sat in summer
weather beneath the great tree on the lawn where Erskine used to read
the fresh chapters to Lockhart and his wife, while the burn murmured by
from the Rhymer's Glen. So little altered is the cottage of Chiefswood
by the addition of a gabled wing in the same red stone as the older
portion, so charmed a quiet has the place, in the shelter of Eildon
Hill, that there one can readily beget the golden time again, and think
oneself back into the day when Mustard and Spice, running down the shady
glen, might herald the coming of the Sheriff himself. Happy hours and
gone: like that summer of 1821, whereof Lockhart speaks with an emotion
the more touching because it is so rare,--
the first of several seasons, which will ever dwell on my memory
as the happiest of my life. We were near enough Abbotsford to
partake as often as we liked of its brilliant society; yet could
do so without being exposed to the worry and exhaustion of spirit
which the daily reception of new visitors entailed upon all the
society except Sir Walter himself. But, in truth, even he was not
always proof against the annoyances connected with such a style of
open-house-keeping. Even his temper sank sometimes under the
solemn applause of learned dulness, the vapid raptures of painted
and periwigged dowagers the horse-leech avidity with which
underbred foreigners urged their questions, and the pompous
simpers of condescending magnates. When sore beset in this way, he
would every now and then discover that he had some very particular
business to attend to on an outlying part of his estate, and,
craving the indulgence of his guests overnight, appear at the
cabin in the glen before its inhabitants were astir in the
morning. The clatter of Sibyl Grey's hoofs, the yelping of Mustard
and Spice, and his own joyous shout of _reveillée_ under our
window, were the signal that he had burst his bonds, and meant for
that day to take his ease in his inn.... After breakfast he would
take possession of a dressing-room upstairs, and write a chapter
of "The Pirate"; and then, having made up and dispatched his
parcel for Mr. Ballantyne, away to join Purdie where the foresters
were at work....
The constant and eager delight with which Erskine watched the
progress of the tale has left a deep impression on my memory: and
indeed I heard so many of its chapters first read from the MS. by
him, that I can never open the book now without thinking I hear
his voice. Sir Walter used to give him at breakfast the pages he
had written that morning, and very commonly, while he was again at
work in his study, Erskine would walk over to Chiefswood, that he
might have the pleasure of reading them aloud to my wife and me
under our favourite tree.[1]
"The tree is living yet!" This long quotation from a book but too little
read in general may be excused for its interest, as bearing on the
composition of "The Pirate," in the early autumn of 1821. In "The
Pirate" Scott fell back on his recollections of the Orcades, as seen by
him in a tour with the Commissioners of Light Houses, in August 1814,
immediately after the publication of "Waverley." They were accompanied
by Mr. Stevenson, the celebrated engineer, "a most gentlemanlike and
modest man, and well known by his scientific skill."[2] It is understood
that Mr. Stevenson also kept a diary, and that it is to be published by
the care of his distinguished grandson, Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson,
author of "Kidnapped," "The Master of Ballantrae," and other novels in
which Scott would have recognised a not alien genius.
Sir Walter's Diary, read in company with "The Pirate," offers a most
curious study of his art in composition. It may be said that he scarcely
noted a natural feature, a monument, a custom, a superstition, or a
legend in Zetland and Orkney which he did not weave into the magic web
of his romance. In the Diary all those matters appear as very ordinary;
in "The Pirate" they are transfigured in the light of fancy. History
gives Scott the career of Gow and his betrothal to an island lady:
observation gives him a few headlands, Picts' houses, ruined towers, and
old stone monuments, and his characters gather about these, in rhythmic
array, like the dancers in the sword-dance. We may conceive that
Cleveland, like Gow, was originally meant to die, and that Minna, like
Margaret in the ballad of Clerk Saunders, was to recover her troth from
the hand of her dead lover. But, if Scott intended this, he was
good-natured, and relented.
Taking the incidents in the Diary in company with the novel, we find, in
the very first page of "The Pirate," mention of the roost, or rost, of
Sumburgh, the running current of tidal water, which he hated so, because
it made him so sea-sick. "All the landsmen sicker than sick, and our
Viceroy, Stevenson, qualmish. It is proposed to have a light on Sumburgh
Head. Fitful Head is higher, but is to the west, from which quarter few
vessels come." As for Sumburgh Head, Scott climbed it, rolled down a
rock from the summit, and found it "a fine situation to compose an ode
to the Genius of Sumburgh Head, or an Elegy upon a Cormorant--or to have
written or spoken madness of any kind in prose or poetry. But I gave
vent to my excited feelings in a more simple way, and, sitting gently
down on the steep green slope which led to the beach, I e'en slid down a
few hundred feet, and found the exercise quite an adequate vent to my
enthusiasm."
Sir Walter was certainly not what he found Mrs. Hemans, "too poetical."
In the first chapter, his Giffords, Scotts (of Scotstarvet, the
Fifeshire house, not of the Border clan), and Mouats are the very gentry
who entertained him on his tour. His "plantie cruives," in the novel,
had been noted in the Diary (Lockhart, iv. 193). "Pate Stewart," the
oppressive Earl, is chronicled at length in "the Diary." "His huge tower
remains wild and desolate--its chambers filled with sand, and its rifted
walls and dismantled battlements giving unrestrained access to the
roaring sea-blast." So Scott wrote in his last review for the
"Quarterly," a criticism of Pitcairn's "Scotch Criminal Trials" (1831).
The Trows, or Drows, the fairy dwarfs he studied on the spot, and
connects the name with Dwerg, though _Trolls_ seem rather to be their
spiritual and linguistic ancestors. The affair of the clergyman who was
taken for a Pecht, or Pict, actually occurred during the tour, and Mr.
Stevenson, who had met the poor Pecht before, was able to clear his
character.[3] In the same place the Kraken is mentioned: he had been
visible for nearly a fortnight, but no sailor dared go near him.
He lay in the offing a fortnight or more,
But the devil a Zetlander put from the shore.
If your Grace thinks I'm writing the thing that is not,
You may ask at a namesake of ours, Mr. Scott,
Sir Walter wrote to the Duke of Buccleugh. He paid a visit to an old
lady, who, like Norna, and Æolus in the Odyssey, kept the winds in a
bag, and could sell a fair breeze. "She was a miserable figure, upwards
of ninety, she told me, and dried up like a mummy. A sort of
clay-coloured cloak, folded over her head, corresponded in colour to her
corpse-like complexion. Fine light-blue eyes, and nose and chin that
almost met, and a ghastly expression of cunning gave her quite the
effect of Hecate. She told us she remembered _Gow the Pirate_, betrothed
to a Miss Gordon,"--so here are the germs of Norna, Cleveland, and
Minna, all sown in good ground, to bear fruit in seven years
(1814-1821). Triptolemus Yellowley is entirely derived from the Diary,
and is an anachronism. The Lowland Scots factors and ploughs were only
coming in while Scott was in the isles. He himself saw the absurd little
mills (vol. i. ch. xi.), and the one stilted plough which needed two
women to open the furrows, a feebler plough than the Virgilian specimens
which one still remarks in Tuscany. "When this precious machine was in
motion, it was dragged by four little bullocks, yoked abreast, and as
many ponies harnessed, or rather strung, to the plough by ropes and
thongs of raw hide.... An antiquary might be of opinion that this was
the very model of the original plough invented by Triptolemus," son of
the Eleusinian king, who sheltered Demeter in her wanderings. The
sword-dance was not danced for Scott's entertainment, but he heard of
the Pupa dancers, and got a copy of the accompanying chant, and was
presented with examples of the flint and bronze Celts which Norna
treasured. All over the world, as in Zetland, they were regarded as
"thunder stones." (Diary; Lockhart, iv. 220.) The bridal of Norna, by
clasping of hands through Odin's stone ring, was still practised as a
form of betrothal. (Lockhart, iv. 252.) Some island people were
despised, as by Magnus Troil, as "poor sneaks" who ate limpets, "the
last of human meannesses." The "wells," or smooth wave-currents, were
also noted, and the _Garland_ of the whalers often alluded to in the
tale. The Stones of Stennis were visited, and the Dwarfie Stone of Hoy,
where Norna, like some Eskimo Angekok, met her familiar demon. Scott
held that the stone "probably was meant as the temple of some northern
edition of the _dii Manes_. They conceive that the dwarf may be seen
sometimes sitting at the door of his abode, but he vanishes on a nearer
approach." The dwelling of Norna, a Pict's house, with an overhanging
story, "shaped like a dice-box," is the ancient Castle of Mousa.[4] The
strange incantation of Norna, the dropping of molten lead into water, is
also described. Usually the lead was poured through the wards of a key.
In affections of the heart, like Minna's, a triangular stone, probably a
neolithic arrow-head, was usually employed as an amulet. (Lockhart, iv.
208.) Even the story of the pirate's insolent answer to the Provost is
adapted from a recent occurrence. Two whalers were accused of stealing a
sheep. The first denied the charge, but said he had seen the animal
carried off by "a fellow with a red nose and a black wig. Don't you
think he was like his honour, Tom?" "By God, Jack, I believe it was the
very man." (Diary; Lockhart, iv. 222; "The Pirate," vol. ii. ch. xiv.)
The goldless Northern Ophir was also visited--in brief, Scott scarcely
made a remark on his tour which he did not manage to transmute into the
rare metal of his romance. It is no wonder that the Orcadians at once
detected his authorship. A trifling anecdote of the cruise has recently
been published. Scott presented a lady in the isles with a piano, which,
it seems, is still capable of producing a melancholy jingling tune.[5]
Lockhart says, as to the reception of "The Pirate" (Dec. 1821): "The
wild freshness of the atmosphere of this splendid romance, the beautiful
contrast of Minna and Brenda, and the exquisitely drawn character of
Captain Cleveland, found the reception which they deserved." "The wild
freshness of the atmosphere" is indeed magically transfused, and
breathes across the pages as it blows over the Fitful Head, the
skerries, the desolate moors, the plain of the Standing Stones of
Stennis. The air is keen and salt and fragrant of the sea. Yet Sydney
Smith was greatly disappointed. "I am afraid this novel will depend upon
the former reputation of the author, and will add nothing to it. It may
sell, and another may half sell, but that is all, unless he comes out
with something vigorous, and redeems himself. I do not blame him for
writing himself out, if he knows he is doing so, and has done his
_best_, and his _all_. If the native land of Scotland will supply no
more scenes and characters, for he is always best in Scotland, though he
was very good in England the (time) he was there; but pray, wherever the
scene is laid, no more Meg Merrilies and Dominie Sampsons--very good the
first and second times, but now quite worn out, and always recurring."
("Archibald Constable," iii. 69.)
It was Smith's grammar that gave out, and produced no apodosis to his
phrase. Scott could not write himself out, before his brain was affected
by disease. Had his age been miraculously prolonged, with health, it
could never be said that "all the stories have been told," and he would
have delighted mankind unceasingly.
Scott himself was a little nettled by the criticisms of Norna as a
replica of Meg Merrilies. She is, indeed, "something distinct from the
Dumfriesshire gipsy"--in truth, she rather resembles the Ulrica of
"Ivanhoe." Like her, she is haunted by the memory of an awful crime, an
insane version of a mere accident; like her, she is a votaress of the
dead gods of the older world, Thor and Odin, and the spirits of the
tempest. Scott's imagination lived so much in the past that the ancient
creeds never ceased to allure him: like Heine, he felt the fascination
of the banished deities, not of Greece, but of the North. Thus Norna,
crazed by her terrible mischance, dwells among them, worships the Red
Beard, as outlying descendants of the Aztecs yet retain some faith in
their old monstrous Pantheon. Even Minna keeps, in her girlish
enthusiasm, some touch of Freydis in the saga of Eric the Red: for her
the old gods and the old years are not wholly exiled and impotent. All
this is most characteristic of the antiquary and the poet in Scott, who
lingers fondly over what has been, and stirs the last faint embers of
fallen fires. It is of a piece with the harmless Jacobitism of his
festivals, when they sang
Here's to the King, boys!
Ye ken wha I mean, boys.
In the singularly feeble and provincial vulgarities which Borrow
launches, in the appendix to "Lavengro," against the memory of Scott,
the charge of reviving Catholicism is the most bitter. That rowdy
evangelist might as well have charged Scott with a desire to restore the
worship of Odin, and to sacrifice human victims on the stone altar of
Stennis. He saw in Orkney the ruined fanes of the Norse deities, as at
Melrose of the Virgin, and his loyal heart could feel for all that was
old and lost, for all into which men had put their hearts and faiths,
had made, and had unmade, in the secular quest for the divine. Like a
later poet, he might have said:--
Not as their friend or child I speak,
But as on some far Northern strand,
Thinking of his own gods, a Greek
In pity and mournful awe might stand
Beside some fallen Runic stone,
For both were gods, and both are gone.
And surely no creed is more savage, cruel, and worthy of death than
Borrow's belief in a God who "knew where to strike," and deliberately
struck Scott by inducing Robinson to speculate in hops, and so bring
down his Edinburgh associate, Constable, and with him Sir Walter! Such
was the religion which Borrow expressed in the style of a writer in a
fourth-rate country newspaper. We might prefer the frank Heathenism of
the Red Beard to the religion of the author of "The Bible in Spain."
There is no denying that Scott had in his imagination a certain mould of
romance, into which his ideas, when he wrote most naturally, and most
for his own pleasure, were apt to run. It is one of the charms of "The
Pirate" that here he is manifestly writing for his own pleasure, with a
certain boyish eagerness. Had we but the plot of one of the tales which
he told, as a lad, to his friend Irving, we might find that it turned on
a romantic mystery, a clue in the hands of some witch or wise woman, of
some one who was always appearing in the nick of time, was always round
the corner when anything was to be heard. This is a standing
characteristic of the tales: now it is Edie Ochiltree, now
Flibbertigibbet, now Meg Merrilies, now Norna, who holds the thread of
the plot, but these characters are all well differentiated. Again, he
had types, especially the pedantic type, which attracted him, but they
vary as much as Yellowley and Dugald Dalgetty, the Antiquary, and
Dominie Sampson. Yellowley is rather more repressed than some of Scott's
bores; but then he is not the only bore, for Claud Halcro, with all his
merits, is a professed proser. Swift had exactly described the
character, the episodical narrator, in a passage parallel to one in
Theophrastus. In writing to Morritt, Scott says (November 1818): "I
sympathise with you for the _dole_ you are _dreeing_ under the
inflictions of your honest proser. Of all the boring machines ever
devised, your regular and determined story-teller is the most peremptory
and powerful in his operations."
"With what perfect placidity he submitted to be bored even by bores of
the first water!" says Lockhart. The species is one which we all have
many opportunities of studying, but it may be admitted that Scott
produced his studies of bores with a certain complacency. Yet they are
all different bores, and the gay, kind _scald_ Halcro is very unlike
Master Mumblasen or Dominie Sampson.
For a hero Mordaunt may be called almost sprightly and individual. His
mysterious father occasionally suggests the influence of Byron,
occasionally of Mrs. Radcliffe. The Udaller is as individual and genial
as Dandie Dinmont himself; or, again, he is the Cedric of Thule, though
much more sympathetic than Cedric to most readers. His affection for his
daughters is characteristic and deserved. Many a pair of sisters, blonde
and brune, have we met in fiction since Minna and Brenda, but none have
been their peers, and, like Mordaunt in early years, we know not to
which of them our hearts are given. They are "L'Allegro" and "Il
Penseroso" of the North, and it is probable that all men would fall in
love with Minna if they had the chance, and marry Brenda, if they could.
Minna is, indeed, the ideal youth of poetry, and Brenda of the practical
life. The innocent illusions of Minna, her love of all that is old, her
championship of the forlorn cause, her beauty, her tenderness, her
truth, her passionate waywardness of sorrow, make her one of Scott's
most original and delightful heroines. She believes and trembles not,
like Bertram in "Rokeby." Brenda trembles, but does not believe in
Norna's magic, and in the spirits of ancient saga. As for Cleveland,
Scott managed to avoid Byron's Lara-like pirates, and produced a
freebooter as sympathetic as any _hostis humani generis_ can be, while
"Frederick Altamont" (Thackeray borrowed the name for his romantic
crossing-sweeper) has a place among the Marischals and Bucklaws of
romance. Scott's minute studies in Dryden come to the aid of his local
observations, and so, out of not very promising materials, and out of
the contrast of Lowland Scot and Orcadian, the romance is spun. Probably
the "psychological analysis" which most interested the author is the
double consciousness of Norna, the occasional intrusions of the rational
self on her dreams of supernatural powers. That double consciousness,
indeed, exists in all of us: occasionally the self in which we believe
has a vision of the real underlying self, and shudders from the sight,
like the pair "who met themselves" in the celebrated drawing.
"The Pirate" can scarcely be placed in the front rank of Scott's novels,
but it has a high and peculiar place in the second, and probably will
always be among the special favourites of those who, being young, are
fortunate enough not to be critical.
Scott's novels at this time came forth so frequently that the lumbering
"Quarterlies" toiled after them in vain. They adopted the plan of
reviewing them in batches, and the "Quarterly" may be said to have
omitted "The Pirate" altogether. About this time Gifford began to find
that the person who spoke of a "dark dialect of Anglified Erse" was not
a competent critic, and Mr. Senior noticed several of the tales in a
more judicious manner. As to "The Pirate," the "Edinburgh Review"
found "the character and story of Mertoun at once commonplace and
extravagant." Cleveland disappoints "by turning out so much better
than we had expected, and yet substantially so ill." "Nothing can
be more beautiful than the description of the sisters." "Norna is
a new incarnation of Meg Merrilies, and palpably the same in the
spirit ... but far above the rank of a mere imitated or borrowed
character." "The work, on the whole, opens up a new world to our
curiosity, and affords another proof of the extreme pliability,
as well as vigour, of the author's genius."
ANDREW LANG.
_August 1893._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Lockhart, vi. 388-393. Erskine died before Scott, slain by a silly
piece of gossip, and Mr. Skene says: "I never saw Sir Walter so much
affected by any event, and at the funeral, which he attended, he was
quite unable to suppress his feelings, but wept like a child." His
correspondence with Scott fell into the hands of a lady, who, seeing
that it revealed the secret of Scott's authorship, most unfortunately
burned all the letters. (Journal, i. 416.)
[2] Scott's Diary, July 29, 1814. Lockhart, vi. 183.
[3] See Author's Note No. I.
[4] Diary; Lockhart, iv. 223.
[5] "Atalanta," December 1892.
INTRODUCTION TO THE PIRATE.
"Quoth he, there was a ship."
This brief preface may begin like the tale of the Ancient Mariner, since
it was on shipboard that the author acquired the very moderate degree of
local knowledge and information, both of people and scenery, which he
has endeavoured to embody in the romance of the Pirate.
In the summer and autumn of 1814, the author was invited to join a party
of Commissioners for the Northern Light-House Service, who proposed
making a voyage round the coast of Scotland, and through its various
groups of islands, chiefly for the purpose of seeing the condition of
the many lighthouses under their direction,--edifices so important,
whether regarding them as benevolent or political institutions. Among
the commissioners who manage this important public concern, the sheriff
of each county of Scotland which borders on the sea, holds ex-officio a
place at the Board. These gentlemen act in every respect gratuitously,
but have the use of an armed yacht, well found and fitted up, when they
choose to visit the lighthouses. An excellent engineer, Mr. Robert
Stevenson, is attached to the Board, to afford the benefit of his
professional advice. The author accompanied this expedition as a guest;
for Selkirkshire, though it calls him Sheriff, has not, like the kingdom
of Bohemia in Corporal Trim's story, a seaport in its circuit, nor its
magistrate, of course, any place at the Board of Commissioners,--a
circumstance of little consequence where all were old and intimate
friends, bred to the same profession, and disposed to accommodate each
other in every possible manner.
The nature of the important business which was the principal purpose of
the voyage, was connected with the amusement of visiting the leading
objects of a traveller's curiosity; for the wild cape, or formidable
shelve, which requires to be marked out by a lighthouse, is generally at
no great distance from the most magnificent scenery of rocks, caves, and
billows. Our time, too, was at our own disposal, and, as most of us were
freshwater sailors, we could at any time make a fair wind out of a foul
one, and run before the gale in quest of some object of curiosity which
lay under our lee.
With these purposes of public utility and some personal amusement in
view, we left the port of Leith on the 26th July, 1814, ran along the
east coast of Scotland, viewing its different curiosities, stood over to
Zetland and Orkney, where we were some time detained by the wonders of a
country which displayed so much that was new to us; and having seen what
was curious in the Ultima Thule of the ancients, where the sun hardly
thought it worth while to go to bed, since his rising was at this season
so early, we doubled the extreme northern termination of Scotland, and
took a rapid survey of the Hebrides, where we found many kind friends.
There, that our little expedition might not want the dignity of danger,
we were favoured with a distant glimpse of what was said to be an
American cruiser, and had opportunity to consider what a pretty figure
we should have made had the voyage ended in our being carried captive
to the United States. After visiting the romantic shores of Morven, and
the vicinity of Oban, we made a run to the coast of Ireland, and visited
the Giant's Causeway, that we might compare it with Staffa, which we had
surveyed in our course. At length, about the middle of September, we
ended our voyage in the Clyde, at the port of Greenock.
And thus terminated our pleasant tour, to which our equipment gave
unusual facilities, as the ship's company could form a strong boat's
crew, independent of those who might be left on board the vessel, which
permitted us the freedom to land wherever our curiosity carried us. Let
me add, while reviewing for a moment a sunny portion of my life, that
among the six or seven friends who performed this voyage together, some
of them doubtless of different tastes and pursuits, and remaining for
several weeks on board a small vessel, there never occurred the
slightest dispute or disagreement, each seeming anxious to submit his
own particular wishes to those of his friends. By this mutual
accommodation all the purposes of our little expedition were obtained,
while for a time we might have adopted the lines of Allan Cunningham's
fine sea-song,
"The world of waters was our home,
And merry men were we!"
But sorrow mixes her memorials with the purest remembrances of pleasure.
On returning from the voyage which had proved so satisfactory, I found
that fate had deprived her country most unexpectedly of a lady,
qualified to adorn the high rank which she held, and who had long
admitted me to a share of her friendship. The subsequent loss of one of
those comrades who made up the party, and he the most intimate friend I
had in the world, casts also its shade on recollections which, but for
these embitterments, would be otherwise so pleasing.
I may here briefly observe, that my business in this voyage, so far as I
could be said to have any, was to endeavour to discover some localities
which might be useful in the "Lord of the Isles," a poem with which I
was then threatening the public, and was afterwards printed without
attaining remarkable success. But as at the same time the anonymous
novel of "Waverley" was making its way to popularity, I already augured
the possibility of a second effort in this department of literature, and
I saw much in the wild islands of the Orkneys and Zetland, which I
judged might be made in the highest degree interesting, should these
isles ever become the scene of a narrative of fictitious events. I
learned the history of Gow the pirate from an old sibyl, (the subject of
a note, p. 326 of this volume,) whose principal subsistence was by a
trade in favourable winds, which she sold to mariners at Stromness.
Nothing could be more interesting than the kindness and hospitality of
the gentlemen of Zetland, which was to me the more affecting, as several
of them had been friends and correspondents of my father.
I was induced to go a generation or two farther back, to find materials
from which I might trace the features of the old Norwegian Udaller, the
Scottish gentry having in general occupied the place of that primitive
race, and their language and peculiarities of manner having entirely
disappeared. The only difference now to be observed betwixt the gentry
of these islands, and those of Scotland in general, is, that the wealth
and property is more equally divided among our more northern countrymen,
and that there exists among the resident proprietors no men of very
great wealth, whose display of its luxuries might render the others
discontented with their own lot. From the same cause of general
equality of fortunes, and the cheapness of living, which is its natural
consequence, I found the officers of a veteran regiment who had
maintained the garrison at Fort Charlotte, in Lerwick, discomposed at
the idea of being recalled from a country where their pay, however
inadequate to the expenses of a capital, was fully adequate to their
wants, and it was singular to hear natives of merry England herself
regretting their approaching departure from the melancholy isles of the
Ultima Thule.
Such are the trivial particulars attending the origin of that
publication, which took place several years later than the agreeable
journey from which it took its rise.
The state of manners which I have introduced in the romance, was
necessarily in a great degree imaginary, though founded in some measure
on slight hints, which, showing what was, seemed to give reasonable
indication of what must once have been, the tone of the society in these
sequestered but interesting islands.
In one respect I was judged somewhat hastily, perhaps, when the
character of Norna was pronounced by the critics a mere copy of Meg
Merrilees. That I had fallen short of what I wished and desired to
express is unquestionable, otherwise my object could not have been so
widely mistaken; nor can I yet think that any person who will take the
trouble of reading the Pirate with some attention, can fail to trace in
Norna,--the victim of remorse and insanity, and the dupe of her own
imposture, her mind, too, flooded with all the wild literature and
extravagant superstitions of the north,--something distinct from the
Dumfries-shire gipsy, whose pretensions to supernatural powers are not
beyond those of a Norwood prophetess. The foundations of such a
character may be perhaps traced, though it be too true that the
necessary superstructure cannot have been raised upon them, otherwise
these remarks would have been unnecessary. There is also great
improbability in the statement of Norna's possessing power and
opportunity to impress on others that belief in her supernatural gifts
which distracted her own mind. Yet, amid a very credulous and ignorant
population, it is astonishing what success may be attained by an
impostor, who is, at the same time, an enthusiast. It is such as to
remind us of the couplet which assures us that
"The pleasure is as great
In being cheated as to cheat."
Indeed, as I have observed elsewhere, the professed explanation of a
tale, where appearances or incidents of a supernatural character are
referred to natural causes, has often, in the winding up of the story, a
degree of improbability almost equal to an absolute goblin narrative.
Even the genius of Mrs. Radcliffe could not always surmount this
difficulty.
ABBOTSFORD,
_1st May, 1831._
ADVERTISEMENT.
The purpose of the following Narrative is to give a detailed and
accurate account of certain remarkable incidents which took place in the
Orkney Islands, concerning which the more imperfect traditions and
mutilated records of the country only tell us the following erroneous
particulars:--
In the month of January, 1724-5, a vessel, called the Revenge, bearing
twenty large guns, and six smaller, commanded by JOHN GOW, or GOFFE, or
SMITH, came to the Orkney Islands, and was discovered to be a pirate, by
various acts of insolence and villainy committed by the crew. These were
for some time submitted to, the inhabitants of these remote islands not
possessing arms nor means of resistance; and so bold was the Captain of
these banditti, that he not only came ashore, and gave dancing parties
in the village of Stromness, but before his real character was
discovered, engaged the affections, and received the troth-plight, of a
young lady possessed of some property. A patriotic individual, JAMES
FEA, younger of Clestron, formed the plan of securing the buccanier,
which he effected by a mixture of courage and address, in consequence
chiefly of Gow's vessel having gone on shore near the harbour of
Calfsound, on the Island of Eda, not far distant from a house then
inhabited by Mr. FEA. In the various stratagems by which Mr. FEA
contrived finally, at the peril of his life, (they being well armed and
desperate,) to make the whole pirates his prisoners, he was much aided
by Mr. JAMES LAING, the grandfather of the late MALCOLM LAING, Esq., the
acute and ingenious historian of Scotland during the 17th century.
Gow, and others of his crew, suffered, by sentence of the High Court of
Admiralty, the punishment their crimes had long deserved. He conducted
himself with great audacity when before the Court; and, from an account
of the matter by an eye-witness, seems to have been subjected to some
unusual severities, in order to compel him to plead. The words are
these: "JOHN GOW would not plead, for which he was brought to the bar,
and the Judge ordered that his thumbs should be squeezed by two men,
with a whip-cord, till it did break; and then it should be doubled, till
it did again break, and then laid threefold, and that the executioners
should pull with their whole strength; which sentence Gow endured with a
great deal of boldness." The next morning, (27th May, 1725,) when he had
seen the terrible preparations for pressing him to death, his courage
gave way, and he told the Marshal of Court, that he would not have given
so much trouble, had he been assured of not being hanged in chains. He
was then tried, condemned, and executed, with others of his crew.
It is said, that the lady whose affections GOW had engaged, went up to
London to see him before his death, and that, arriving too late, she had
the courage to request a sight of his dead body; and then, touching the
hand of the corpse, she formally resumed the troth-plight which she had
bestowed. Without going through this ceremony, she could not, according
to the superstition of the country, have escaped a visit from the ghost
of her departed lover, in the event of her bestowing upon any living
suitor the faith which she had plighted to the dead. This part of the
legend may serve as a curious commentary on the fine Scottish ballad,
which begins,
"There came a ghost to Margaret's door," &c.(_a_)[6]
The common account of this incident farther bears, that Mr. FEA, the
spirited individual by whose exertions GOW'S career of iniquity was cut
short, was so far from receiving any reward from Government, that he
could not obtain even countenance enough to protect him against a
variety of sham suits, raised against him by Newgate solicitors, who
acted in the name of GOW, and others of the pirate crew; and the various
expenses, vexatious prosecutions, and other legal consequences, in which
his gallant exploit involved him, utterly ruined his fortune, and his
family; making his memory a notable example to all who shall in future
take pirates on their own authority.
It is to be supposed, for the honour of GEORGE the First's Government,
that the last circumstance, as well as the dates, and other particulars
of the commonly received story, are inaccurate, since they will be found
totally irreconcilable with the following veracious narrative, compiled
from materials to which he himself alone has had access, by
THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] See Editor's Notes at the end of the Volume. Wherever a similar
reference occurs, the reader will understand that the same direction
applies.
THE PIRATE.
CHAPTER I.
The storm had ceased its wintry roar,
Hoarse dash the billows of the sea;
But who on Thule's desert shore,
Cries, Have I burnt my harp for thee?
MACNIEL.
That long, narrow, and irregular island, usually called the mainland of
Zetland, because it is by far the largest of that Archipelago,
terminates, as is well known to the mariners who navigate the stormy
seas which surround the Thule of the ancients, in a cliff of immense
height, entitled Sumburgh-Head, which presents its bare scalp and naked
sides to the weight of a tremendous surge, forming the extreme point of
the isle to the south-east. This lofty promontory is constantly exposed
to the current of a strong and furious tide, which, setting in betwixt
the Orkney and Zetland Islands, and running with force only inferior to
that of the Pentland Frith, takes its name from the headland we have
mentioned, and is called the Roost of Sumburgh; _roost_ being the phrase
assigned in those isles to currents of this description.
On the land side, the promontory is covered with short grass, and slopes
steeply down to a little isthmus, upon which the sea has encroached in
creeks, which, advancing from either side of the island, gradually work
their way forward, and seem as if in a short time they would form a
junction, and altogether insulate Sumburgh-Head, when what is now a
cape, will become a lonely mountain islet, severed from the mainland, of
which it is at present the terminating extremity.
Man, however, had in former days considered this as a remote or unlikely
event; for a Norwegian chief of other times, or, as other accounts said,
and as the name of Jarlshof seemed to imply, an ancient Earl of the
Orkneys had selected this neck of land as the place for establishing a
mansion-house. It has been long entirely deserted, and the vestiges only
can be discerned with difficulty; for the loose sand, borne on the
tempestuous gales of those stormy regions, has overblown, and almost
buried, the ruins of the buildings; but in the end of the seventeenth
century, a part of the Earl's mansion was still entire and habitable. It
was a rude building of rough stone, with nothing about it to gratify the
eye, or to excite the imagination; a large old-fashioned narrow house,
with a very steep roof, covered with flags composed of grey sandstone,
would perhaps convey the best idea of the place to a modern reader. The
windows were few, very small in size, and distributed up and down the
building with utter contempt of regularity. Against the main structure
had rested, in former times, certain smaller co-partments of the
mansion-house, containing offices, or subordinate apartments, necessary
for the accommodation of the Earl's retainers and menials. But these had
become ruinous; and the rafters had been taken down for fire-wood, or
for other purposes; the walls had given way in many places; and, to
complete the devastation, the sand had already drifted amongst the
ruins, and filled up what had been once the chambers they contained, to
the depth of two or three feet.
Amid this desolation, the inhabitants of Jarlshof had contrived, by
constant labour and attention, to keep in order a few roods of land,
which had been enclosed as a garden, and which, sheltered by the walls
of the house itself, from the relentless sea-blast, produced such
vegetables as the climate could bring forth, or rather as the sea-gale
would permit to grow; for these islands experience even less of the
rigour of cold than is encountered on the mainland of Scotland; but,
unsheltered by a wall of some sort or other, it is scarce possible to
raise even the most ordinary culinary vegetables; and as for shrubs or
trees, they are entirely out of the question, such is the force of the
sweeping sea-blast.
At a short distance from the mansion, and near to the sea-beach, just
where the creek forms a sort of imperfect harbour, in which lay three or
four fishing-boats, there were a few most wretched cottages for the
inhabitants and tenants of the township of Jarlshof, who held the whole
district of the landlord upon such terms as were in those days usually
granted to persons of this description, and which, of course, were hard
enough. The landlord himself resided upon an estate which he possessed
in a more eligible situation, in a different part of the island, and
seldom visited his possessions at Sumburgh-Head. He was an honest, plain
Zetland gentleman, somewhat passionate, the necessary result of being
surrounded by dependents; and somewhat over-convivial in his habits, the
consequence, perhaps, of having too much time at his disposal; but
frank-tempered and generous to his people, and kind and hospitable to
strangers. He was descended also of an old and noble Norwegian family; a
circumstance which rendered him dearer to the lower orders, most of whom
are of the same race; while the lairds, or proprietors, are generally of
Scottish extraction, who, at that early period, were still considered as
strangers and intruders. Magnus Troil, who deduced his descent from the
very Earl who was supposed to have founded Jarlshof, was peculiarly of
this opinion.
The present inhabitants of Jarlshof had experienced, on several
occasions, the kindness and good will of the proprietor of the
territory. When Mr. Mertoun--such was the name of the present inhabitant
of the old mansion--first arrived in Zetland, some years before the
story commences, he had been received at the house of Mr. Troil with
that warm and cordial hospitality for which the islands are
distinguished. No one asked him whence he came, where he was going, what
was his purpose in visiting so remote a corner of the empire, or what
was likely to be the term of his stay. He arrived a perfect stranger,
yet was instantly overpowered by a succession of invitations; and in
each house which he visited, he found a home as long as he chose to
accept it, and lived as one of the family, unnoticed and unnoticing,
until he thought proper to remove to some other dwelling. This apparent
indifference to the rank, character, and qualities of their guest, did
not arise from apathy on the part of his kind hosts, for the islanders
had their full share of natural curiosity; but their delicacy deemed it
would be an infringement upon the laws of hospitality, to ask questions
which their guest might have found it difficult or unpleasing to answer;
and instead of endeavouring, as is usual in other countries, to wring
out of Mr. Mertoun such communications as he might find it agreeable to
withhold, the considerate Zetlanders contented themselves with eagerly
gathering up such scraps of information as could be collected in the
course of conversation.
But the rock in an Arabian desert is not more reluctant to afford water,
than Mr. Basil Mertoun was niggard in imparting his confidence, even
incidentally; and certainly the politeness of the gentry of Thule was
never put to a more severe test than when they felt that good-breeding
enjoined them to abstain from enquiring into the situation of so
mysterious a personage.
All that was actually known of him was easily summed up. Mr. Mertoun had
come to Lerwick, then rising into some importance, but not yet
acknowledged as the principal town of the island, in a Dutch vessel,
accompanied only by his son, a handsome boy of about fourteen years old.
His own age might exceed forty. The Dutch skipper introduced him to some
of the very good friends with whom he used to barter gin and gingerbread
for little Zetland bullocks, smoked geese, and stockings of lambs-wool;
and although Meinheer could only say, that "Meinheer Mertoun hab bay his
bassage like one gentlemans, and hab given a Kreitz-dollar beside to the
crew," this introduction served to establish the Dutchman's passenger in
a respectable circle of acquaintances, which gradually enlarged, as it
appeared that the stranger was a man of considerable acquirements.
This discovery was made almost _per force_; for Mertoun was as unwilling
to speak upon general subjects, as upon his own affairs. But he was
sometimes led into discussions, which showed, as it were in spite of
himself, the scholar and the man of the world; and, at other times, as
if in requital of the hospitality which he experienced, he seemed to
compel himself, against his fixed nature, to enter into the society of
those around him, especially when it assumed the grave, melancholy, or
satirical cast, which best suited the temper of his own mind. Upon such
occasions, the Zetlanders were universally of opinion that he must have
had an excellent education, neglected only in one striking particular,
namely, that Mr. Mertoun scarce knew the stem of a ship from the stern;
and in the management of a boat, a cow could not be more ignorant. It
seemed astonishing such gross ignorance of the most necessary art of
life (in the Zetland Isles at least) should subsist along with his
accomplishments in other respects; but so it was.
Unless called forth in the manner we have mentioned, the habits of Basil
Mertoun were retired and gloomy. From loud mirth he instantly fled; and
even the moderated cheerfulness of a friendly party, had the invariable
effect of throwing him into deeper dejection than even his usual
demeanour indicated.
Women are always particularly desirous of investigating mystery, and of
alleviating melancholy, especially when these circumstances are united
in a handsome man about the prime of life. It is possible, therefore,
that amongst the fair-haired and blue-eyed daughters of Thule, this
mysterious and pensive stranger might have found some one to take upon
herself the task of consolation, had he shown any willingness to accept
such kindly offices; but, far from doing so, he seemed even to shun the
presence of the sex, to which in our distresses, whether of mind or
body, we generally apply for pity and comfort.
To these peculiarities Mr. Mertoun added another, which was particularly
disagreeable to his host and principal patron, Magnus Troil. This
magnate of Zetland, descended by the father's side, as we have already
said, from an ancient Norwegian family, by the marriage of its
representative with a Danish lady, held the devout opinion that a cup of
Geneva or Nantz was specific against all cares and afflictions whatever.
These were remedies to which Mr. Mertoun never applied; his drink was
water, and water alone, and no persuasion or entreaties could induce him
to taste any stronger beverage than was afforded by the pure spring. Now
this Magnus Troil could not tolerate; it was a defiance to the ancient
northern laws of conviviality, which, for his own part, he had so
rigidly observed, that although he was wont to assert that he had never
in his life gone to bed drunk, (that is, in his own sense of the word,)
it would have been impossible to prove that he had ever resigned himself
to slumber in a state of actual and absolute sobriety. It may be
therefore asked, What did this stranger bring into society to compensate
the displeasure given by his austere and abstemious habits? He had, in
the first place, that manner and self-importance which mark a person of
some consequence: and although it was conjectured that he could not be
rich, yet it was certainly known by his expenditure that neither was he
absolutely poor. He had, besides, some powers of conversation, when, as
we have already hinted, he chose to exert them, and his misanthropy or
aversion to the business and intercourse of ordinary life, was often
expressed in an antithetical manner, which passed for wit, when better
was not to be had. Above all, Mr. Mertoun's secret seemed impenetrable,
and his presence had all the interest of a riddle, which men love to
read over and over, because they cannot find out the meaning of it.
Notwithstanding these recommendations, Mertoun differed in so many
material points from his host, that after he had been for some time a
guest at his principal residence, Magnus Troil was agreeably surprised
when, one evening after they had sat two hours in absolute silence,
drinking brandy and water,--that is, Magnus drinking the alcohol, and
Mertoun the element,--the guest asked his host's permission to occupy,
as his tenant, this deserted mansion of Jarlshof, at the extremity of
the territory called Dunrossness, and situated just beneath
Sumburgh-Head. "I shall be handsomely rid of him," quoth Magnus to
himself, "and his kill-joy visage will never again stop the bottle in
its round. His departure will ruin me in lemons, however, for his mere
look was quite sufficient to sour a whole ocean of punch."
Yet the kind-hearted Zetlander generously and disinterestedly
remonstrated with Mr. Mertoun on the solitude and inconveniences to
which he was about to subject himself. "There were scarcely," he said,
"even the most necessary articles of furniture in the old house--there
was no society within many miles--for provisions, the principal article
of food would be sour sillocks, and his only company gulls and
gannets."
"My good friend," replied Mertoun, "if you could have named a
circumstance which would render the residence more eligible to me than
any other, it is that there would be neither human luxury nor human
society near the place of my retreat; a shelter from the weather for my
own head, and for the boy's, is all I seek for. So name your rent, Mr.
Troil, and let me be your tenant at Jarlshof."
"Rent?" answered the Zetlander; "why, no great rent for an old house
which no one has lived in since my mother's time--God rest her!--and as
for shelter, the old walls are thick enough, and will bear many a bang
yet. But, Heaven love you, Mr. Mertoun, think what you are purposing.
For one of us to live at Jarlshof, were a wild scheme enough; but you,
who are from another country, whether English, Scotch, or Irish, no one
can tell"----
"Nor does it greatly matter," said Mertoun, somewhat abruptly.
"Not a herring's scale," answered the Laird; "only that I like you the
better for being no Scot, as I trust you are not one. Hither they have
come like the clack-geese--every chamberlain has brought over a flock of
his own name, and his own hatching, for what I know, and here they roost
for ever--catch them returning to their own barren Highlands or
Lowlands, when once they have tasted our Zetland beef, and seen our
bonny _voes_ and lochs. No, sir," (here Magnus proceeded with great
animation, sipping from time to time the half-diluted spirit, which at
the same time animated his resentment against the intruders, and enabled
him to endure the mortifying reflection which it suggested,)--"No, sir,
the ancient days and the genuine manners of these Islands are no more;
for our ancient possessors,--our Patersons, our Feas, our
Schlagbrenners, our Thorbiorns, have given place to Giffords, Scotts,
Mouats, men whose names bespeak them or their ancestors strangers to the
soil which we the Troils have inhabited long before the days of
Turf-Einar, who first taught these Isles the mystery of burning peat for
fuel, and who has been handed down to a grateful posterity by a name
which records the discovery."
This was a subject upon which the potentate of Jarlshof was usually very
diffuse, and Mertoun saw him enter upon it with pleasure, because he
knew he should not be called upon to contribute any aid to the
conversation, and might therefore indulge his own saturnine humour while
the Norwegian Zetlander declaimed on the change of times and
inhabitants. But just as Magnus had arrived at the melancholy
conclusion, "how probable it was, that in another century scarce a
_merk_--scarce even an _ure_ of land, would be in the possession of the
Norse inhabitants, the true Udallers[7] of Zetland," he recollected the
circumstances of his guest, and stopped suddenly short. "I do not say
all this," he added, interrupting himself, "as if I were unwilling that
you should settle on my estate, Mr. Mertoun--But for Jarlshof--the place
is a wild one--Come from where you will, I warrant you will say, like
other travellers, you came from a better climate than ours, for so say
you all. And yet you think of a retreat, which the very natives run away
from. Will you not take your glass?"--(This was to be considered as
interjectional,)--"then here's to you."
"My good sir," answered Mertoun, "I am indifferent to climate; if there
is but air enough to fill my lungs, I care not if it be the breath of
Arabia or of Lapland."
"Air enough you may have," answered Magnus, "no lack of that--somewhat
damp, strangers allege it to be, but we know a corrective for
that--Here's to you, Mr. Mertoun--You must learn to _do so_, and to
smoke a pipe; and then, as you say, you will find the air of Zetland
equal to that of Arabia. But have you seen Jarlshof?"
The stranger intimated that he had not.
"Then," replied Magnus, "you have no idea of your undertaking. If you
think it a comfortable roadstead like this, with the house situated on
the side of an inland voe,[8] that brings the herrings up to your door,
you are mistaken, my heart. At Jarlshof you will see nought but the wild
waves tumbling on the bare rocks, and the Roost of Sumburgh running at
the rate of fifteen knots an-hour."
"I shall see nothing at least of the current of human passions," replied
Mertoun.
"You will hear nothing but the clanging and screaming of scarts,
sheer-waters, and seagulls, from daybreak till sunset."
"I will compound, my friend," replied the stranger, "so that I do not
hear the chattering of women's tongues."
"Ah," said the Norman, "that is because you hear just now my little
Minna and Brenda singing in the garden with your Mordaunt. Now, I would
rather listen to their little voices, than the skylark which I once
heard in Caithness, or the nightingale that I have read of.--What will
the girls do for want of their playmate Mordaunt?"
"They will shift for themselves," answered Mertoun; "younger or elder
they will find playmates or dupes.--But the question is, Mr. Troil, will
you let to me, as your tenant, this old mansion of Jarlshof?"
"Gladly, since you make it your option to live in a spot so desolate."
"And as for the rent?" continued Mertoun.
"The rent?" replied Magnus; "hum--why, you must have the bit of _plantie
cruive_,[9] which they once called a garden, and a right in the
_scathold_, and a sixpenny merk of land, that the tenants may fish for
you;--eight _lispunds_[10] of butter, and eight shillings sterling
yearly, is not too much?"
Mr. Mertoun agreed to terms so moderate, and from thenceforward resided
chiefly at the solitary mansion which we have described in the beginning
of this chapter, conforming not only without complaint, but, as it
seemed, with a sullen pleasure, to all the privations which so wild and
desolate a situation necessarily imposed on its inhabitant.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] The Udallers are the _allodial_ possessors of Zetland, who hold
their possessions under the old Norwegian law, instead of the feudal
tenures introduced among them from Scotland.
[8] Salt-water lake.
[9] Patch of ground for vegetables. The liberal custom of the country
permits any person, who has occasion for such a convenience, to select
out of the unenclosed moorland a small patch, which he surrounds with a
drystone wall, and cultivates as a kailyard, till he exhausts the soil
with cropping, and then he deserts it, and encloses another. This
liberty is so far from inferring an invasion of the right of proprietor
and tenant, that the last degree of contempt is inferred of an
avaricious man, when a Zetlander says he would not hold a _plantie
cruive_ of him.
[10] A lispund is about thirty pounds English, and the value is averaged
by Dr. Edmonston at ten shillings sterling.
CHAPTER II.
'Tis not alone the scene--the man, Anselmo,
The man finds sympathies in these wild wastes,
And roughly tumbling seas, which fairer views
And smoother waves deny him.
_Ancient Arama._
The few inhabitants of the township of Jarlshof had at first heard with
alarm, that a person of rank superior to their own was come to reside in
the ruinous tenement, which they still called the Castle. In those days
(for the present times are greatly altered for the better) the presence
of a superior, in such a situation, was almost certain to be attended
with additional burdens and exactions, for which, under one pretext or
another, feudal customs furnished a thousand apologies. By each of
these, a part of the tenants' hard-won and precarious profits was
diverted for the use of their powerful neighbour and superior, the
tacksman, as he was called. But the sub-tenants speedily found that no
oppression of this kind was to be apprehended at the hands of Basil
Mertoun. His own means, whether large or small, were at least fully
adequate to his expenses, which, so far as regarded his habits of life,
were of the most frugal description. The luxuries of a few books, and
some philosophical instruments, with which he was supplied from London
as occasion offered, seemed to indicate a degree of wealth unusual in
those islands; but, on the other hand, the table and the accommodations
at Jarlshof, did not exceed what was maintained by a Zetland proprietor
of the most inferior description.
The tenants of the hamlet troubled themselves very little about the
quality of their superior, as soon as they found that their situation
was rather to be mended than rendered worse by his presence; and, once
relieved from the apprehension of his tyrannizing over them, they laid
their heads together to make the most of him by various petty tricks of
overcharge and extortion, which for a while the stranger submitted to
with the most philosophic indifference. An incident, however, occurred,
which put his character in a new light, and effectually checked all
future efforts at extravagant imposition.
A dispute arose in the kitchen of the Castle betwixt an old governante,
who acted as housekeeper to Mr. Mertoun, and Sweyn Erickson, as good a
Zetlander as ever rowed a boat to the _haaf_ fishing;[11] which dispute,
as is usual in such cases, was maintained with such increasing heat and
vociferation as to reach the ears of the master, (as he was called,)
who, secluded in a solitary turret, was deeply employed in examining the
contents of a new package of books from London, which, after long
expectation, had found its way to Hull, from thence by a whaling vessel
to Lerwick, and so to Jarlshof. With more than the usual thrill of
indignation which indolent people always feel when roused into action on
some unpleasant occasion, Mertoun descended to the scene of contest, and
so suddenly, peremptorily, and strictly, enquired into the cause of
dispute, that the parties, notwithstanding every evasion which they
attempted, became unable to disguise from him, that their difference
respected the several interests to which the honest governante, and no
less honest fisherman, were respectively entitled, in an overcharge of
about one hundred per cent on a bargain of rock-cod, purchased by the
former from the latter, for the use of the family at Jarlshof.
When this was fairly ascertained and confessed, Mr. Mertoun stood
looking upon the culprits with eyes in which the utmost scorn seemed to
contend with awakening passion. "Hark you, ye old hag," said he at
length to the housekeeper, "avoid my house this instant! and know that I
dismiss you, not for being a liar, a thief, and an ungrateful
quean,--for these are qualities as proper to you as your name of
woman,--but for daring, in my house, to scold above your breath.--And
for you, you rascal, who suppose you may cheat a stranger as you would
_flinch_[12] a whale, know that I am well acquainted with the rights
which, by delegation from your master, Magnus Troil, I can exercise over
you, if I will. Provoke me to a certain pitch, and you shall learn, to
your cost, I can break your rest as easily as you can interrupt my
leisure. I know the meaning of _scat_, and _wattle_, and _hawkhen_, and
_hagalef_,(_b_) and every other exaction, by which your lords, in
ancient and modern days, have wrung your withers; nor is there one of
you that shall not rue the day that you could not be content with
robbing me of my money, but must also break in on my leisure with your
atrocious northern clamour, that rivals in discord the screaming of a
flight of Arctic gulls."
Nothing better occurred to Sweyn, in answer to this objurgation, than
the preferring a humble request that his honour would be pleased to
keep the cod-fish without payment, and say no more about the matter; but
by this time Mr. Mertoun had worked up his passions into an ungovernable
rage, and with one hand he threw the money at the fisherman's head,
while with the other he pelted him out of the apartment with his own
fish, which he finally flung out of doors after him.
There was so much of appalling and tyrannic fury in the stranger's
manner on this occasion, that Sweyn neither stopped to collect the money
nor take back his commodity, but fled at a precipitate rate to the small
hamlet, to tell his comrades that if they provoked Master Mertoun any
farther, he would turn an absolute Pate Stewart[13] on their hand, and
head and hang without either judgment or mercy.
Hither also came the discarded housekeeper, to consult with her
neighbours and kindred (for she too was a native of the village) what
she should do to regain the desirable situation from which she had been
so suddenly expelled. The old Ranzellaar of the village, who had the
voice most potential in the deliberations of the township, after hearing
what had happened, pronounced that Sweyn Erickson had gone too far in
raising the market upon Mr. Mertoun; and that whatever pretext the
tacksman might assume for thus giving way to his anger, the real
grievance must have been the charging the rock cod-fish at a penny
instead of a half-penny a-pound; he therefore exhorted all the community
never to raise their exactions in future beyond the proportion of
threepence upon the shilling, at which rate their master at the Castle
could not reasonably be expected to grumble, since, as he was disposed
to do them no harm, it was reasonable to think that, in a moderate way,
he had no objection to do them good. "And three upon twelve," said the
experienced Ranzellaar, "is a decent and moderate profit, and will bring
with it God's blessing and Saint Ronald's."
Proceeding upon the tariff thus judiciously recommended to them, the
inhabitants of Jarlshof cheated Mertoun in future only to the moderate
extent of twenty-five per cent; a rate to which all nabobs,
army-contractors, speculators in the funds, and others, whom recent and
rapid success has enabled to settle in the country upon a great scale,
ought to submit, as very reasonable treatment at the hand of their
rustic neighbours. Mertoun at least seemed of that opinion, for he gave
himself no farther trouble upon the subject of his household expenses.
The conscript fathers of Jarlshof, having settled their own matters,
took next under their consideration the case of Swertha, the banished
matron who had been expelled from the Castle, whom, as an experienced
and useful ally, they were highly desirous to restore to her office of
housekeeper, should that be found possible. But as their wisdom here
failed them, Swertha, in despair, had recourse to the good offices of
Mordaunt Mertoun, with whom she had acquired some favour by her
knowledge in old Norwegian ballads, and dismal tales concerning the
Trows or Drows, (the dwarfs of the Scalds,) with whom superstitious eld
had peopled many a lonely cavern and brown dale in Dunrossness, as in
every other district of Zetland. "Swertha," said the youth, "I can do
but little for you, but you may do something for yourself. My father's
passion resembles the fury of those ancient champions, those Berserkars,
you sing songs about."
"Ay, ay, fish of my heart," replied the old woman, with a pathetic
whine; "the Berserkars(_c_) were champions who lived before the blessed
days of Saint Olave, and who used to run like madmen on swords, and
spears, and harpoons, and muskets, and snap them all into pieces, as a
finner[14] would go through a herring-net, and then, when the fury went
off, they were as weak and unstable as water."[15]
"That's the very thing, Swertha," said Mordaunt. "Now, my father never
likes to think of his passion after it is over, and is so much of a
Berserkar, that, let him be desperate as he will to-day, he will not
care about it to-morrow. Therefore, he has not filled up your place in
the household at the Castle, and not a mouthful of warm food has been
dressed there since you went away, and not a morsel of bread baked, but
we have lived just upon whatever cold thing came to hand. Now, Swertha,
I will be your warrant, that if you go boldly up to the Castle, and
enter upon the discharge of your duties as usual, you will never hear a
single word from him."
Swertha hesitated at first to obey this bold counsel. She said, "to her
thinking, Mr. Mertoun, when he was angry, looked more like a fiend than
any Berserkar of them all; that the fire flashed from his eyes, and the
foam flew from his lips; and that it would be a plain tempting of
Providence to put herself again in such a venture."
But, on the encouragement which she received from the son, she
determined at length once more to face the parent; and, dressing herself
in her ordinary household attire, for so Mordaunt particularly
recommended, she slipped into the Castle, and presently resuming the
various and numerous occupations which devolved on her, seemed as deeply
engaged in household cares as if she had never been out of office.
The first day of her return to her duty, Swertha made no appearance in
presence of her master, but trusted that after his three days' diet on
cold meat, a hot dish, dressed with the best of her simple skill, might
introduce her favourably to his recollection. When Mordaunt had reported
that his father had taken no notice of this change of diet, and when she
herself observed that in passing and repassing him occasionally, her
appearance produced no effect upon her singular master, she began to
imagine that the whole affair had escaped Mr. Mertoun's memory, and was
active in her duty as usual. Neither was she convinced of the contrary
until one day, when, happening somewhat to elevate her tone in a dispute
with the other maid-servant, her master, who at that time passed the
place of contest, eyed her with a strong glance, and pronounced the
single word, _Remember!_ in a tone which taught Swertha the government
of her tongue for many weeks after.
If Mertoun was whimsical in his mode of governing his household, he
seemed no less so in his plan of educating his son. He showed the youth
but few symptoms of parental affection; yet, in his ordinary state of
mind, the improvement of Mordaunt's education seemed to be the utmost
object of his life. He had both books and information sufficient to
discharge the task of tutor in the ordinary branches of knowledge; and
in this capacity was regular, calm, and strict, not to say severe, in
exacting from his pupil the attention necessary for his profiting. But
in the perusal of history, to which their attention was frequently
turned, as well as in the study of classic authors, there often occurred
facts or sentiments which produced an instant effect upon Mertoun's
mind, and brought on him suddenly what Swertha, Sweyn, and even
Mordaunt, came to distinguish by the name of his dark hour. He was
aware, in the usual case, of its approach, and retreated to an inner
apartment, into which he never permitted even Mordaunt to enter. Here he
would abide in seclusion for days, and even weeks, only coming out at
uncertain times, to take such food as they had taken care to leave
within his reach, which he used in wonderfully small quantities. At
other times, and especially during the winter solstice, when almost
every person spends the gloomy time within doors in feasting and
merriment, this unhappy man would wrap himself in a dark-coloured
sea-cloak, and wander out along the stormy beach, or upon the desolate
heath, indulging his own gloomy and wayward reveries under the inclement
sky, the rather that he was then most sure to wander unencountered and
unobserved.
As Mordaunt grew older, he learned to note the particular signs which
preceded these fits of gloomy despondency, and to direct such
precautions as might ensure his unfortunate parent from ill-timed
interruption, (which had always the effect of driving him to fury,)
while, at the same time, full provision was made for his subsistence.
Mordaunt perceived that at such periods the melancholy fit of his father
was greatly prolonged, if he chanced to present himself to his eyes
while the dark hour was upon him. Out of respect, therefore, to his
parent, as well as to indulge the love of active exercise and of
amusement natural to his period of life, Mordaunt used often to absent
himself altogether from the mansion of Jarlshof, and even from the
district, secure that his father, if the dark hour passed away in his
absence, would be little inclined to enquire how his son had disposed of
his leisure, so that he was sure he had not watched his own weak
moments; that being the subject on which he entertained the utmost
jealousy.
At such times, therefore, all the sources of amusement which the country
afforded, were open to the younger Mertoun, who, in these intervals of
his education, had an opportunity to give full scope to the energies of
a bold, active, and daring character. He was often engaged with the
youth of the hamlet in those desperate sports, to which the "dreadful
trade of the samphire-gatherer" is like a walk upon level ground--often
joined those midnight excursions upon the face of the giddy cliffs, to
secure the eggs or the young of the sea-fowl; and in these daring
adventures displayed an address, presence of mind, and activity, which,
in one so young, and not a native of the country, astonished the oldest
fowlers.[16]
At other times, Mordaunt accompanied Sweyn and other fishermen in their
long and perilous expeditions to the distant and deep sea, learning
under their direction the management of the boat, in which they equal,
or exceed, perhaps, any natives of the British empire. This exercise had
charms for Mordaunt, independently of the fishing alone.
At this time, the old Norwegian sagas were much remembered, and often
rehearsed, by the fishermen, who still preserved among themselves the
ancient Norse tongue, which was the speech of their forefathers. In the
dark romance of those Scandinavian tales, lay much that was captivating
to a youthful ear; and the classic fables of antiquity were rivalled at
least, if not excelled, in Mordaunt's opinion, by the strange legends of
Berserkars, of Sea-kings, of dwarfs, giants, and sorcerers, which he
heard from the native Zetlanders. Often the scenes around him were
assigned as the localities of the wild poems, which, half recited, half
chanted by voices as hoarse, if not so loud, as the waves over which
they floated, pointed out the very bay on which they sailed as the scene
of a bloody sea-fight; the scarce-seen heap of stones that bristled over
the projecting cape, as the dun, or castle, of some potent earl or noted
pirate; the distant and solitary grey stone on the lonely moor, as
marking the grave of a hero; the wild cavern, up which the sea rolled in
heavy, broad, and unbroken billows, as the dwelling of some noted
sorceress.[17]
The ocean also had its mysteries, the effect of which was aided by the
dim twilight, through which it was imperfectly seen for more than half
the year. Its bottomless depths and secret caves contained, according to
the account of Sweyn and others, skilled in legendary lore, such wonders
as modern navigators reject with disdain. In the quiet moonlight bay,
where the waves came rippling to the shore, upon a bed of smooth sand
intermingled with shells, the mermaid was still seen to glide along the
waters, and, mingling her voice with the sighing breeze, was often heard
to sing of subterranean wonders, or to chant prophecies of future
events. The kraken, that hugest of living things, was still supposed to
cumber the recesses of the Northern Ocean; and often, when some fog-bank
covered the sea at a distance, the eye of the experienced boatman saw
the horns of the monstrous leviathan welking and waving amidst the
wreaths of mist, and bore away with all press of oar and sail, lest the
sudden suction, occasioned by the sinking of the monstrous mass to the
bottom, should drag within the grasp of its multifarious feelers his own
frail skiff. The sea-snake was also known, which, arising out of the
depths of ocean, stretches to the skies his enormous neck, covered with
a mane like that of a war-horse, and with its broad glittering eyes,
raised mast-head high, looks out, as it seems, for plunder or for
victims.
Many prodigious stories of these marine monsters, and of many others
less known, were then universally received among the Zetlanders, whose
descendants have not as yet by any means abandoned faith in them.[18]
Such legends are, indeed, everywhere current amongst the vulgar; but
the imagination is far more powerfully affected by them on the deep and
dangerous seas of the north, amidst precipices and headlands, many
hundred feet in height,--amid perilous straits, and currents, and
eddies,--long sunken reefs of rock, over which the vivid ocean foams and
boils,--dark caverns, to whose extremities neither man nor skiff has
ever ventured,--lonely, and often uninhabited isles,--and occasionally
the ruins of ancient northern fastnesses, dimly seen by the feeble light
of the Arctic winter. To Mordaunt, who had much of romance in his
disposition, these superstitions formed a pleasing and interesting
exercise of the imagination, while, half doubting, half inclined to
believe, he listened to the tales chanted concerning these wonders of
nature, and creatures of credulous belief, told in the rude but
energetic language of the ancient Scalds.
But there wanted not softer and lighter amusement, that might seem
better suited to Mordaunt's age, than the wild tales and rude exercises
which we have already mentioned. The season of winter, when, from the
shortness of the daylight, labour becomes impossible, is in Zetland the
time of revel, feasting, and merriment. Whatever the fisherman has been
able to acquire during summer, was expended, and often wasted, in
maintaining the mirth and hospitality of his hearth during this period;
while the landholders and gentlemen of the island gave double loose to
their convivial and hospitable dispositions, thronged their houses with
guests, and drove away the rigour of the season with jest, glee, and
song, the dance, and the wine-cup.
Amid the revels of this merry, though rigorous season, no youth added
more spirit to the dance, or glee to the revel, than the young stranger,
Mordaunt Mertoun. When his father's state of mind permitted, or indeed
required, his absence, he wandered from house to house a welcome guest
whereever he came, and lent his willing voice to the song, and his foot
to the dance. A boat, or, if the weather, as was often the case,
permitted not that convenience, one of the numerous ponies, which,
straying in hordes about the extensive moors, may be said to be at any
man's command who can catch them, conveyed him from the mansion of one
hospitable Zetlander to that of another. None excelled him in performing
the warlike sword-dance, a species of amusement which had been derived
from the habits of the ancient Norsemen. He could play upon the _gue_,
and upon the common violin, the melancholy and pathetic tunes peculiar
to the country; and with great spirit and execution could relieve their
monotony with the livelier airs of the North of Scotland. When a party
set forth as maskers, or, as they are called in Scotland, _guizards_, to
visit some neighbouring Laird, or rich Udaller, it augured well of the
expedition if Mordaunt Mertoun could be prevailed upon to undertake the
office of _skudler_, or leader of the band. Upon these occasions, full
of fun and frolic, he led his retinue from house to house, bringing
mirth where he went, and leaving regret when he departed. Mordaunt
became thus generally known and beloved as generally, through most of
the houses composing the patriarchal community of the Main Isle; but his
visits were most frequently and most willingly paid at the mansion of
his father's landlord and protector, Magnus Troil.
It was not entirely the hearty and sincere welcome of the worthy old
Magnate, nor the sense that he was in effect his father's patron, which
occasioned these frequent visits. The hand of welcome was indeed
received as eagerly as it was sincerely given, while the ancient
Udaller, raising himself in his huge chair, whereof the inside was lined
with well-dressed sealskins, and the outside composed of massive oak,
carved by the rude graving-tool of some Hamburgh carpenter, shouted
forth his welcome in a tone, which might, in ancient times, have hailed
the return of _Ioul_, the highest festival of the Goths. There was metal
yet more attractive, and younger hearts, whose welcome, if less loud,
was as sincere as that of the jolly Udaller. But this is matter which
ought not to be discussed at the conclusion of a chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] _i. e._ The deep-sea fishing, in distinction to that which is
practised along shore.
[12] The operation of slicing the blubber from the bones of the whale,
is called, technically, _flinching_.
[13] Meaning, probably, Patrick Stewart, Earl of Orkney, executed for
tyranny and oppression practised on the inhabitants of those remote
islands, in the beginning of the seventeenth century.
[14] _Finner_, small whale.
[15] The sagas of the Scalds are full of descriptions of these
champions, and do not permit us to doubt that the Berserkars, so called
from fighting without armour, used some physical means of working
themselves into a frenzy, during which they possessed the strength and
energy of madness. The Indian warriors are well known to do the same by
dint of opium and bang.
[16] Fatal accidents, however, sometimes occur. When I visited the Fair
Isle in 1814, a poor lad of fourteen had been killed by a fall from the
rocks about a fortnight before our arrival. The accident happened almost
within sight of his mother, who was casting peats at no great distance.
The body fell into the sea, and was seen no more. But the islanders
account this an honourable mode of death; and as the children begin the
practice of climbing very early, fewer accidents occur than might be
expected.
[17] Note I.--Norse Fragments.
[18] Note II.--Monsters of the Northern Seas.
CHAPTER III.
"O, Bessy Bell and Mary Gray,
They were twa bonnie lasses;
They biggit a house on yon burn-brae,
And theekit it ower wi' rashes.
Fair Bessy Bell I looed yestreen,
And thought I ne'er could alter;
But Mary Gray's twa pawky een
Have garr'd my fancy falter."(_d_)
_Scots Song._
We have already mentioned Minna and Brenda, the daughters of Magnus
Troil. Their mother had been dead for many years, and they were now two
beautiful girls, the eldest only eighteen, which might be a year or two
younger than Mordaunt Mertoun, the second about seventeen.--They were
the joy of their father's heart, and the light of his old eyes; and
although indulged to a degree which might have endangered his comfort
and their own, they repaid his affection with a love, into which even
blind indulgence had not introduced slight regard, or feminine caprice.
The difference of their tempers and of their complexions was singularly
striking, although combined, as is usual, with a certain degree of
family resemblance.
The mother of these maidens had been a Scottish lady from the Highlands
of Sutherland, the orphan of a noble chief, who, driven from his own
country during the feuds of the seventeenth century, had found shelter
in those peaceful islands, which, amidst poverty and seclusion, were
thus far happy, that they remained unvexed by discord, and unstained by
civil broil. The father (his name was Saint Clair) pined for his native
glen, his feudal tower, his clansmen, and his fallen authority, and died
not long after his arrival in Zetland. The beauty of his orphan
daughter, despite her Scottish lineage, melted the stout heart of Magnus
Troil. He sued and was listened to, and she became his bride; but dying
in the fifth year of their union, left him to mourn his brief period of
domestic happiness.
From her mother, Minna inherited the stately form and dark eyes, the
raven locks and finely-pencilled brows, which showed she was, on one
side at least, a stranger to the blood of Thule. Her cheek,--
"O call it fair, not pale!"
was so slightly and delicately tinged with the rose, that many thought
the lily had an undue proportion in her complexion. But in that
predominance of the paler flower, there was nothing sickly or languid;
it was the true natural colour of health, and corresponded in a peculiar
degree with features, which seemed calculated to express a contemplative
and high-minded character. When Minna Troil heard a tale of woe or of
injustice, it was then her blood rushed to her cheeks, and showed
plainly how warm it beat, notwithstanding the generally serious,
composed, and retiring disposition, which her countenance and demeanour
seemed to exhibit. If strangers sometimes conceived that these fine
features were clouded by melancholy, for which her age and situation
could scarce have given occasion, they were soon satisfied, upon
further acquaintance, that the placid, mild quietude of her disposition,
and the mental energy of a character which was but little interested in
ordinary and trivial occurrences, was the real cause of her gravity; and
most men, when they knew that her melancholy had no ground in real
sorrow, and was only the aspiration of a soul bent on more important
objects than those by which she was surrounded, might have wished her
whatever could add to her happiness, but could scarce have desired that,
graceful as she was in her natural and unaffected seriousness, she
should change that deportment for one more gay. In short,
notwithstanding our wish to have avoided that hackneyed simile of an
angel, we cannot avoid saying there was something in the serious beauty
of her aspect, in the measured, yet graceful ease of her motions, in the
music of her voice, and the serene purity of her eye, that seemed as if
Minna Troil belonged naturally to some higher and better sphere, and was
only the chance visitant of a world that was not worthy of her.
The scarcely less beautiful, equally lovely, and equally innocent
Brenda, was of a complexion as differing from her sister, as they
differed in character, taste, and expression. Her profuse locks were of
that paly brown which receives from the passing sunbeam a tinge of gold,
but darkens again when the ray has passed from it. Her eye, her mouth,
the beautiful row of teeth, which in her innocent vivacity were
frequently disclosed; the fresh, yet not too bright glow of a healthy
complexion, tinging a skin like the drifted snow, spoke her genuine
Scandinavian descent. A fairy form, less tall than that of Minna, but
still more finely moulded into symmetry--a careless, and almost
childish lightness of step--an eye that seemed to look on every object
with pleasure, from a natural and serene cheerfulness of disposition,
attracted even more general admiration than the charms of her sister,
though perhaps that which Minna did excite might be of a more intense as
well as more reverential character.
The dispositions of these lovely sisters were not less different than
their complexions. In the kindly affections, neither could be said to
excel the other, so much were they attached to their father and to each
other. But the cheerfulness of Brenda mixed itself with the every-day
business of life, and seemed inexhaustible in its profusion. The less
buoyant spirit of her sister appeared to bring to society a contented
wish to be interested and pleased with what was going forward, but was
rather placidly carried along with the stream of mirth and pleasure,
than disposed to aid its progress by any efforts of her own. She endured
mirth, rather than enjoyed it; and the pleasures in which she most
delighted, were those of a graver and more solitary cast. The knowledge
which is derived from books was beyond her reach. Zetland afforded few
opportunities, in those days, of studying the lessons, bequeathed
"By dead men to their kind;"
and Magnus Troil, such as we have described him, was not a person within
whose mansion the means of such knowledge were to be acquired. But the
book of nature was before Minna, that noblest of volumes, where we are
ever called to wonder and to admire, even when we cannot understand.
The plants of those wild regions, the shells on the shores, and the
long list of feathered clans which haunt their cliffs and eyries, were
as well known to Minna Troil as to the most experienced fowlers. Her
powers of observation were wonderful, and little interrupted by other
tones of feeling. The information which she acquired by habits of
patient attention, was indelibly riveted in a naturally powerful memory.
She had also a high feeling for the solitary and melancholy grandeur of
the scenes in which she was placed. The ocean, in all its varied forms
of sublimity and terror--the tremendous cliffs that resound to the
ceaseless roar of the billows, and the clang of the sea-fowl, had for
Minna a charm in almost every state in which the changing seasons
exhibited them. With the enthusiastic feelings proper to the romantic
race from which her mother descended, the love of natural objects was to
her a passion capable not only of occupying, but at times of agitating,
her mind. Scenes upon which her sister looked with a sense of transient
awe or emotion, which vanished on her return from witnessing them,
continued long to fill Minna's imagination, not only in solitude, and in
the silence of the night, but in the hours of society. So that sometimes
when she sat like a beautiful statue, a present member of the domestic
circle, her thoughts were far absent, wandering on the wild sea-shore,
and among the yet wilder mountains of her native isles. And yet, when
recalled to conversation, and mingling in it with interest, there were
few to whom her friends were more indebted for enhancing its enjoyments;
and although something in her manners claimed deference (notwithstanding
her early youth) as well as affection, even her gay, lovely, and
amiable sister was not more generally beloved than the more retired and
pensive Minna.
Indeed, the two lovely sisters were not only the delight of their
friends, but the pride of those islands, where the inhabitants of a
certain rank were blended, by the remoteness of their situation and the
general hospitality of their habits, into one friendly community. A
wandering poet and parcel-musician, who, after going through various
fortunes, had returned to end his days as he could in his native
islands, had celebrated the daughters of Magnus in a poem, which he
entitled Night and Day; and in his description of Minna, might almost be
thought to have anticipated, though only in a rude outline, the
exquisite lines of Lord Byron,--
"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect, and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies."
Their father loved the maidens both so well, that it might be difficult
to say which he loved best; saving that, perchance, he liked his graver
damsel better in the walk without doors, and his merry maiden better by
the fireside; that he more desired the society of Minna when he was sad,
and that of Brenda when he was mirthful; and, what was nearly the same
thing, preferred Minna before noon, and Brenda after the glass had
circulated in the evening.
But it was still more extraordinary, that the affections of Mordaunt
Mertoun seemed to hover with the same impartiality as those of their
father betwixt the two lovely sisters. From his boyhood, as we have
noticed, he had been a frequent inmate of the residence of Magnus at
Burgh-Westra, although it lay nearly twenty miles distant from Jarlshof.
The impassable character of the country betwixt these places, extending
over hills covered with loose and quaking bog, and frequently
intersected by the creeks or arms of the sea, which indent the island on
either side, as well as by fresh-water streams and lakes, rendered the
journey difficult, and even dangerous, in the dark season; yet, as soon
as the state of his father's mind warned him to absent himself,
Mordaunt, at every risk, and under every difficulty, was pretty sure to
be found the next day at Burgh-Westra, having achieved his journey in
less time than would have been employed perhaps by the most active
native.
He was of course set down as a wooer of one of the daughters of Magnus,
by the public of Zetland; and when the old Udaller's great partiality to
the youth was considered, nobody doubted that he might aspire to the
hand of either of those distinguished beauties, with as large a share of
islets, rocky moorland, and shore-fishings, as might be the fitting
portion of a favoured child, and with the presumptive prospect of
possessing half the domains of the ancient house of Troil, when their
present owner should be no more. This seemed all a reasonable
speculation, and, in theory at least, better constructed than many that
are current through the world as unquestionable facts. But, alas! all
that sharpness of observation which could be applied to the conduct of
the parties, failed to determine the main point, to which of the young
persons, namely, the attentions of Mordaunt were peculiarly devoted. He
seemed, in general, to treat them as an affectionate and attached
brother might have treated two sisters, so equally dear to him that a
breath would have turned the scale of affection. Or if at any time,
which often happened, the one maiden appeared the more especial object
of his attention, it seemed only to be because circumstances called her
peculiar talents and disposition into more particular and immediate
exercise.
Both the sisters were accomplished in the simple music of the north, and
Mordaunt, who was their assistant, and sometimes their preceptor, when
they were practising this delightful art, might be now seen assisting
Minna in the acquisition of those wild, solemn, and simple airs, to
which scalds and harpers sung of old the deeds of heroes, and presently
found equally active in teaching Brenda the more lively and complicated
music, which their father's affection caused to be brought from the
English or Scottish capital for the use of his daughters. And while
conversing with them, Mordaunt, who mingled a strain of deep and ardent
enthusiasm with the gay and ungovernable spirits of youth, was equally
ready to enter into the wild and poetical visions of Minna, or into the
lively and often humorous chat of her gayer sister. In short, so little
did he seem to attach himself to either damsel exclusively, that he was
sometimes heard to say, that Minna never looked so lovely, as when her
lighthearted sister had induced her, for the time, to forget her
habitual gravity; or Brenda so interesting, as when she sat listening, a
subdued and affected partaker of the deep pathos of her sister Minna.
The public of the mainland were, therefore, to use the hunter's phrase,
at fault in their farther conclusions, and could but determine, after
long vacillating betwixt the maidens, that the young man was positively
to marry one of them, but which of the two could only be determined when
his approaching manhood, or the interference of stout old Magnus, the
father, should teach Master Mordaunt Mertoun to know his own mind. "It
was a pretty thing, indeed," they usually concluded, "that he, no native
born, and possessed of no visible means of subsistence that is known to
any one, should presume to hesitate, or affect to have the power of
selection and choice, betwixt the two most distinguished beauties of
Zetland. If they were Magnus Troil, they would soon be at the bottom of
the matter"--and so forth. All which remarks were only whispered, for
the hasty disposition of the Udaller had too much of the old Norse fire
about it to render it safe for any one to become an unauthorized
intermeddler with his family affairs; and thus stood the relation of
Mordaunt Mertoun to the family of Mr. Troil of Burgh-Westra, when the
following incidents took place.
CHAPTER IV.
This is no pilgrim's morning--yon grey mist
Lies upon hill, and dale, and field, and forest,
Like the dun wimple of a new-made widow;
And, by my faith, although my heart be soft,
I'd rather hear that widow weep and sigh,
And tell the virtues of the dear departed,
Than, when the tempest sends his voice abroad,
Be subject to its fury.
_The Double Nuptials._
The spring was far advanced, when, after a week spent in sport and
festivity at Burgh-Westra, Mordaunt Mertoun bade adieu to the family,
pleading the necessity of his return to Jarlshof. The proposal was
combated by the maidens, and more decidedly by Magnus himself: He saw no
occasion whatever for Mordaunt returning to Jarlshof. If his father
desired to see him, which, by the way, Magnus did not believe, Mr.
Mertoun had only to throw himself into the stern of Sweyn's boat, or
betake himself to a pony, if he liked a land journey better, and he
would see not only his son, but twenty folk besides, who would be most
happy to find that he had not lost the use of his tongue entirely during
his long solitude; "although I must own," added the worthy Udaller,
"that when he lived among us, nobody ever made less use of it."
Mordaunt acquiesced both in what respected his father's taciturnity, and
his dislike to general society; but suggested, at the same time, that
the first circumstance rendered his own immediate return more
necessary, as he was the usual channel of communication betwixt his
father and others; and that the second corroborated the same necessity,
since Mr. Mertoun's having no other society whatever seemed a weighty
reason why his son's should be restored to him without loss of time. As
to his father's coming to Burgh-Westra, "they might as well," he said,
"expect to see Sumburgh Cape come thither."
"And that would be a cumbrous guest," said Magnus. "But you will stop
for our dinner to-day? There are the families of Muness, Quendale,
Thorslivoe, and I know not who else, are expected; and, besides the
thirty that were in house this blessed night, we shall have as many more
as chamber and bower, and barn and boat-house, can furnish with beds, or
with barley-straw,--and you will leave all this behind you!"
"And the blithe dance at night," added Brenda, in a tone betwixt
reproach and vexation; "and the young men from the Isle of Paba that are
to dance the sword-dance, whom shall we find to match them, for the
honour of the Main?"
"There is many a merry dancer on the mainland, Brenda," replied
Mordaunt, "even if I should never rise on tiptoe again. And where good
dancers are found, Brenda Troil will always find the best partner. I
must trip it to-night through the Wastes of Dunrossness."
"Do not say so, Mordaunt," said Minna, who, during this conversation,
had been looking from the window something anxiously; "go not, to-day at
least, through the Wastes of Dunrossness."
"And why not to-day, Minna," said Mordaunt, laughing, "any more than
to-morrow?"
"O, the morning mist lies heavy upon yonder chain of isles, nor has it
permitted us since daybreak even a single glimpse of Fitful-head, the
lofty cape that concludes yon splendid range of mountains. The fowl are
winging their way to the shore, and the shelldrake seems, through the
mist, as large as the scart.[19] See, the very sheerwaters and bonxies
are making to the cliffs for shelter."
"And they will ride out a gale against a king's frigate," said her
father; "there is foul weather when they cut and run."
"Stay, then, with us," said Minna to her friend; "the storm will be
dreadful, yet it will be grand to see it from Burgh-Westra, if we have
no friend exposed to its fury. See, the air is close and sultry, though
the season is yet so early, and the day so calm, that not a windlestraw
moves on the heath. Stay with us, Mordaunt; the storm which these signs
announce will be a dreadful one."
"I must be gone the sooner," was the conclusion of Mordaunt, who could
not deny the signs, which had not escaped his own quick observation. "If
the storm be too fierce, I will abide for the night at Stourburgh."
"What!" said Magnus; "will you leave us for the new chamberlain's new
Scotch tacksman, who is to teach all us Zetland savages new ways? Take
your own gate, my lad, if that is the song you sing."
"Nay," said Mordaunt; "I had only some curiosity to see the new
implements he has brought."
"Ay, ay, ferlies make fools fain. I would like to know if his new plough
will bear against a Zetland rock?" answered Magnus.
"I must not pass Stourburgh on the journey," said the youth, deferring
to his patron's prejudice against innovation, "if this boding weather
bring on tempest; but if it only break in rain, as is most probable, I
am not likely to be melted in the wetting."
"It will not soften into rain alone," said Minna; "see how much heavier
the clouds fall every moment, and see these weather-gaws that streak the
lead-coloured mass with partial gleams of faded red and purple."
"I see them all," said Mordaunt; "but they only tell me I have no time
to tarry here. Adieu, Minna; I will send you the eagle's feathers, if an
eagle can be found on Fair-isle or Foulah. And fare thee well, my pretty
Brenda, and keep a thought for me, should the Paba men dance ever so
well."
"Take care of yourself, since go you will," said both sisters, together.
Old Magnus scolded them formally for supposing there was any danger to
an active young fellow from a spring gale, whether by sea or land; yet
ended by giving his own caution also to Mordaunt, advising him seriously
to delay his journey, or at least to stop at Stourburgh. "For," said he,
"second thoughts are best; and as this Scottishman's howf lies right
under your lee, why, take any port in a storm. But do not be assured to
find the door on latch, let the storm blow ever so hard; there are such
matters as bolts and bars in Scotland,(_e_) though, thanks to Saint
Ronald, they are unknown here, save that great lock on the old Castle
of Scalloway, that all men run to see--may be they make part of this
man's improvements. But go, Mordaunt, since go you will. You should
drink a stirrup-cup now, were you three years older, but boys should
never drink, excepting after dinner; I will drink it for you, that good
customs may not be broken, or bad luck come of it. Here is your bonally,
my lad." And so saying, he quaffed a rummer glass of brandy with as much
impunity as if it had been spring-water. Thus regretted and cautioned on
all hands, Mordaunt took leave of the hospitable household, and looking
back at the comforts with which it was surrounded, and the dense smoke
that rolled upwards from its chimneys, he first recollected the
guestless and solitary desolation of Jarlshof, then compared with the
sullen and moody melancholy of his father's temper the warm kindness of
those whom he was leaving, and could not refrain from a sigh at the
thoughts which forced themselves on his imagination.
The signs of the tempest did not dishonour the predictions of Minna.
Mordaunt had not advanced three hours on his journey, before the wind,
which had been so deadly still in the morning, began at first to wail
and sigh, as if bemoaning beforehand the evils which it might perpetrate
in its fury, like a madman in the gloomy state of dejection which
precedes his fit of violence; then gradually increasing, the gale
howled, raged, and roared, with the full fury of a northern storm. It
was accompanied by showers of rain mixed with hail, that dashed with the
most unrelenting rage against the hills and rocks with which the
traveller was surrounded, distracting his attention, in spite of his
utmost exertions, and rendering it very difficult for him to keep the
direction of his journey in a country where there is neither road, nor
even the slightest track to direct the steps of the wanderer, and where
he is often interrupted by brooks as well as large pools of water,
lakes, and lagoons. All these inland waters were now lashed into sheets
of tumbling foam, much of which, carried off by the fury of the
whirlwind, was mingled with the gale, and transported far from the waves
of which it had lately made a part; while the salt relish of the drift
which was pelted against his face, showed Mordaunt that the spray of the
more distant ocean, disturbed to frenzy by the storm, was mingled with
that of the inland lakes and streams.
Amidst this hideous combustion of the elements, Mordaunt Mertoun
struggled forward as one to whom such elemental war was familiar, and
who regarded the exertions which it required to withstand its fury, but
as a mark of resolution and manhood. He felt even, as happens usually to
those who endure great hardships, that the exertion necessary to subdue
them, is in itself a kind of elevating triumph. To see and distinguish
his path when the cattle were driven from the hill, and the very fowls
from the firmament, was but the stronger proof of his own superiority.
"They shall not hear of me at Burgh-Westra," said he to himself, "as
they heard of old doited Ringan Ewenson's boat, that foundered betwixt
roadstead and key. I am more of a cragsman than to mind fire or water,
wave by sea, or quagmire by land." Thus he struggled on, buffeting with
the storm, supplying the want of the usual signs by which travellers
directed their progress, (for rock, mountain, and headland, were
shrouded in mist and darkness,) by the instinctive sagacity with which
long acquaintance with these wilds had taught him to mark every minute
object, which could serve in such circumstances to regulate his course.
Thus, we repeat, he struggled onward, occasionally standing still, or
even lying down, when the gust was most impetuous; making way against it
when it was somewhat lulled, by a rapid and bold advance even in its
very current; or, when this was impossible, by a movement resembling
that of a vessel working to windward by short tacks, but never yielding
one inch of the way which he had fought so hard to gain.
Yet, notwithstanding Mordaunt's experience and resolution, his situation
was sufficiently uncomfortable, and even precarious; not because his
sailor's jacket and trowsers, the common dress of young men through
these isles when on a journey, were thoroughly wet, for that might have
taken place within the same brief time, in any ordinary day, in this
watery climate; but the real danger was, that, notwithstanding his
utmost exertions, he made very slow way through brooks that were sending
their waters all abroad, through morasses drowned in double deluges of
moisture, which rendered all the ordinary passes more than usually
dangerous, and repeatedly obliged the traveller to perform a
considerable circuit, which in the usual case was unnecessary. Thus
repeatedly baffled, notwithstanding his youth and strength, Mordaunt,
after maintaining a dogged conflict with wind, rain, and the fatigue of
a prolonged journey, was truly happy, when, not without having been more
than once mistaken in his road, he at length found himself within sight
of the house of Stourburgh, or Harfra; for the names were indifferently
given to the residence of Mr. Triptolemus Yellowley, who was the chosen
missionary of the Chamberlain of Orkney and Zetland, a speculative
person, who designed, through the medium of Triptolemus, to introduce
into the _Ultima Thule_ of the Romans, a spirit of improvement, which at
that early period was scarce known to exist in Scotland itself.
At length, and with much difficulty, Mordaunt reached the house of this
worthy agriculturist, the only refuge from the relentless storm which he
could hope to meet with for several miles; and going straight to the
door, with the most undoubting confidence of instant admission, he was
not a little surprised to find it not merely latched, which the weather
might excuse, but even bolted, a thing which, as Magnus Troil has
already intimated, was almost unknown in the Archipelago. To knock, to
call, and finally to batter the door with staff and stones, were the
natural resources of the youth, who was rendered alike impatient by the
pelting of the storm, and by encountering such most unexpected and
unusual obstacles to instant admission. As he was suffered, however, for
many minutes to exhaust his impatience in noise and clamour, without
receiving any reply, we will employ them in informing the reader who
Triptolemus Yellowley was, and how he came by a name so singular.
Old Jasper Yellowley, the father of Triptolemus, (though born at the
foot of Roseberry-Topping,) had been _come over_ by a certain noble
Scottish Earl, who, proving too far north for canny Yorkshire, had
persuaded him to accept of a farm in the Mearns, where, it is
unnecessary to add, he found matters very different from what he had
expected. It was in vain that the stout farmer set manfully to work, to
counterbalance, by superior skill, the inconveniences arising from a
cold soil and a weeping climate. These might have been probably
overcome; but his neighbourhood to the Grampians exposed him eternally
to that species of visitation from the plaided gentry, who dwelt within
their skirts, which made young Norval a warrior and a hero, but only
converted Jasper Yellowley into a poor man. This was, indeed, balanced
in some sort by the impression which his ruddy cheek and robust form had
the fortune to make upon Miss Barbara Clinkscale, daughter to the
umquhile, and sister to the then existing, Clinkscale of that ilk.
This was thought a horrid and unnatural union in the neighbourhood,
considering that the house of Clinkscale had at least as great a share
of Scottish pride as of Scottish parsimony, and was amply endowed with
both. But Miss Babie had her handsome fortune of two thousand marks at
her own disposal, was a woman of spirit who had been _major_ and _sui
juris_, (as the writer who drew the contract assured her,) for full
twenty years; so she set consequences and commentaries alike at
defiance, and wedded the hearty Yorkshire yeoman. Her brother and her
more wealthy kinsmen drew off in disgust, and almost disowned their
degraded relative. But the house of Clinkscale was allied (like every
other family in Scotland at the time) to a set of relations who were not
so nice--tenth and sixteenth cousins, who not only acknowledged their
kinswoman Babie after her marriage with Yellowley but even condescended
to eat beans and bacon (though the latter was then the abomination of
the Scotch as much as of the Jews) with her husband, and would
willingly have cemented the friendship by borrowing a little cash from
him, had not his good lady (who understood trap as well as any woman in
the Mearns) put a negative on this advance to intimacy. Indeed she knew
how to make young Deilbelicket,(_f_) old Dougald Baresword, the Laird of
Bandybrawl, and others, pay for the hospitality which she did not think
proper to deny them, by rendering them useful in her negotiations with
the lighthanded lads beyond the Cairn, who, finding their late object of
plunder was now allied to "kend folks, and owned by them at kirk and
market," became satisfied, on a moderate yearly composition, to desist
from their depredations.
This eminent success reconciled Jasper to the dominion which his wife
began to assume over him; and which was much confirmed by her proving to
be--let me see--what is the prettiest mode of expressing it?--in the
family way. On this occasion, Mrs. Yellowley had a remarkable dream, as
is the usual practice of teeming mothers previous to the birth of an
illustrious offspring. She "was a-dreamed," as her husband expressed it,
that she was safely delivered of a plough, drawn by three yoke of
Angus-shire oxen; and being a mighty investigator into such portents,
she sat herself down with her gossips, to consider what the thing might
mean. Honest Jasper ventured, with much hesitation, to intimate his own
opinion, that the vision had reference rather to things past than things
future, and might have been occasioned by his wife's nerves having been
a little startled by meeting in the loan above the house his own great
plough with the six oxen, which were the pride of his heart. But the
good _cummers_[20] raised such a hue and cry against this exposition,
that Jasper was fain to put his fingers in his ears, and to run out of
the apartment.
"Hear to him," said an old whigamore carline--"hear to him, wi' his
owsen, that are as an idol to him, even as the calf of Bethel! Na,
na--it's nae pleugh of the flesh that the bonny lad-bairn--for a lad it
sall be--sall e'er striddle between the stilts o'--it's the pleugh of
the spirit--and I trust mysell to see him wag the head o' him in a
pu'pit; or, what's better, on a hill-side."
"Now the deil's in your whiggery," said the old Lady Glenprosing; "wad
ye hae our cummer's bonny lad-bairn wag the head aff his shouthers like
your godly Mess James Guthrie,(_g_) that ye hald such a clavering
about?--Na, na, he sall walk a mair siccar path, and be a dainty
curate--and say he should live to be a bishop, what the waur wad he be?"
The gauntlet thus fairly flung down by one sibyl, was caught up by
another, and the controversy between presbytery and episcopacy raged,
roared, or rather screamed, a round of cinnamon-water serving only like
oil to the flame, till Jasper entered with the plough-staff; and by the
awe of his presence, and the shame of misbehaving "before the stranger
man," imposed some conditions of silence upon the disputants.
I do not know whether it was impatience to give to the light a being
destined to such high and doubtful fates, or whether poor Dame Yellowley
was rather frightened at the hurly-burly which had taken place in her
presence, but she was taken suddenly ill; and, contrary to the formula
in such cases used and provided, was soon reported to be "a good deal
worse than was to be expected." She took the opportunity (having still
all her wits about her) to extract from her sympathetic husband two
promises; first, that he would christen the child, whose birth was like
to cost her so dear, by a name indicative of the vision with which she
had been favoured; and next, that he would educate him for the ministry.
The canny Yorkshireman, thinking she had a good title at present to
dictate in such matters, subscribed to all she required. A man-child was
accordingly born under these conditions, but the state of the mother did
not permit her for many days to enquire how far they had been complied
with. When she was in some degree convalescent, she was informed, that
as it was thought fit the child should be immediately christened, it had
received the name of Triptolemus; the Curate, who was a man of some
classical skill, conceiving that this epithet contained a handsome and
classical allusion to the visionary plough, with its triple yoke of
oxen. Mrs. Yellowley was not much delighted with the manner in which her
request had been complied with; but grumbling being to as little purpose
as in the celebrated case of Tristram Shandy, she e'en sat down
contented with the heathenish name, and endeavoured to counteract the
effects it might produce upon the taste and feelings of the nominee, by
such an education as might put him above the slightest thought of sacks,
coulters, stilts, mould-boards, or any thing connected with the servile
drudgery of the plough.
Jasper, sage Yorkshireman, smiled slyly in his sleeve, conceiving that
young Trippie was likely to prove a chip of the old block, and would
rather take after the jolly Yorkshire yeoman, than the gentle but
somewhat _aigre_ blood of the house of Clinkscale. He remarked, with
suppressed glee, that the tune which best answered the purpose of a
lullaby was the "Ploughman's Whistle," and the first words the infant
learned to stammer were the names of the oxen; moreover, that the "bern"
preferred home-brewed ale to Scotch twopenny, and never quitted hold of
the tankard with so much reluctance as when there had been, by some
manoeuvre of Jasper's own device, a double straik of malt allowed to the
brewing, above that which was sanctioned by the most liberal recipe, of
which his dame's household thrift admitted. Besides this, when no other
means could be fallen upon to divert an occasional fit of squalling, his
father observed that Trip could be always silenced by jingling a bridle
at his ear. From all which symptoms he used to swear in private, that
the boy would prove true Yorkshire, and mother and mother's kin would
have small share of him.
Meanwhile, and within a year after the birth of Triptolemus, Mrs.
Yellowley bore a daughter, named after herself Barbara, who, even in
earliest infancy, exhibited the pinched nose and thin lips by which the
Clinkscale family were distinguished amongst the inhabitants of the
Mearns; and as her childhood advanced, the readiness with which she
seized, and the tenacity wherewith she detained, the playthings of
Triptolemus, besides a desire to bite, pinch, and scratch, on slight, or
no provocation, were all considered by attentive observers as proofs,
that Miss Babie would prove "her mother over again." Malicious people
did not stick to say, that the acrimony of the Clinkscale blood had not,
on this occasion, been cooled and sweetened by that of Old England;
that young Deilbelicket was much about the house, and they could not but
think it odd that Mrs. Yellowley, who, as the whole world knew, gave
nothing for nothing, should be so uncommonly attentive to heap the
trencher, and to fill the caup, of an idle blackguard ne'er-do-weel. But
when folk had once looked upon the austere and awfully virtuous
countenance of Mrs. Yellowley, they did full justice to her propriety of
conduct, and Deilbelicket's delicacy of taste.
Meantime young Triptolemus, having received such instructions as the
Curate could give him, (for though Dame Yellowley adhered to the
persecuted remnant, her jolly husband, edified by the black gown and
prayer-book, still conformed to the church as by law established,) was,
in due process of time, sent to Saint Andrews to prosecute his studies.
He went, it is true; but with an eye turned back with sad remembrances
on his father's plough, his father's pancakes, and his father's ale, for
which the small-beer of the college, commonly there termed
"thorough-go-nimble," furnished a poor substitute. Yet he advanced in
his learning, being found, however, to show a particular favour to such
authors of antiquity as had made the improvement of the soil the object
of their researches. He endured the Bucolics of Virgil--the Georgics he
had by heart--but the Æneid he could not away with; and he was
particularly severe upon the celebrated line expressing a charge of
cavalry, because, as he understood the word _putrem_,[21] he opined that
the combatants, in their inconsiderate ardour, galloped over a
new-manured ploughed field. Cato, the Roman Censor was his favourite
among classical heroes and philosophers, not on account of the
strictness of his morals, but because of his treatise, _de Re Rustica_.
He had ever in his mouth the phrase of Cicero, _Jam neminem antepones
Catoni_. He thought well of Palladius, and of Terentius Varro, but
Columella was his pocket-companion. To these ancient worthies, he added
the more modern Tusser, Hartlib, and other writers on rural economics,
not forgetting the lucubrations of the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, and
such of the better-informed Philomaths, who, instead of loading their
almanacks with vain predictions of political events, pretended to see
what seeds would grow and what would not, and direct the attention of
their readers to that course of cultivation from which the production of
good crops may be safely predicted; modest sages, in fine, who, careless
of the rise and downfall of empires, content themselves with pointing
out the fit seasons to reap and sow, with a fair guess at the weather
which each month will be likely to present; as, for example, that if
Heaven pleases, we shall have snow in January, and the author will stake
his reputation that July proves, on the whole, a month of sunshine. Now,
although the Rector of Saint Leonard's was greatly pleased, in general,
with the quiet, laborious, and studious bent of Triptolemus Yellowley,
and deemed him, in so far, worthy of a name of four syllables having a
Latin termination, yet he relished not, by any means, his exclusive
attention to his favourite authors. It savoured of the earth, he said,
if not of something worse, to have a man's mind always grovelling in
mould, stercorated or unstercorated; and he pointed out, but in vain,
history, and poetry, and divinity, as more elevating subjects of
occupation. Triptolemus Yellowley was obstinate in his own course: Of
the battle of Pharsalia, he thought not as it affected the freedom of
the world, but dwelt on the rich crop which the Emathian fields were
likely to produce the next season. In vernacular poetry, Triptolemus
could scarce be prevailed upon to read a single couplet, excepting old
Tusser, as aforesaid, whose Hundred Points of Good Husbandry he had got
by heart; and excepting also Piers Ploughman's Vision, which, charmed
with the title, he bought with avidity from a packman, but after reading
the two first pages, flung it into the fire as an impudent and misnamed
political libel. As to divinity, he summed that matter up by reminding
his instructors, that to labour the earth and win his bread with the
toil of his body and sweat of his brow, was the lot imposed upon fallen
man; and, for his part, he was resolved to discharge, to the best of his
abilities, a task so obviously necessary to existence, leaving others to
speculate as much as they would, upon the more recondite mysteries of
theology.
With a spirit so much narrowed and limited to the concerns of rural
life, it may be doubted whether the proficiency of Triptolemus in
learning, or the use he was like to make of his acquisitions, would have
much gratified the ambitious hope of his affectionate mother. It is
true, he expressed no reluctance to embrace the profession of a
clergyman, which suited well enough with the habitual personal indolence
which sometimes attaches to speculative dispositions. He had views, to
speak plainly, (I wish they were peculiar to himself,) of cultivating
the _glebe_ six days in the week, preaching on the seventh with due
regularity, and dining with some fat franklin or country laird, with
whom he could smoke a pipe and drink a tankard after dinner, and mix in
secret conference on the exhaustless subject,
Quid faciat lætas segetes.
Now, this plan, besides that it indicated nothing of what was then
called the root of the matter, implied necessarily the possession of a
manse; and the possession of a manse inferred compliance with the
doctrines of prelacy, and other enormities of the time. There was some
question how far manse and glebe, stipend, both victual and money, might
have outbalanced the good lady's predisposition towards Presbytery; but
her zeal was not put to so severe a trial. She died before her son had
completed his studies, leaving her afflicted spouse just as disconsolate
as was to be expected. The first act of old Jasper's undivided
administration was to recall his son from Saint Andrews, in order to
obtain his assistance in his domestic labours. And here it might have
been supposed that our Triptolemus, summoned to carry into practice what
he had so fondly studied in theory, must have been, to use a simile
which _he_ would have thought lively, like a cow entering upon a clover
park. Alas, mistaken thoughts, and deceitful hopes of mankind!
A laughing philosopher, the Democritus of our day, once, in a moral
lecture, compared human life to a table pierced with a number of holes,
each of which has a pin made exactly to fit it, but which pins being
stuck in hastily, and without selection, chance leads inevitably to the
most awkward mistakes. "For how often do we see," the orator
pathetically concluded,--"how often, I say, do we see the round man
stuck into the three-cornered hole!" This new illustration of the
vagaries of fortune set every one present into convulsions of laughter,
excepting one fat alderman, who seemed to make the case his own, and
insisted that it was no jesting matter. To take up the simile, however,
which is an excellent one, it is plain that Triptolemus Yellowley had
been shaken out of the bag at least a hundred years too soon. If he had
come on the stage in our own time, that is, if he had flourished at any
time within these thirty or forty years, he could not have missed to
have held the office of vice-president of some eminent agricultural
society, and to have transacted all the business thereof under the
auspices of some noble duke or lord, who, as the matter might happen,
either knew, or did not know, the difference betwixt a horse and a cart,
and a cart-horse. He could not have missed such preferment, for he was
exceedingly learned in all those particulars, which, being of no
consequence in actual practice, go, of course, a great way to constitute
the character of a connoisseur in any art, and especially in
agriculture. But, alas! Triptolemus Yellowley had, as we already have
hinted, come into the world at least a century too soon; for, instead of
sitting in an arm-chair, with a hammer in his hand, and a bumper of port
before him, giving forth the toast,--"To breeding, in all its branches,"
his father planted him betwixt the stilts of a plough, and invited him
to guide the oxen, on whose beauties he would, in our day, have
descanted, and whose rumps he would not have goaded, but have carved.
Old Jasper complained, that although no one talked so well of common and
several, wheat and rape, fallow and lea, as his learned son, (whom he
always called Tolimus,) yet, "dang it," added the Seneca, "nought
thrives wi' un--nought thrives wi' un!" It was still worse, when Jasper,
becoming frail and ancient, was obliged, as happened in the course of a
few years, gradually to yield up the reins of government to the
academical neophyte.
As if Nature had meant him a spite, he had got one of the _dourest_ and
most intractable farms in the Mearns, to try conclusions withal, a place
which seemed to yield every thing but what the agriculturist wanted; for
there were plenty of thistles, which indicates dry land; and store of
fern, which is said to intimate deep land; and nettles, which show where
lime hath been applied; and deep furrows in the most unlikely spots,
which intimated that it had been cultivated in former days by the
Peghts, as popular tradition bore. There was also enough of stones to
keep the ground warm, according to the creed of some farmers, and great
abundance of springs to render it cool and sappy, according to the
theory of others. It was in vain that, acting alternately on these
opinions, poor Triptolemus endeavoured to avail himself of the supposed
capabilities of the soil. No kind of butter that might be churned could
be made to stick upon his own bread, any more than on that of poor
Tusser, whose Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, so useful to others of
his day, were never to himself worth as many pennies.[22]
In fact, excepting an hundred acres of infield, to which old Jasper had
early seen the necessity of limiting his labours, there was not a
corner of the farm fit for any thing but to break plough-graith, and
kill cattle. And then, as for the part which was really tilled with some
profit, the expense of the farming establishment of Triptolemus, and his
disposition to experiment, soon got rid of any good arising from the
cultivation of it. "The carles and the cart-avers," he confessed, with a
sigh, speaking of his farm-servants and horses, "make it all, and the
carles and cart-avers eat it all;" a conclusion which might sum up the
year-book of many a gentleman farmer.
Matters would have soon been brought to a close with Triptolemus in the
present day. He would have got a bank-credit, manoeuvred with
wind-bills, dashed out upon a large scale, and soon have seen his crop
and stock sequestered by the Sheriff; but in those days a man could not
ruin himself so easily. The whole Scottish tenantry stood upon the same
level flat of poverty, so that it was extremely difficult to find any
vantage ground, by climbing up to which a man might have an opportunity
of actually breaking his neck with some eclat. They were pretty much in
the situation of people, who, being totally without credit, may indeed
suffer from indigence, but cannot possibly become bankrupt. Besides,
notwithstanding the failure of Triptolemus's projects, there was to be
balanced against the expenditure which they occasioned, all the savings
which the extreme economy of his sister Barbara could effect; and in
truth her exertions were wonderful. She might have realized, if any one
could, the idea of the learned philosopher, who pronounced that sleeping
was a fancy, and eating but a habit, and who appeared to the world to
have renounced both, until it was unhappily discovered that he had an
intrigue with the cook-maid of the family, who indemnified him for his
privations by giving him private entrée to the pantry, and to a share of
her own couch. But no such deceptions were practised by Barbara
Yellowley. She was up early, and down late, and seemed, to her
over-watched and over-tasked maidens, to be as _wakerife_ as the cat
herself. Then, for eating, it appeared that the air was a banquet to
her, and she would fain have made it so to her retinue. Her brother,
who, besides being lazy in his person, was somewhat luxurious in his
appetite, would willingly now and then have tasted a mouthful of animal
food, were it but to know how his sheep were fed off; but a proposal to
eat a child could not have startled Mistress Barbara more; and, being of
a compliant and easy disposition, Triptolemus reconciled himself to the
necessity of a perpetual Lent, too happy when he could get a scrap of
butter to his oaten cake, or (as they lived on the banks of the Esk)
escape the daily necessity of eating salmon, whether in or out of
season, six days out of the seven.
But although Mrs. Barbara brought faithfully to the joint stock all
savings which her awful powers of economy accomplished to scrape
together, and although the dower of their mother was by degrees
expended, or nearly so, in aiding them upon extreme occasions, the term
at length approached when it seemed impossible that they could sustain
the conflict any longer against the evil star of Triptolemus, as he
called it himself, or the natural result of his absurd speculations, as
it was termed by others. Luckily at this sad crisis, a god jumped down
to their relief out of a machine. In plain English, the noble lord, who
owned their farm, arrived at his mansion-house in their neighbourhood,
with his coach and six and his running footmen, in the full splendour
of the seventeenth century.
This person of quality was the son of the nobleman who had brought the
ancient Jasper into the country from Yorkshire, and he was, like his
father, a fanciful and scheming man.[23] He had schemed well for
himself, however, amid the mutations of the time, having obtained, for a
certain period of years, the administration of the remote islands of
Orkney and Zetland, for payment of a certain rent, with the right of
making the most of whatever was the property or revenue of the crown in
these districts, under the title of Lord Chamberlain. Now, his lordship
had become possessed with a notion, in itself a very true one, that much
might be done to render this grant available, by improving the culture
of the crown lands, both in Orkney and Zetland; and then having some
acquaintance with our friend Triptolemus, he thought (rather less
happily) that he might prove a person capable of furthering his schemes.
He sent for him to the great Hallhouse, and was so much edified by the
way in which our friend laid down the law upon every given subject
relating to rural economy, that he lost no time in securing the
co-operation of so valuable an assistant, the first step being to
release him from his present unprofitable farm.
The terms were arranged much to the mind of Triptolemus, who had already
been taught, by many years' experience, a dark sort of notion, that
without undervaluing or doubting for a moment his own skill, it would be
quite as well that almost all the trouble and risk should be at the
expense of his employer. Indeed, the hopes of advantage which he held
out to his patron were so considerable, that the Lord Chamberlain
dropped every idea of admitting his dependent into any share of the
expected profits; for, rude as the arts of agriculture were in Scotland,
they were far superior to those known and practised in the regions of
Thule, and Triptolemus Yellowley conceived himself to be possessed of a
degree of insight into these mysteries, far superior to what was
possessed or practised even in the Mearns. The improvement, therefore,
which was to be expected, would bear a double proportion, and the Lord
Chamberlain was to reap all the profit, deducting a handsome salary for
his steward Yellowley, together with the accommodation of a house and
domestic farm, for the support of his family. Joy seized the heart of
Mistress Barbara, at hearing this happy termination of what threatened
to be so very bad an affair as the lease of Cauldacres.
"If we cannot," she said, "provide for our own house, when all is coming
in, and nothing going out, surely we must be worse than infidels!"
Triptolemus was a busy man for some time, huffing and puffing, and
eating and drinking in every changehouse, while he ordered and collected
together proper implements of agriculture, to be used by the natives of
these devoted islands, whose destinies were menaced with this formidable
change. Singular tools these would seem, if presented before a modern
agricultural society; but every thing is relative, nor could the heavy
cartload of timber, called the old Scots plough, seem less strange to a
Scottish farmer of this present day, than the corslets and casques of
the soldiers of Cortes might seem to a regiment of our own army. Yet the
latter conquered Mexico, and undoubtedly the former would have been a
splendid improvement on the state of agriculture in Thule.
We have never been able to learn why Triptolemus preferred fixing his
residence in Zetland, to becoming an inhabitant of the Orkneys. Perhaps
he thought the inhabitants of the latter Archipelago the more simple and
docile of the two kindred tribes; or perhaps he considered the situation
of the house and farm he himself was to occupy, (which was indeed a
tolerable one,) as preferable to that which he had it in his power to
have obtained upon Pomona (so the main island of the Orkneys is
entitled). At Harfra, or, as it was sometimes called, Stourburgh, from
the remains of a Pictish fort, which was almost close to the
mansion-house, the factor settled himself, in the plenitude of his
authority; determined to honour the name he bore by his exertions, in
precept and example, to civilize the Zetlanders, and improve their very
confined knowledge in the primary arts of human life.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] The cormorant; which may be seen frequently dashing in wild flight
along the roosts and tides of Zetland, and yet more often drawn up in
ranks on some ledge of rock, like a body of the Black Brunswickers in
181.
[20] _i. e._ Gossips.
[21] Quadrupedumque putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.
[22] This is admitted by the English agriculturist:--
"My music since has been the plough,
Entangled with some care among;
The gain not great, the pain enough,
Hath made me sing another song."
[23] GOVERNMENT OF ZETLAND.--At the period supposed, the Earls of Morton
held the islands of Orkney and Zetland, originally granted in 1643,
confirmed in 1707, and rendered absolute in 1742. This gave the family
much property and influence, which they usually exercised by factors,
named chamberlains. In 1766 this property was sold by the then Earl of
Morton to Sir Lawrence Dundas, by whose son, Lord Dundas, it is now
held.
CHAPTER V.
The wind blew keen frae north and east;
It blew upon the floor.
Quo' our goodman to our goodwife,
"Get up and bar the door."
"My hand is in my housewife-skep,
Goodman, as ye may see;
If it shouldna be barr'd this hundred years,
It's no be barr'd for me!"
_Old Song._
We can only hope that the gentle reader has not found the latter part of
the last chapter extremely tedious; but, at any rate, his impatience
will scarce equal that of young Mordaunt Mertoun, who, while the
lightning came flash after flash, while the wind, veering and shifting
from point to point, blew with all the fury of a hurricane, and while
the rain was dashed against him in deluges, stood hammering, calling,
and roaring at the door of the old Place of Harfra, impatient for
admittance, and at a loss to conceive any position of existing
circumstances, which could occasion the exclusion of a stranger,
especially during such horrible weather. At length, finding his noise
and vociferation were equally in vain, he fell back so far from the
front of the house, as was necessary to enable him to reconnoitre the
chimneys; and amidst "storm and shade," could discover, to the increase
of his dismay, that though noon, then the dinner hour of these islands,
was now nearly arrived, there was no smoke proceeding from the tunnels
of the vents to give any note of preparation within.
Mordaunt's wrathful impatience was now changed into sympathy and alarm;
for, so long accustomed to the exuberant hospitality of the Zetland
islands, he was immediately induced to suppose some strange and
unaccountable disaster had befallen the family; and forthwith set
himself to discover some place at which he could make forcible entry, in
order to ascertain the situation of the inmates, as much as to obtain
shelter from the still increasing storm. His present anxiety was,
however, as much thrown away as his late clamorous importunities for
admittance had been. Triptolemus and his sister had heard the whole
alarm without, and had already had a sharp dispute on the propriety of
opening the door.
Mrs. Baby, as we have described her, was no willing renderer of the
rites of hospitality. In their farm of Cauldacres, in the Mearns, she
had been the dread and abhorrence of all gaberlunzie men, and travelling
packmen, gipsies, long remembered beggars, and so forth; nor was there
one of them so wily, as she used to boast, as could ever say they had
heard the clink of her sneck. In Zetland, where the new settlers were
yet strangers to the extreme honesty and simplicity of all classes,
suspicion and fear joined with frugality in her desire to exclude all
wandering guests of uncertain character; and the second of these motives
had its effect on Triptolemus himself, who, though neither suspicious
nor penurious, knew good people were scarce, good farmers scarcer, and
had a reasonable share of that wisdom which looks towards
self-preservation as the first law of nature. These hints may serve as
a commentary on the following dialogue which took place betwixt the
brother and sister.
"Now, good be gracious to us," said Triptolemus, as he sat thumbing his
old school-copy of Virgil, "here is a pure day, for the bear seed!--Well
spoke the wise Mantuan--_ventis surgentibus_--and then the groans of the
mountains, and the long-resounding shores--but where's the woods, Baby?
tell me, I say, where we shall find the _nemorum murmur_, sister Baby,
in these new seats of ours?"
"What's your foolish will?" said Baby, popping her head from out of a
dark recess in the kitchen, where she was busy about some nameless deed
of housewifery.
Her brother, who had addressed himself to her more from habit than
intention, no sooner saw her bleak red nose, keen grey eyes, with the
sharp features thereunto conforming, shaded by the flaps of the loose
_toy_ which depended on each side of her eager face, than he bethought
himself that his query was likely to find little acceptation from her,
and therefore stood another volley before he would resume the topic.
"I say, Mr. Yellowley," said sister Baby, coming into the middle of the
room, "what for are ye crying on me, and me in the midst of my
housewifeskep?"
"Nay, for nothing at all, Baby," answered Triptolemus, "saving that I
was saying to myself, that here we had the sea, and the wind, and the
rain, sufficient enough, but where's the wood? where's the wood, Baby,
answer me that?"
"The wood?" replied Baby--"Were I no to take better care of the wood
than you, brother, there would soon be no more wood about the town than
the barber's block that's on your own shoulders, Triptolemus. If ye be
thinking of the wreck-wood that the callants brought in yesterday, there
was six ounces of it gaed to boil your parritch this morning; though, I
trow, a carefu' man wad have ta'en drammock, if breakfast he behoved to
have, rather than waste baith meltith and fuel in the same morning."
"That is to say, Baby," replied Triptolemus, who was somewhat of a dry
joker in his way, "that when we have fire we are not to have food, and
when we have food we are not to have fire, these being too great
blessings to enjoy both in the same day! Good luck, you do not propose
we should starve with cold and starve with hunger _unico contextu_. But,
to tell you the truth, I could never away with raw oatmeal, slockened
with water, in all my life. Call it drammock, or crowdie, or just what
ye list, my vivers must thole fire and water."
"The mair gowk you," said Baby; "can ye not make your brose on the
Sunday, and sup them cauld on the Monday, since ye're sae dainty? Mony
is the fairer face than yours that has licked the lip after such a
cogfu'."
"Mercy on us, sister!" said Triptolemus; "at this rate, it's a finished
field with me--I must unyoke the pleugh, and lie down to wait for the
dead-thraw. Here is that in this house wad hold all Zetland in meal for
a twelvemonth, and ye grudge a cogfu' of warm parritch to me, that has
sic a charge!"
"Whisht--haud your silly clavering tongue!" said Baby, looking round
with apprehension--"ye are a wise man to speak of what is in the house,
and a fitting man to have the charge of it!--Hark, as I live by bread,
I hear a tapping at the outer yett!"
"Go and open it then, Baby," said her brother, glad at any thing that
promised to interrupt the dispute.
"Go and open it, said he!" echoed Baby, half angry, half frightened, and
half triumphant at the superiority of her understanding over that of her
brother--"Go and open it, said he, indeed!--is it to lend robbers a
chance to take all that is in the house?"
"Robbers!" echoed Triptolemus, in his turn; "there are no more robbers
in this country than there are lambs at Yule. I tell you, as I have told
you an hundred times, there are no Highlandmen to harry us here. This is
a land of quiet and honesty. _O fortunati nimium!_"
"And what good is Saint Rinian to do ye, Tolimus?" said his sister,
mistaking the quotation for a Catholic invocation. "Besides, if there be
no Highlandmen, there may be as bad. I saw sax or seven as ill-looking
chields gang past the Place yesterday, as ever came frae beyont
Clochna-ben; ill-fa'red tools they had in their hands, whaaling knives
they ca'ed them, but they looked as like dirks and whingers as ae bit
airn can look like anither. There is nae honest men carry siccan tools."
Here the knocking and shouts of Mordaunt were very audible betwixt every
swell of the horrible blast which was careering without. The brother and
sister looked at each other in real perplexity and fear. "If they have
heard of the siller," said Baby, her very nose changing with terror from
red to blue, "we are but gane folk!"
"Who speaks now, when they should hold their tongue?" said Triptolemus.
"Go to the shot-window instantly, and see how many there are of them,
while I load the old Spanish-barrelled duck-gun--go as if you were
stepping on new-laid eggs."
Baby crept to the window, and reported that she saw only "one young
chield, clattering and roaring as gin he were daft. How many there might
be out of sight, she could not say."
"Out of sight!--nonsense," said Triptolemus, laying aside the ramrod
with which he was loading the piece, with a trembling hand. "I will
warrant them out of sight and hearing both--this is some poor fellow
catched in the tempest, wants the shelter of our roof, and a little
refreshment. Open the door, Baby, it's a Christian deed."
"But is it a Christian deed of him to come in at the window, then?" said
Baby, setting up a most doleful shriek, as Mordaunt Mertoun, who had
forced open one of the windows, leaped down into the apartment, dripping
with water like a river god. Triptolemus, in great tribulation,
presented the gun which he had not yet loaded, while the intruder
exclaimed, "Hold, hold--what the devil mean you by keeping your doors
bolted in weather like this, and levelling your gun at folk's heads as
you would at a sealgh's?"
"And who are you, friend, and what want you?" said Triptolemus, lowering
the but of his gun to the floor as he spoke, and so recovering his arms.
"What do I want!" said Mordaunt; "I want every thing--I want meat,
drink, and fire, a bed for the night, and a sheltie for to-morrow
morning to carry me to Jarlshof."
"And ye said there were nae caterans or sorners here?" said Baby to the
agriculturist, reproachfully. "Heard ye ever a breekless loon frae
Lochaber tell his mind and his errand mair deftly?--Come, come, friend,"
she added, addressing herself to Mordaunt, "put up your pipes and gang
your gate; this is the house of his lordship's factor, and no place of
reset for thiggers or sorners."
Mordaunt laughed in her face at the simplicity of the request. "Leave
built walls," he said, "and in such a tempest as this? What take you me
for?--a gannet or a scart do you think I am, that your clapping your
hands and skirling at me like a madwoman, should drive me from the
shelter into the storm?"
"And so you propose, young man," said Triptolemus, gravely, "to stay in
my house, _volens nolens_--that is, whether we will or no?"
"Will!" said Mordaunt; "what right have you to will any thing about it?
Do you not hear the thunder? Do you not hear the rain? Do you not see
the lightning? And do you not know this is the only house within I wot
not how many miles? Come, my good master and dame, this may be Scottish
jesting, but it sounds strange in Zetland ears. You have let out the
fire, too, and my teeth are dancing a jig in my head with cold; but I'll
soon put that to rights."
He seized the fire-tongs, raked together the embers upon the hearth,
broke up into life the gathering-peat, which the hostess had calculated
should have preserved the seeds of fire, without giving them forth, for
many hours; then casting his eye round, saw in a corner the stock of
drift-wood, which Mistress Baby had served forth by ounces, and
transferred two or three logs of it at once to the hearth, which,
conscious of such unwonted supply, began to transmit to the chimney
such a smoke as had not issued from the Place of Harfra for many a day.
While their uninvited guest was thus making himself at home, Baby kept
edging and jogging the factor to turn out the intruder. But for this
undertaking, Triptolemus Yellowley felt neither courage nor zeal, nor
did circumstances seem at all to warrant the favourable conclusion of
any fray into which he might enter with the young stranger. The sinewy
limbs and graceful form of Mordaunt Mertoun were seen to great advantage
in his simple sea-dress; and with his dark sparkling eye, finely formed
head, animated features, close curled dark hair, and bold, free looks,
the stranger formed a very strong contrast with the host on whom he had
intruded himself. Triptolemus was a short, clumsy, duck-legged disciple
of Ceres, whose bottle-nose, turned up and handsomely coppered at the
extremity, seemed to intimate something of an occasional treaty with
Bacchus. It was like to be no equal mellay betwixt persons of such
unequal form and strength; and the difference betwixt twenty and fifty
years was nothing in favour of the weaker party. Besides, the factor was
an honest good-natured fellow at bottom, and being soon satisfied that
his guest had no other views than those of obtaining refuge from the
storm, it would, despite his sister's instigations, have been his last
act to deny a boon so reasonable and necessary to a youth whose exterior
was so prepossessing. He stood, therefore, considering how he could most
gracefully glide into the character of the hospitable landlord, out of
that of the churlish defender of his domestic castle, against an
unauthorized intrusion, when Baby, who had stood appalled at the extreme
familiarity of the stranger's address and demeanour, now spoke up for
herself.
"My troth, lad," said she to Mordaunt, "ye are no blate, to light on at
that rate, and the best of wood, too--nane of your sharney peats, but
good aik timber, nae less maun serve ye!"
"You come lightly by it, dame," said Mordaunt, carelessly; "and you
should not grudge to the fire what the sea gives you for nothing. These
good ribs of oak did their last duty upon earth and ocean, when they
could hold no longer together under the brave hearts that manned the
bark."
"And that's true, too," said the old woman, softening--"this maun be
awsome weather by sea. Sit down and warm ye, since the sticks are
a-low."
"Ay, ay," said Triptolemus, "it is a pleasure to see siccan a bonny
bleeze. I havena seen the like o't since I left Cauldacres."
"And shallna see the like o't again in a hurry," said Baby, "unless the
house take fire, or there suld be a coal-heugh found out."
"And wherefore should not there be a coal-heugh found out?" said the
factor, triumphantly--"I say, wherefore should not a coal-heugh be found
out in Zetland as well as in Fife, now that the Chamberlain has a
far-sighted and discreet man upon the spot to make the necessary
perquisitions? They are baith fishing-stations, I trow?"
"I tell you what it is, Tolemus Yellowley," answered his sister, who had
practical reasons to fear her brother's opening upon any false scent,
"if you promise my Lord sae mony of these bonnie-wallies, we'll no be
weel hafted here before we are found out and set a-trotting again. If
ane was to speak to ye about a gold mine, I ken weel wha would promise
he suld have Portugal pieces clinking in his pouch before the year gaed
by."
"And why suld I not?" said Triptolemus--"maybe your head does not know
there is a land in Orkney called Ophir, or something very like it; and
wherefore might not Solomon, the wise King of the Jews, have sent
thither his ships and his servants for four hundred and fifty talents? I
trow he knew best where to go or send, and I hope you believe in your
Bible, Baby?"
Baby was silenced by an appeal to Scripture, however _mal à propos_, and
only answered by an inarticulate _humph_ of incredulity or scorn, while
her brother went on addressing Mordaunt.--"Yes, you shall all of you see
what a change shall coin introduce, even into such an unpropitious
country as yours. Ye have not heard of copper, I warrant, nor of
iron-stone, in these islands, neither?" Mordaunt said he had heard there
was copper near the Cliffs of Konigsburgh. "Ay, and a copper scum is
found on the Loch of Swana, too, young man. But the youngest of you,
doubtless, thinks himself a match for such as I am!"
Baby, who during all this while had been closely and accurately
reconnoitring the youth's person, now interposed in a manner by her
brother totally unexpected. "Ye had mair need, Mr. Yellowley, to give
the young man some dry clothes, and to see about getting something for
him to eat, than to sit there bleezing away with your lang tales, as if
the weather were not windy enow without your help; and maybe the lad
would drink some _bland_, or sic-like, if ye had the grace to ask him."
While Triptolemus looked astonished at such a proposal, considering the
quarter it came from, Mordaunt answered, he "should be very glad to
have dry clothes, but begged to be excused from drinking until he had
eaten somewhat."
Triptolemus accordingly conducted him into another apartment, and
accommodating him with a change of dress, left him to his arrangements,
while he himself returned to the kitchen, much puzzled to account for
his sister's unusual fit of hospitality. "She must be _fey_,"[24] he
said, "and in that case has not long to live, and though I fall heir to
her tocher-good, I am sorry for it; for she has held the house-gear well
together--drawn the girth over tight it may be now and then, but the
saddle sits the better."
When Triptolemus returned to the kitchen, he found his suspicions
confirmed; for his sister was in the desperate act of consigning to the
pot a smoked goose, which, with others of the same tribe, had long hung
in the large chimney, muttering to herself at the same time,--"It maun
be eaten sune or syne, and what for no by the puir callant?"
"What is this of it, sister?" said Triptolemus. "You have on the girdle
and the pot at ance. What day is this wi' you?"
"E'en such a day as the Israelites had beside the flesh-pots of Egypt,
billie Triptolemus; but ye little ken wha ye have in your house this
blessed day."
"Troth, and little do I ken," said Triptolemus, "as little as I would
ken the naig I never saw before. I would take the lad for a jagger,[25]
but he has rather ower good havings, and he has no pack."
"Ye ken as little as ane of your ain bits o' nowt, man," retorted sister
Baby; "if ye ken na him, do ye ken Tronda Dronsdaughter?"
"Tronda Dronsdaughter!" echoed Triptolemus--"how should I but ken her,
when I pay her twal pennies Scots by the day, for working in the house
here? I trow she works as if the things burned her fingers. I had better
give a Scots lass a groat of English siller."
"And that's the maist sensible word ye have said this blessed
morning.--Weel, but Tronda kens this lad weel, and she has often spoke
to me about him. They call his father the Silent Man of Sumburgh, and
they say he's uncanny."
"Hout, hout--nonsense, nonsense--they are aye at sic trash as that,"
said the brother, "when you want a day's wark out of them--they have
stepped ower the tangs, or they have met an uncanny body, or they have
turned about the boat against the sun, and then there's nought to be
done that day."
"Weel, weel, brother, ye are so wise," said Baby, "because ye knapped
Latin at Saint Andrews; and can your lair tell me, then, what the lad
has round his halse?"
"A Barcelona napkin, as wet as a dishclout, and I have just lent him one
of my own overlays," said Triptolemus.
"A Barcelona napkin!" said Baby, elevating her voice, and then suddenly
lowering it, as from apprehension of being overheard--"I say a gold
chain!"
"A gold chain!" said Triptolemus.
"In troth is it, hinny; and how like you that? The folk say here, as
Tronda tells me, that the King of the Drows gave it to his father, the
Silent Man of Sumburgh."
"I wish you would speak sense, or be the silent woman," said
Triptolemus. "The upshot of it all is, then, that this lad is the rich
stranger's son, and that you are giving him the goose you were to keep
till Michaelmas!"
"Troth, brother, we maun do something for God's sake, and to make
friends; and the lad," added Baby, (for even she was not altogether
above the prejudices of her sex in favour of outward form,) "the lad has
a fair face of his ain."
"Ye would have let mony a fair face," said Triptolemus, "pass the door
pining, if it had not been for the gold chain."
"Nae doubt, nae doubt," replied Barbara; "ye wadna have me waste our
substance on every thigger or sorner that has the luck to come by the
door in a wet day? But this lad has a fair and a wide name in the
country, and Tronda says he is to be married to a daughter of the rich
Udaller, Magnus Troil, and the marriage-day is to be fixed whenever he
makes choice (set him up) between the twa lasses; and so it wad be as
much as our good name is worth, and our quiet forby, to let him sit
unserved, although he does come unsent for."
"The best reason in life," said Triptolemus, "for letting a man into a
house is, that you dare not bid him go by. However, since there is a man
of quality amongst them, I will let him know whom he has to do with, in
my person." Then advancing to the door, he exclaimed, "_Heus tibi,
Dave!_"
"_Adsum_," answered the youth, entering the apartment.
"Hem!" said the erudite Triptolemus, "not altogether deficient in his
humanities, I see. I will try him further.--Canst thou aught of
husbandry, young gentleman?"
"Troth, sir, not I," answered Mordaunt; "I have been trained to plough
upon the sea, and to reap upon the crag."
"Plough the sea!" said Triptolemus; "that's a furrow requires small
harrowing; and for your harvest on the crag, I suppose you mean these
_scowries_, or whatever you call them. It is a sort of ingathering which
the Ranzelman should stop by the law; nothing more likely to break an
honest man's bones. I profess I cannot see the pleasure men propose by
dangling in a rope's-end betwixt earth and heaven. In my case, I had as
lief the other end of the rope were fastened to the gibbet; I should be
sure of not falling, at least."
"Now, I would only advise you to try it," replied Mordaunt. "Trust me,
the world has few grander sensations than when one is perched in midair
between a high-browed cliff and a roaring ocean, the rope by which you
are sustained seeming scarce stronger than a silken thread, and the
stone on which you have one foot steadied, affording such a breadth as
the kittywake might rest upon--to feel and know all this, with the full
confidence that your own agility of limb, and strength of head, can
bring you as safe off as if you had the wing of the gosshawk--this is
indeed being almost independent of the earth you tread on!"
Triptolemus stared at this enthusiastic description of an amusement
which had so few charms for him; and his sister, looking at the glancing
eye and elevated bearing of the young adventurer, answered, by
ejaculating, "My certie, lad, but ye are a brave chield!"
"A brave chield?" returned Yellowley,--"I say a brave goose, to be
flichtering and fleeing in the wind when he might abide upon _terra
firma_! But come, here's a goose that is more to the purpose, when once
it is well boiled. Get us trenchers and salt, Baby--but in truth it will
prove salt enough--a tasty morsel it is; but I think the Zetlanders be
the only folk in the world that think of running such risks to catch
geese, and then boiling them when they have done."
"To be sure," replied his sister, (it was the only word they had agreed
in that day,) "it would be an unco thing to bid ony gudewife in Angus or
a' the Mearns boil a goose, while there was sic things as spits in the
warld.--But wha's this neist!" she added, looking towards the entrance
with great indignation. "My certie, open doors, and dogs come in--and
wha opened the door to him?"
"I did, to be sure," replied Mordaunt; "you would not have a poor devil
stand beating your deaf door-cheeks in weather like this?--Here goes
something, though, to help the fire," he added, drawing out the sliding
bar of oak with which the door had been secured, and throwing it on the
hearth, whence it was snatched by Dame Baby in great wrath, she
exclaiming at the same time,--
"It's sea-borne timber, as there's little else here, and he dings it
about as if it were a fir-clog!--And who be you, an it please you?" she
added, turning to the stranger,--"a very hallanshaker loon, as ever
crossed my twa een!"
"I am a jagger, if it like your ladyship," replied the uninvited guest,
a stout vulgar, little man, who had indeed the humble appearance of a
pedlar, called _jagger_ in these islands--"never travelled in a waur
day, or was more willing to get to harbourage.--Heaven be praised for
fire and house-room!"
So saying, he drew a stool to the fire, and sat down without further
ceremony. Dame Baby stared "wild as grey gosshawk," and was meditating
how to express her indignation in something warmer than words, for which
the boiling pot seemed to offer a convenient hint, when an old
half-starved serving-woman--the Tronda already mentioned--the sharer of
Barbara's domestic cares, who had been as yet in some remote corner of
the mansion, now hobbled into the room, and broke out into exclamations
which indicated some new cause of alarm.
"O master!" and "O mistress!" were the only sounds she could for some
time articulate, and then followed them up with, "The best in the
house--the best in the house--set a' on the board, and a' will be little
aneugh--There is auld Norna of Fitful-head, the most fearful woman in
all the isles!"
"Where can she have been wandering?" said Mordaunt, not without some
apparent sympathy with the surprise, if not with the alarm, of the old
domestic; "but it is needless to ask--the worse the weather, the more
likely is she to be a traveller."
"What new tramper is this?" echoed the distracted Baby, whom the quick
succession of guests had driven wellnigh crazy with vexation. "I'll soon
settle her wandering, I sall warrant, if my brother has but the saul of
a man in him, or if there be a pair of jougs at Scalloway!"
"The iron was never forged on stithy that would hauld her," said the old
maid-servant. "She comes--she comes--God's sake speak her fair and
canny, or we will have a ravelled hasp on the yarn-windles!"
As she spoke, a woman, tall enough almost to touch the top of the door
with her cap, stepped into the room, signing the cross as she entered,
and pronouncing, with a solemn voice, "The blessing of God and Saint
Ronald on the open door, and their broad malison and mine upon
close-handed churls!"
"And wha are ye, that are sae bauld wi' your blessing and banning in
other folk's houses? What kind of country is this, that folk cannot sit
quiet for an hour, and serve Heaven, and keep their bit gear thegither,
without gangrel men and women coming thigging and sorning ane after
another, like a string of wild-geese?"
This speech, the understanding reader will easily saddle on Mistress
Baby, and what effects it might have produced on the last stranger, can
only be matter of conjecture; for the old servant and Mordaunt applied
themselves at once to the party addressed, in order to deprecate her
resentment; the former speaking to her some words of Norse, in a tone of
intercession, and Mordaunt saying in English, "They are strangers,
Norna, and know not your name or qualities; they are unacquainted, too,
with the ways of this country, and therefore we must hold them excused
for their lack of hospitality."
"I lack no hospitality, young man," said Triptolemus, "_miseris
succurrere disco_--the goose that was destined to roost in the chimney
till Michaelmas, is boiling in the pot for you; but if we had twenty
geese, I see we are like to find mouths to eat them every feather--this
must be amended."
"What must be amended, sordid slave?" said the stranger Norna, turning
at once upon him with an emphasis that made him start--"_What_ must be
amended? Bring hither, if thou wilt, thy new-fangled coulters, spades,
and harrows, alter the implements of our fathers from the ploughshare to
the mouse-trap; but know thou art in the land that was won of old by the
flaxen-haired Kempions of the North, and leave us their hospitality at
least, to show we come of what was once noble and generous. I say to you
beware--while Norna looks forth at the measureless waters, from the
crest of Fitful-head, something is yet left that resembles power of
defence. If the men of Thule have ceased to be champions, and to spread
the banquet for the raven, the women have not forgotten the arts that
lifted them of yore into queens and prophetesses."
The woman who pronounced this singular tirade, was as striking in
appearance as extravagantly lofty in her pretensions and in her
language. She might well have represented on the stage, so far as
features, voice, and stature, were concerned, the Bonduca or Boadicea of
the Britons, or the sage Velleda, Aurinia, or any other fated Pythoness,
who ever led to battle a tribe of the ancient Goths. Her features were
high and well formed, and would have been handsome, but for the ravages
of time and the effects of exposure to the severe weather of her
country. Age, and perhaps sorrow, had quenched, in some degree, the fire
of a dark-blue eye, whose hue almost approached to black, and had
sprinkled snow on such parts of her tresses as had escaped from under
her cap, and were dishevelled by the rigour of the storm. Her upper
garment, which dropped with water, was of a coarse dark-coloured stuff,
called wadmaal, then much used in the Zetland islands, as also in
Iceland and Norway. But as she threw this cloak back from her
shoulders, a short jacket, of dark-blue velvet, stamped with figures,
became visible, and the vest, which corresponded to it, was of crimson
colour, and embroidered with tarnished silver. Her girdle was plated
with silver ornaments, cut into the shape of planetary signs--her blue
apron was embroidered with similar devices, and covered a petticoat of
crimson cloth. Strong thick enduring shoes, of the half-dressed leather
of the country, were tied with straps like those of the Roman buskins,
over her scarlet stockings. She wore in her belt an ambiguous-looking
weapon, which might pass for a sacrificing knife, or dagger, as the
imagination of the spectator chose to assign to the wearer the character
of a priestess or of a sorceress. In her hand she held a staff, squared
on all sides, and engraved with Runic characters and figures, forming
one of those portable and perpetual calendars which were used among the
ancient natives of Scandinavia, and which, to a superstitious eye, might
have passed for a divining rod.
Such were the appearance, features, and attire, of Norna of the
Fitful-head, upon whom many of the inhabitants of the island looked with
observance, many with fear, and almost all with a sort of veneration.
Less pregnant circumstances of suspicion would, in any other part of
Scotland, have exposed her to the investigation of those cruel
inquisitors, who were then often invested with the delegated authority
of the Privy Council, for the purpose of persecuting, torturing, and
finally consigning to the flames, those who were accused of witchcraft
or sorcery. But superstitions of this nature pass through two stages ere
they become entirely obsolete. Those supposed to be possessed of
supernatural powers, are venerated in the earlier stages of society. As
religion and knowledge increase, they are first held in hatred and
horror, and are finally regarded as impostors. Scotland was in the
second state--the fear of witchcraft was great, and the hatred against
those suspected of it intense. Zetland was as yet a little world by
itself, where, among the lower and ruder classes, so much of the ancient
northern superstition remained, as cherished the original veneration for
those affecting supernatural knowledge, and power over the elements,
which made a constituent part of the ancient Scandinavian creed. At
least if the natives of Thule admitted that one class of magicians
performed their feats by their alliance with Satan, they devoutly
believed that others dealt with spirits of a different and less odious
class--the ancient Dwarfs, called, in Zetland, Trows, or Drows, the
modern fairies, and so forth.
Among those who were supposed to be in league with disembodied spirits,
this Norna, descended from, and representative of, a family, which had
long pretended to such gifts, was so eminent, that the name assigned to
her, which signifies one of those fatal sisters who weave the web of
human fate, had been conferred in honour of her supernatural powers. The
name by which she had been actually christened was carefully concealed
by herself and her parents; for to its discovery they superstitiously
annexed some fatal consequences. In those times, the doubt only
occurred, whether her supposed powers were acquired by lawful means. In
our days, it would have been questioned whether she was an impostor, or
whether her imagination was so deeply impressed with the mysteries of
her supposed art, that she might be in some degree a believer in her
own pretensions to supernatural knowledge. Certain it is, that she
performed her part with such undoubting confidence, and such striking
dignity of look and action, and evinced, at the same time, such strength
of language, and energy of purpose, that it would have been difficult
for the greatest sceptic to have doubted the reality of her enthusiasm,
though he might smile at the pretensions to which it gave rise.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] When a person changes his condition suddenly, as when a miser
becomes liberal, or a churl good-humoured, he is said, in Scotch, to be
_fey_; that is, predestined to speedy death, of which such mutations of
humour are received as a sure indication.
[25] A pedlar.
CHAPTER VI.
----If, by your art, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
_Tempest._
The storm had somewhat relaxed its rigour just before the entrance of
Norna, otherwise she must have found it impossible to travel during the
extremity of its fury. But she had hardly added herself so unexpectedly
to the party whom chance had assembled at the dwelling of Triptolemus
Yellowley, when the tempest suddenly resumed its former vehemence, and
raged around the building with a fury which made the inmates insensible
to any thing except the risk that the old mansion was about to fall
above their heads.
Mistress Baby gave vent to her fears in loud exclamations of "The Lord
guide us--this is surely the last day--what kind of a country of
guisards and gyre-carlines is this!--and you, ye fool carle," she added,
turning on her brother, (for all her passions had a touch of acidity in
them,) "to quit the bonny Mearns land to come here, where there is
naething but sturdy beggars and gaberlunzies within ane's house, and
Heaven's anger on the outside on't!"
"I tell you, sister Baby," answered the insulted agriculturist, "that
all shall be reformed and amended,--excepting," he added, betwixt his
teeth, "the scaulding humours of an ill-natured jaud, that can add
bitterness to the very storm!"
The old domestic and the pedlar meanwhile exhausted themselves in
entreaties to Norna, of which, as they were couched in the Norse
language, the master of the house understood nothing.
She listened to them with a haughty and unmoved air, and replied at
length aloud, and in English--"I will not. What if this house be strewed
in ruins before morning--where would be the world's want in the crazed
projector, and the niggardly pinch-commons, by which it is inhabited?
They will needs come to reform Zetland customs, let them try how they
like a Zetland storm.--You that would not perish, quit this house!"
The pedlar seized on his little knapsack, and began hastily to brace it
on his back; the old maid-servant cast her cloak about her shoulders,
and both seemed to be in the act of leaving the house as fast as they
could.
Triptolemus Yellowley, somewhat commoved by these appearances, asked
Mordaunt, with a voice which faltered with apprehension, whether he
thought there was any, that is, so very much danger?
"I cannot tell," answered the youth, "I have scarce ever seen such a
storm. Norna can tell us better than any one when it will abate; for no
one in these islands can judge of the weather like her."
"And is that all thou thinkest Norna can do?" said the sibyl; "thou
shalt know her powers are not bounded within such a narrow space. Hear
me, Mordaunt, youth of a foreign land, but of a friendly heart--Dost
thou quit this doomed mansion with those who now prepare to leave it?"
"I do not--I will not, Norna," replied Mordaunt; "I know not your motive
for desiring me to remove, and I will not leave, upon these dark
threats, the house in which I have been kindly received in such a
tempest as this. If the owners are unaccustomed to our practice of
unlimited hospitality, I am the more obliged to them that they have
relaxed their usages, and opened their doors in my behalf."
"He is a brave lad," said Mistress Baby, whose superstitious feelings
had been daunted by the threats of the supposed sorceress, and who,
amidst her eager, narrow, and repining disposition, had, like all who
possess marked character, some sparks of higher feeling, which made her
sympathize with generous sentiments, though she thought it too expensive
to entertain them at her own cost--"He is a brave lad," she again
repeated, "and worthy of ten geese, if I had them to boil for him, or
roast either. I'll warrant him a gentleman's son, and no churl's blood."
"Hear me, young Mordaunt," said Norna, "and depart from this house. Fate
has high views on you--you shall not remain in this hovel to be crushed
amid its worthless ruins, with the relics of its more worthless
inhabitants, whose life is as little to the world as the vegetation of
the house-leek, which now grows on their thatch, and which shall soon be
crushed amongst their mangled limbs."
"I--I--I will go forth," said Yellowley, who, despite of his bearing
himself scholarly and wisely, was beginning to be terrified for the
issue of the adventure; for the house was old, and the walls rocked
formidably to the blast.
"To what purpose?" said his sister. "I trust the Prince of the power of
the air has not yet such-like power over those that are made in God's
image, that a good house should fall about our heads, because a randy
quean" (here she darted a fierce glance at the Pythoness) "should boast
us with her glamour, as if we were sae mony dogs to crouch at her
bidding!"
"I was only wanting," said Triptolemus, ashamed of his motion, "to look
at the bear-braird, which must be sair laid wi' this tempest; but if
this honest woman like to bide wi' us, I think it were best to let us a'
sit doun canny thegither, till it's working weather again."
"Honest woman!" echoed Baby--"Foul warlock thief!--Aroint ye, ye
limmer!" she added, addressing Norna directly; "out of an honest house,
or, shame fa' me, but I'll take the bittle[26] to you!"
Norna cast on her a look of supreme contempt; then, stepping to the
window, seemed engaged in deep contemplation of the heavens, while the
old maid-servant, Tronda, drawing close to her mistress, implored, for
the sake of all that was dear to man or woman, "Do not provoke Norna of
Fitful-head! You have no sic woman on the mainland of Scotland--she can
ride on one of these clouds as easily as man ever rode on a sheltie."
"I shall live to see her ride on the reek of a fat tar-barrel," said
Mistress Baby; "and that will be a fit pacing palfrey for her."
Again Norna regarded the enraged Mrs. Baby Yellowley with a look of that
unutterable scorn which her haughty features could so well express, and
moving to the window which looked to the north-west, from which quarter
the gale seemed at present to blow, she stood for some time with her
arms crossed, looking out upon the leaden-coloured sky, obscured as it
was by the thick drift, which, coming on in successive gusts of tempest,
left ever and anon sad and dreary intervals of expectation betwixt the
dying and the reviving blast.
Norna regarded this war of the elements as one to whom their strife was
familiar; yet the stern serenity of her features had in it a cast of
awe, and at the same time of authority, as the cabalist may be supposed
to look upon the spirit he has evoked, and which, though he knows how to
subject him to his spell, bears still an aspect appalling to flesh and
blood. The attendants stood by in different attitudes, expressive of
their various feelings. Mordaunt, though not indifferent to the risk in
which they stood, was more curious than alarmed. He had heard of Norna's
alleged power over the elements, and now expected an opportunity of
judging for himself of its reality. Triptolemus Yellowley was confounded
at what seemed to be far beyond the bounds of his philosophy; and, if
the truth must be spoken, the worthy agriculturist was greatly more
frightened than inquisitive. His sister was not in the least curious on
the subject; but it was difficult to say whether anger or fear
predominated in her sharp eyes and thin compressed lips. The pedlar and
old Tronda, confident that the house would never fall while the
redoubted Norna was beneath its roof, held themselves ready for a start
the instant she should take her departure.
Having looked on the sky for some time in a fixed attitude, and with the
most profound silence, Norna at once, yet with a slow and elevated
gesture, extended her staff of black oak towards that part of the
heavens from which the blast came hardest, and in the midst of its fury
chanted a Norwegian invocation, still preserved in the Island of Uist,
under the name of the Song of the Reimkennar, though some call it the
Song of the Tempest. The following is a free translation, it being
impossible to render literally many of the elliptical and metaphorical
terms of expression, peculiar to the ancient Northern poetry:--
1.
"Stern eagle of the far north-west,
Thou that bearest in thy grasp the thunderbolt,
Thou whose rushing pinions stir ocean to madness,
Thou the destroyer of herds, thou the scatterer of navies,
Thou the breaker down of towers,
Amidst the scream of thy rage,
Amidst the rushing of thy onward wings,
Though thy scream be loud as the cry of a perishing nation,
Though the rushing of thy wings be like the roar of ten thousand waves,
Yet hear, in thine ire and thy haste,
Hear thou the voice of the Reim-kennar.
2.
"Thou hast met the pine-trees of Drontheim,
Their dark-green heads lie prostrate beside their uprooted stems;
Thou hast met the rider of the ocean,
The tall, the strong bark of the fearless rover,
And she has struck to thee the topsail
That she had not veiled to a royal armada;
Thou hast met the tower that hears its crest among the clouds,
The battled massive tower of the Jarl of former days,
And the cope-stone of the turret
Is lying upon its hospitable hearth;
But thou too shalt stoop, proud compeller of clouds,
When thou hearest the voice of the Reim-kennar.
3.
"There are verses that can stop the stag in the forest,
Ay, and when the dark-coloured dog is opening on his track;
There are verses can make the wild hawk pause on the wing,
Like the falcon that wears the hood and the jesses,
And who knows the shrill whistle of the fowler.
Thou who canst mock at the scream of the drowning mariner,
And the crash of the ravaged forest,
And the groan of the overwhelmed crowds,
When the church hath fallen in the moment of prayer,
There are sounds which thou also must list,
When they are chanted by the voice of the Reim-kennar.
4.
"Enough of woe hast thou wrought on the ocean,
The widows wring their hands on the beach;
Enough of woe hast thou wrought on the land,
The husbandman folds his arms in despair;
Cease thou the waving of thy pinions,
Let the ocean repose in her dark strength;
Cease thou the flashing of thine eye.
Let the thunderbolt sleep in the armoury of Odin;
Be thou still at my bidding, viewless racer of the north-western heaven,
Sleep thou at the voice of Norna the Reim-kennar!"
We have said that Mordaunt was naturally fond of romantic poetry and
romantic situation; it is not therefore surprising that he listened with
interest to the wild address thus uttered to the wildest wind of the
compass, in a tone of such dauntless enthusiasm. But though he had heard
so much of the Runic rhyme and of the northern spell, in the country
where he had so long dwelt, he was not on this occasion so credulous as
to believe that the tempest, which had raged so lately, and which was
now beginning to decline, was subdued before the charmed verse of Norna.
Certain it was, that the blast seemed passing away, and the apprehended
danger was already over; but it was not improbable that this issue had
been for some time foreseen by the Pythoness, through signs of the
weather imperceptible to those who had not dwelt long in the country, or
had not bestowed on the meteorological phenomena the attention of a
strict and close observer. Of Norna's experience he had no doubt, and
that went a far way to explain what seemed supernatural in her
demeanour. Yet still the noble countenance, half-shaded by dishevelled
tresses, the air of majesty with which, in a tone of menace as well as
of command, she addressed the viewless spirit of the tempest, gave him a
strong inclination to believe in the ascendency of the occult arts over
the powers of nature; for, if a woman ever moved on earth to whom such
authority over the ordinary laws of the universe could belong, Norna of
Fitful-head, judging from bearing, figure, and face, was born to that
high destiny.
The rest of the company were less slow in receiving conviction. To
Tronda and the jagger none was necessary; they had long believed in the
full extent of Norna's authority over the elements. But Triptolemus and
his sister gazed at each other with wondering and alarmed looks,
especially when the wind began perceptibly to decline, as was remarkably
visible during the pauses which Norna made betwixt the strophes of her
incantation. A long silence followed the last verse, until Norna
resumed her chant, but with a changed and more soothing modulation of
voice and tune.
"Eagle of the far north-western waters,
Thou hast heard the voice of the Reim-kennar,
Thou hast closed thy wide sails at her bidding,
And folded them in peace by thy side.
My blessing be on thy retiring path!
When thou stoopest from thy place on high,
Soft be thy slumbers in the caverns of the unknown ocean,
Rest till destiny shall again awaken thee;
Eagle of the north-west, thou hast heard the voice of the Reim-kennar!"
"A pretty sang that would be to keep the corn from shaking in har'st,"
whispered the agriculturist to his sister; "we must speak her fair,
Baby--she will maybe part with the secret for a hundred pund Scots."
"An hundred fules' heads!" replied Baby--"bid her five merks of ready
siller. I never knew a witch in my life but she was as poor as Job."
Norna turned towards them as if she had guessed their thoughts; it may
be that she did so. She passed them with a look of the most sovereign
contempt, and walking to the table on which the preparations for Mrs.
Barbara's frugal meal were already disposed, she filled a small wooden
quaigh from an earthen pitcher which contained bland, a subacid liquor
made out of the serous part of the milk. She broke a single morsel from
a barley-cake, and having eaten and drunk, returned towards the churlish
hosts. "I give you no thanks," she said, "for my refreshment, for you
bid me not welcome to it; and thanks bestowed on a churl are like the
dew of heaven on the cliffs of Foulah, where it finds nought that can
be refreshed by its influences. I give you no thanks," she said again,
but drawing from her pocket a leathern purse that seemed large and
heavy, she added, "I pay you with what you will value more than the
gratitude of the whole inhabitants of Hialtland. Say not that Norna of
Fitful-head hath eaten of your bread and drunk of your cup, and left you
sorrowing for the charge to which she hath put your house." So saying,
she laid on the table a small piece of antique gold coin, bearing the
rude and half-defaced effigies of some ancient northern king.
Triptolemus and his sister exclaimed against this liberality with
vehemence; the first protesting that he kept no public, and the other
exclaiming, "Is the carline mad? Heard ye ever of ony of the gentle
house of Clinkscale that gave meat for siller?"
"Or for love either?" muttered her brother; "haud to that, tittie."
"What are ye whittie-whattieing about, ye gowk?" said his gentle sister,
who suspected the tenor of his murmurs; "gie the ladie back her
bonnie-die there, and be blithe to be sae rid on't--it will be a
sclate-stane the morn, if not something worse."
The honest factor lifted the money to return it, yet could not help
being struck when he saw the impression, and his hand trembled as he
handed it to his sister.
"Yes," said the Pythoness again, as if she read the thoughts of the
astonished pair, "you have seen that coin before--beware how you use it!
It thrives not with the sordid or the mean-souled--it was won with
honourable danger, and must be expended with honourable liberality. The
treasure which lies under a cold hearth will one day, like the hidden
talent, bear witness against its avaricious possessors."
This last obscure intimation seemed to raise the alarm and the wonder of
Mrs. Baby and her brother to the uttermost. The latter tried to stammer
out something like an invitation to Norna to tarry with them all night,
or at least to take share of the "dinner," so he at first called it; but
looking at the company, and remembering the limited contents of the pot,
he corrected the phrase, and hoped she would take some part of the
"snack, which would be on the table ere a man could loose a pleugh."
"I eat not here--I sleep not here," replied Norna--"nay, I relieve you
not only of my own presence, but I will dismiss your unwelcome
guests.--Mordaunt," she added, addressing young Mertoun, "the dark fit
is past, and your father looks for you this evening."
"Do you return in that direction?" said Mordaunt. "I will but eat a
morsel, and give you my aid, good mother, on the road. The brooks must
be out, and the journey perilous."
"Our roads lie different," answered the Sibyl, "and Norna needs not
mortal arm to aid her on the way. I am summoned far to the east, by
those who know well how to smooth my passage.--For thee, Bryce
Snailsfoot," she continued, speaking to the pedlar, "speed thee on to
Sumburgh--the Roost will afford thee a gallant harvest, and worthy the
gathering in. Much goodly ware will ere now be seeking a new owner, and
the careful skipper will sleep still enough in the deep haaf, and care
not that bale and chest are dashing against the shores."
"Na, na, good mother," answered Snailsfoot, "I desire no man's life for
my private advantage, and am just grateful for the blessing of
Providence on my sma' trade. But doubtless one man's loss is another's
gain; and as these storms destroy a' thing on land, it is but fair they
suld send us something by sea. Sae, taking the freedom, like yoursell,
mother, to borrow a lump of barley-bread, and a draught of bland, I will
bid good-day, and thank you, to this good gentleman and lady, and e'en
go on my way to Jarlshof, as you advise."
"Ay," replied the Pythoness, "where the slaughter is, the eagles will be
gathered; and where the wreck is on the shore, the jagger is as busy to
purchase spoil as the shark to gorge upon the dead."
This rebuke, if it was intended for such, seemed above the comprehension
of the travelling merchant, who, bent upon gain, assumed the knapsack
and ellwand, and asked Mordaunt, with the familiarity permitted in a
wild country, whether he would not take company along with him?
"I wait to eat some dinner with Mr. Yellowley and Mrs. Baby," answered
the youth, "and will set forward in half an hour."
"Then I'll just take my piece in my hand," said the pedlar. Accordingly
he muttered a benediction, and, without more ceremony, helped himself to
what, in Mrs. Baby's covetous eyes, appeared to be two-thirds of the
bread, took a long pull at the jug of bland, seized on a handful of the
small fish called sillocks, which the domestic was just placing on the
board, and left the room without farther ceremony.
"My certie," said the despoiled Mrs. Baby, "there is the chapman's
drouth[27] and his hunger baith, as folk say! If the laws against
vagrants be executed this gate--It's no that I wad shut the door against
decent folk," she said, looking to Mordaunt, "more especially in such
judgment-weather. But I see the goose is dished, poor thing."
This she spoke in a tone of affection for the smoked goose, which,
though it had long been an inanimate inhabitant of her chimney, was far
more interesting to Mrs. Baby in that state, than when it screamed
amongst the clouds. Mordaunt laughed and took his seat, then turned to
look for Norna; but she had glided from the apartment during the
discussion with the pedlar.
"I am glad she is gane, the dour carline," said Mrs. Baby, "though she
has left that piece of gowd to be an everlasting shame to us."
"Whisht, mistress, for the love of heaven!" said Tronda Dronsdaughter;
"wha kens where she may be this moment?--we are no sure but she may hear
us, though we cannot see her."
Mistress Baby cast a startled eye around, and instantly recovering
herself, for she was naturally courageous as well as violent, said, "I
bade her aroint before, and I bid her aroint again, whether she sees me
or hears me, or whether she's ower the cairn and awa.--And you, ye silly
sumph," she said to poor Yellowley, "what do ye stand glowering there
for?--_You_ a Saunt Andrew's student!--_you_ studied lair and Latin
humanities, as ye ca' them, and daunted wi' the clavers of an auld
randie wife! Say your best college grace, man, and witch, or nae witch,
we'll eat our dinner, and defy her. And for the value of the gowden
piece, it shall never be said I pouched her siller. I will gie it to
some poor body--that is, I will test[28] upon it at my death, and keep
it for a purse-penny till that day comes, and that's no using it in the
way of spending siller. Say your best college grace, man, and let us eat
and drink in the meantime."
"Ye had muckle better say an _oraamus_ to Saint Ronald, and fling a
saxpence ower your left shouther, master," said Tronda.[29]
"That ye may pick it up, ye jaud," said the implacable Mistress Baby;
"it will be lang or ye win the worth of it ony other gate.--Sit down,
Triptolemus, and mindna the words of a daft wife."
"Daft or wise," replied Yellowley, very much disconcerted, "she kens
more than I would wish she kend. It was awfu' to see sic a wind fa' at
the voice of flesh and blood like oursells--and then yon about the
hearth-stane--I cannot but think"----
"If ye cannot but think," said Mrs. Baby, very sharply, "at least ye can
haud your tongue?"
The agriculturist made no reply, but sate down to their scanty meal, and
did the honours of it with unusual heartiness to his new guest, the
first of the intruders who had arrived, and the last who left them. The
sillocks speedily disappeared, and the smoked goose, with its
appendages, took wing so effectually, that Tronda, to whom the polishing
of the bones had been destined, found the task accomplished, or nearly
so, to her hand. After dinner, the host produced his bottle of brandy;
but Mordaunt, whose general habits were as abstinent almost as those of
his father, laid a very light tax upon this unusual exertion of
hospitality.
During the meal, they learned so much of young Mordaunt, and of his
father, that even Baby resisted his wish to reassume his wet garments,
and pressed him (at the risk of an expensive supper being added to the
charges of the day) to tarry with them till the next morning. But what
Norna had said excited the youth's wish to reach home, nor, however far
the hospitality of Stourburgh was extended in his behalf, did the house
present any particular temptations to induce him to remain there longer.
He therefore accepted the loan of the factor's clothes, promising to
return them, and send for his own; and took a civil leave of his host
and Mistress Baby, the latter of whom, however affected by the loss of
her goose, could not but think the cost well bestowed (since it was to
be expended at all) upon so handsome and cheerful a youth.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] The beetle with which the Scottish housewives used to perform the
office of the modern mangle, by beating newly-washed linen on a smooth
stone for the purpose, called the beetling-stone.
[27] The chapman's drouth, that is, the pedlar's thirst, is proverbial
in Scotland, because these pedestrian traders were in the use of
modestly asking only for a drink of water, when, in fact, they were
desirous of food.
[28] Test upon it, _i. e._, leave it in my will; a mode of bestowing
charity, to which many are partial as well as the good dame in the text.
[29] Although the Zetlanders were early reconciled to the reformed
faith, some ancient practices of Catholic superstition survived long
among them. In very stormy weather a fisher would vow an _oramus_ to
Saint Ronald, and acquitted himself of the obligation by throwing a
small piece of money in at the window of a ruinous chapel.
CHAPTER VII.
She does no work by halves, yon raving ocean;
Engulfing those she strangles, her wild womb
Affords the mariners whom she hath dealt on,
Their death at once, and sepulchre.
_Old Play._
There were ten "lang Scots miles" betwixt Stourburgh and Jarlshof; and
though the pedestrian did not number all the impediments which crossed
Tam o' Shanter's path,--for in a country where there are neither hedges
nor stone enclosures, there can be neither "slaps nor stiles,"--yet the
number and nature of the "mosses and waters" which he had to cross in
his peregrination, was fully sufficient to balance the account, and to
render his journey as toilsome and dangerous as Tam o' Shanter's
celebrated retreat from Ayr. Neither witch nor warlock crossed
Mordaunt's path, however. The length of the day was already
considerable, and he arrived safe at Jarlshof by eleven o'clock at
night. All was still and dark round the mansion, and it was not till he
had whistled twice or thrice beneath Swertha's window, that she replied
to the signal.
At the first sound, Swertha fell into an agreeable dream of a young
whale-fisher, who some forty years before used to make such a signal
beneath the window of her hut; at the second, she waked to remember that
Johnnie Fea had slept sound among the frozen waves of Greenland for this
many a year, and that she was Mr. Mertoun's governante at Jarlshof; at
the third, she arose and opened the window.
"Whae is that," she demanded, "at sic an hour of the night?"
"It is I," said the youth.
"And what for comena ye in? The door's on the latch, and there is a
gathering peat on the kitchen fire, and a spunk beside it--ye can light
your ain candle."
"All well," replied Mordaunt; "but I want to know how my father is?"
"Just in his ordinary, gude gentleman--asking for you, Maister Mordaunt;
ye are ower far and ower late in your walks, young gentleman."
"Then the dark hour has passed, Swertha?"
"In troth has it, Maister Mordaunt," answered the governante; "and your
father is very reasonably good-natured for him, poor gentleman. I spake
to him twice yesterday without his speaking first; and the first time he
answered me as civil as you could do, and the neist time he bade me no
plague him; and then, thought I, three times were aye canny, so I spake
to him again for luck's-sake, and he called me a chattering old devil;
but it was quite and clean in a civil sort of way."
"Enough, enough, Swertha," answered Mordaunt; "and now get up, and find
me something to eat, for I have dined but poorly."
"Then you have been at the new folk's at Stourburgh; for there is no
another house in a' the Isles but they wad hae gi'en ye the best share
of the best they had. Saw ye aught of Norna of the Fitful-head? She went
to Stourburgh this morning, and returned to the town at night."
"Returned!--then she is here? How could she travel three leagues and
better in so short a time?"
"Wha kens how she travels?" replied Swertha; "but I heard her tell the
Ranzelman wi' my ain lugs, that she intended that day to have gone on to
Burgh-Westra, to speak with Minna Troil, but she had seen that at
Stourburgh, (indeed she said at Harfra, for she never calls it by the
other name of Stourburgh,) that sent her back to our town. But gang your
ways round, and ye shall have plenty of supper--ours is nae toom pantry,
and still less a locked ane, though my master be a stranger, and no just
that tight in the upper rigging, as the Ranzelman says."
Mordaunt walked round to the kitchen accordingly, where Swertha's care
speedily accommodated him with a plentiful, though coarse meal, which
indemnified him for the scanty hospitality he had experienced at
Stourburgh.
In the morning, some feelings of fatigue made young Mertoun later than
usual in leaving his bed; so that, contrary to what was the ordinary
case, he found his father in the apartment where they eat, and which
served them indeed for every common purpose, save that of a bedchamber
or of a kitchen. The son greeted the father in mute reverence, and
waited until he should address him.
"You were absent yesterday, Mordaunt?" said his father. Mordaunt's
absence had lasted a week and more; but he had often observed that his
father never seemed to notice how time passed during the period when he
was affected with his sullen vapours. He assented to what the elder Mr.
Mertoun had said.
"And you were at Burgh-Westra, as I think?" continued his father.
"Yes, sir," replied Mordaunt.
The elder Mertoun was then silent for some time, and paced the floor in
deep silence, with an air of sombre reflection, which seemed as if he
were about to relapse into his moody fit. Suddenly turning to his son,
however, he observed, in the tone of a query, "Magnus Troil has two
daughters--they must be now young women; they are thought handsome, of
course?"
"Very generally, sir," answered Mordaunt, rather surprised to hear his
father making any enquiries about the individuals of a sex which he
usually thought so light of, a surprise which was much increased by the
next question, put as abruptly as the former.
"Which think you the handsomest?"
"I, sir?" replied his son with some wonder, but without
embarrassment--"I really am no judge--I never considered which was
absolutely the handsomest. They are both very pretty young women."
"You evade my question, Mordaunt; perhaps I have some very particular
reason for my wish to be acquainted with your taste in this matter. I am
not used to waste words for no purpose. I ask you again, which of Magnus
Troil's daughters you think most handsome?"
"Really, sir," replied Mordaunt--"but you only jest in asking me such a
question."
"Young man," replied Mertoun, with eyes which began to roll and sparkle
with impatience, "I _never_ jest. I desire an answer to my question."
"Then, upon my word, sir," said Mordaunt, "it is not in my power to form
a judgment betwixt the young ladies--they are both very pretty, but by
no means like each other. Minna is dark-haired, and more grave than her
sister--more serious, but by no means either dull or sullen."
"Um," replied his father; "you have been gravely brought up, and this
Minna, I suppose, pleases you most?"
"No, sir, really I can give her no preference over her sister Brenda,
who is as gay as a lamb in a spring morning--less tall than her sister,
but so well formed, and so excellent a dancer"----
"That she is best qualified to amuse the young man, who has a dull home
and a moody father?" said Mr. Mertoun.
Nothing in his father's conduct had ever surprised Mordaunt so much as
the obstinacy with which he seemed to pursue a theme so foreign to his
general train of thought, and habits of conversation; but he contented
himself with answering once more, "that both the young ladies were
highly admirable, but he had never thought of them with the wish to do
either injustice, by ranking her lower than her sister--that others
would probably decide between them, as they happened to be partial to a
grave or a gay disposition, or to a dark or fair complexion; but that he
could see no excellent quality in the one that was not balanced by
something equally captivating in the other."
It is possible that even the coolness with which Mordaunt made this
explanation might not have satisfied his father concerning the subject
of investigation; but Swertha at this moment entered with breakfast, and
the youth, notwithstanding his late supper, engaged in that meal with an
air which satisfied Mertoun that he held it matter of more grave
importance than the conversation which they had just had, and that he
had
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