THE BRIDAL AND BANQUET OF FERQUES.
Near the marble quarries of Ferques, adjacent to Landrecthun le Nord, in the Boulonnais, may be seen a circular range of stones, bearing a close resemblance in their shape, though little in their magnitude, to those at Stonehenge; as also to the Devil’s Needles, near Boroughbridge, and to the solitary block on the common at Harrogate. Learned people recognise the stones at Ferques by the appellation of the Mallus, a Druidical name for an altar; but the traditionary folks, wiser in their generation, acknowledge no other title for these remains of antiquity than Neuches, an old provincial word, the corruption, I suppose, of Noces, and signifying a bridal, including the banquet which followed it. According to them, the stones at Ferques stand there as a testimony of divine vengeance, inflicted on a fiddler and other individuals belonging to a wedding party who refused to kneel before the Host, as it was being borne along by a priest to a dying brother. Rabelais says, that a well-disposed and sensible man believes all that he is told; (“Un homme de bien, un homme de bon sens, croit toujours ce qu’on lui dit, et ce qu’il trouve par écrit;”) and argal, as the logical grave-digger in Hamlet has it, this story of a bridal and banquet will be allowed to pass without question.
Though around the bleak district there is not a grove
That can boast of a shade, e’en in summer, for love,
Nor a walk by the side of a murmuring stream,
Where somnambulist lovers may talk as they dream;
Nor a valley retir’d, nor sweet mossy dell,
Where young hearts that are aching, their anguish may tell;
Nor a wood where a maiden deserted may sigh,
Or where youths, stripp’d of hope, may with decency die;—
Though all it can boast be a desolate heath,
Where ’twould puzzle young Cupid to find him a wreath,—
Yet e’en here the Idalian has furnish’d full work
For the hearts of the youths and the maidens of Ferques.
Of these there were two in the good days of old,
When the hard iron heel of the baron so bold
Ground those to the dust whom the mere chance of birth
Had deprived of the licence to lord it on earth.
The maid was as light and as shy as the fawn,
Her eyes dark as night, and her brow like the dawn;
And her lips, twice as rich and as red as the rose,
Were more warm than the sky at a summer eve’s close;
While a music fell from them made only to bless;
And her shape—nay! her shape I must leave you to guess.
’Twould require the power pictorial of Burke,
To record how sublime was this beauty of Ferques.
The swain was in manhood’s first op’ning bloom,
In doublet, slash’d hose, martial bonnet, and plume;
And he look’d, as he walk’d ’neath the moon’s silver light,
Half hero, half mortal;—half bourgeois, half knight.
If upward he gazed into heaven’s soft skies,
He saw nothing there half so soft as her eyes;
Or, at least, the young lover thus gallantly swore,
As he ran the long roll of his soft nonsense o’er,
And mincingly walk’d by the damosel’s side,—
The latter all fondness, the former all pride;—
With one arm round the maiden, one hand on his dirk,
Irresistibly fine look’d this gallant of Ferques.
These walkings, these gazings, the terrible sighing,
With death, or at least earnest threat’nings of dying;
These sinkings of spirit, these meltings away,
With the watchings by night and the dreamings by day,
What could such a mixture combustible bring,
But a state of incendiarism, like Swing?
When hearts are the haystack, and Love holds the torch,
’Tis odds but the haystack will soon get a scorch.
And what else could arise from those meetings at eve,
From those flaming assertions which maidens believe,
And those vows warmly breath’d ‘’twixt the gloam and the murk,’[2]
But a bridal and banquet to gladden all Ferques?
Love’s eddying current, I say it in sooth,
Ran, for this young couple, remarkably smooth;
For the fathers paternally look’d on each child,
While the mothers maternally wept as they smiled;
Fraternally too a whole bevy of brothers
Look’d on the alliance as fondly as mothers;
And, if the young bride had possess’d but a sister,
These lines would have told how she tenderly kiss’d her.
Suffice it to say, that there never was seen,
In valley, dale, hamlet, on moorland or green,
An assembly so joyous as met at the kirk,
To view and to envy the lovers of Ferques.
For, the youthful, the aged, the ugly, the fair,
The idle, the busy, grave and gay, all were there.
Maids with prayers on their lips, for the weal of the bride,
Some who long’d for her looks, some for him by her side,
And, though last, yet most certain, by no means the least,
Stood his Rev’rence, who having been bid to the feast,
Look’d as jocund and joyous, and beaming with smiles,
As the fair Cytherean, when weaving her wiles.[3]
For where is the priest, be he Pagan, Hindoo,
Yellow Bonze from Japan, olive sage from Loo Choo,
A Franciscan Friar, an opium-drench’d Turk,
But loves a fair feast like this banquet at Ferques?
’Twould be tedious to tell, when the service was done,
How that of the gallants was warmly begun,
How, like the old suitors in Livy’s old story,
By ‘Cupiditate’ (his words) ‘et Amore,’[4]
The hearts of the damsels they ruthlessly task’d,
And finally gain’d twice as much as they ask’d.
Ah, sigh not to think that in Love’s stricken field,
The maidens of Ferques were so ready to yield;
For Livy declares that no maid can withstand
The wooer who comes with such arms in his hand.
They’re pleasant to talk of, but ’neath them doth lurk
A peril not felt less at Rome than at Ferques.
The banquet was sped, and the floor being clear’d,
Terpsichore’s summons distinctly was heard,
In the tuning Cremona that squeak’d forth its call,
Inviting all those light of foot to the ball.
Lovely dance! of thy charms how correct was the notion
Of her who the Poetry, called thee, of Motion![5]
When Beauty her features in smiles deigns to grace,
What are those same smiles but the dance of the face?
And when Dancing and Modesty happily meet,
What is Dancing just then but the smiles of the feet?[6]
I’d defy e’en a hermit the summons to shirk,
Ask’d a measure to tread by the beauties of Ferques.
When moonlight had risen to silver the scene,
The party adjourn’d from the hall to the green,
And their laughter was shaking the stars in the sky,
When by chance, on the heels of their mirth, there pass’d by
A Franciscan from Boulogne, Franciscanly shod,[7]
Who ask’d them to kneel at the sight of their God,
Whose presence mysterious he fully reveal’d.
But the fiddler, he swore, he’d be hang’d if he kneel’d,
And affirm’d—most irreverent charge ’gainst a monk—
That the bare-footed priest was decidedly drunk.
And the party applauded each quip and each quirk
That fell from this vile Paganini of Ferques.
But, oh, wonder! those ribalds their scoffs had scarce utter’d,
When, at a low prayer by the Cordelier mutter’d,
Their laughter was heard to change into a moan,
As the priest transform’d each to a figure of stone.
There motionless still do the revellers stand,
Misshapen, as turn’d from their sculptor’s rough hand;
Save one, who when moonlight pours down from above,
May be seen from the spot vainly trying to move.
Some affirm ’tis the bridegroom aroused from his trance,
Some declare ’tis the bride gliding forth to the dance.
But ’tis only the fiddler endeavouring to jerk
His bow arm o’er the once magic fiddle of Ferques.