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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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:—