There was no consideration for amateurs in that dreadful eighteenth century in which many writers have found a specious glamour of romance, because men and women wore powder and patches and sported silken clothes of amazing colours and styles. Who shall admire the embroidered waistcoat if no feeling heart beats beneath it, and what are manners or deportment if they but mask the tiger.
Rizpah, whose name forms the title of Tennyson's poem, was the concubine of King Saul and mother of Armoni and Mephibosheth, who were hanged and gibbeted, together with the five sons of Michal, on the sacred hill of Gibeah. There they remained from the early days of barley harvest until October. "And Rizpah ... took sackcloth and spread it upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night."—2 Samuel xxii. 10.
The poor old woman of the poem is a sadder figure than Rizpah, for she is nearer, in time and place, to ourselves, and is represented as gathering up the bones of her only son, as they drop from the gibbet. Hers is a figure of terror and for pity:
Wailing, wailing, wailing, the wind over land and sea—
And Willy's voice in the wind, "O mother, come out to me."
Why should he call me to-night, when he knows that I cannot go?
For the downs are as bright as day, and the full moon stares at the snow.
We should be seen, my dear; they would spy us out of the town.
The loud black nights for us, and the storm rushing over the down,
When I cannot see my own hand, but am led by the creak of the chain,