A TRUE AND IMPORTANT RELATION OF THE WONDERFUL TUNNELL OF NEWARKE ABBEY AND OF THE UNTIMELY ENDE OF SEVERALL OF YE GHOSTLY BRETH’REN.
The monks of the Wey seldom sung any psalms,
And little they thought of religion or qualms;
Such rollicking, frolicking, ranting, and gay,
And jolly old boys were the monks of the Wey.To the sweet nuns of Ockham devoting their cares,
They had little time for their beads and their prayers;
For the love of these maidens they sighed night and day,
And neglected devotion, these monks of the Wey.And happy i’ faith might these brothers have been
If the river had never been rolling between
The abbey so grand and the convent so gray,
That stood on the opposite side of the Wey.For daily they sighed, and then nightly they pined
But little to anchorite precepts inclined,
So smitten with beauty’s enchantments were they,
These rollicking, frolicking monks of the Wey.But scandal was rife in the country near,
They dared not row over the river for fear;
And no more could they swim it, so fat were they,
These oily and amorous monks of the Wey.Loudly they groaned for their fate so hard,
From the love of these beautiful maidens debarred,
Till a brother just hit on a plan which would stay
The woe of these heart-broken monks of the Wey.“Nothing,” quoth he, “should true love sunder;
Since we cannot go over, then let us go under!
Boats and bridges shall yield to clay,
We’ll dig a long tunnel clean under the Wey.”So to it they went with right good will,
With spade and shovel and pike and bill;
And from evening’s close till the dawn of day
They worked like miners all under the Wey.And at vesper hour, as their work begun,
Each sung of the charms of his favorite nun;
“How surprised they will be, and how happy!” said they,
“When we pop in upon them from under the Wey!”And for months they kept grubbing and making no sound
Like other black moles, darkly under the ground;
And no one suspected such going astray,
So sly were these mischievous monks of the Wey.At last their fine work was brought near to a close
And early one morn from their pallets they rose,
And met in their tunnel with lights to survey
If they’d scooped a free passage right under the Wey.But alas for their fate! As they smirked and they smiled.
To think how completely the world was beguiled,
The river broke in, and it grieves me to say
It drowned all the frolicksome monks of the Wey.* * * * *
O churchmen beware of the lures of the flesh,
The net of the devil has many a mesh!
And remember whenever you’re tempted to stray,
The fate that befell the poor monks of the Wey.
It was all long ago, and now there are neither monks nor nuns; the convent has been converted, little by little, age by age, into cottages, even as the friars and nuns themselves may have been organically changed possibly into violets, but more probably into the festive sparrows which flit and hop and flirt about the ruins with abrupt startles, like pheasants sudden bursting on the wing. There is a pretty little Latin epigram, written by a gay monk, of a pretty little lady, who, being very amorous, and observing that sparrows were like her as to love, hoped that she might be turned into one after death; and it is not
difficult for a dreamer in an old abbey, of a golden day to fancy that these merry, saucy birdies, who dart and dip in and out of the sunshine or shadow, chirping their shameless ditties pro et con, were once the human dwellers in the spot, who sang their gaudrioles to pleasant strains.
I became familiar with many such scenes for many miles about Oatlands, not merely during solitary walks, but by availing myself of the kind invitations of many friends, and by hunting afoot with the beagles. In this fashion one has hare and hound, but no horse. It is not needed, for while going over crisp stubble and velvet turf, climbing fences and jumping ditches, a man has a keen sense of being his own horse, and when he accomplishes a good leap of being intrinsically well worth £200. And indeed, so long as anybody can walk day in and out a greater distance than would tire a horse, he may well believe he is really worth one. It may be a good thing for us to reflect on the fact that if slavery prevailed at the present day as it did among the polished Greeks the average price of young gentlemen, and even of young ladies, would not be more than what is paid for a good hunter. Divested of diamonds and of Worth’s dresses, what would a girl of average charms be worth to a stranger? Let us reflect!
It was an October morning, and, pausing after a run, I let the pack and the “course-men” sweep away, while I sat in a pleasant spot to enjoy the air and scenery. The solemn grandeur of groves and the quiet dignity of woodland glades, barred with rays of solid-seeming sunshine, such as the saint of old hung his cloak on, the brook into which the overhanging chestnuts drop, as if in sport, their creamy
golden little boats of leaves, never seem so beautiful or impressive as immediately after a rush and cry of many men, succeeded by solitude and silence. Little by little the bay of the hounds, the shouts of the hunters, and the occasional sound of the horn grew fainter; the birds once more appeared, and sent forth short calls to their timid friends. I began again to notice who my neighbors were, as to daisies and heather which resided around the stone on which I sat, and the exclusive circle of a fairy-ring at a little distance, which, like many exclusive circles, consisted entirely of mushrooms.
As the beagle-sound died away, and while the hounds were “working around” to the road, I heard footsteps approaching, and looking up saw before me a gypsy woman and a boy. She was a very gypsy woman, an ideal witch, nut-brown, tangle-haired, aquiline of nose, and fierce-eyed; and fiercely did she beg! As amid broken Gothic ruins, overhung with unkempt ivy, one can trace a vanished and strange beauty, so in this worn face of the Romany, mantled by neglected tresses, I could see the remains of what must have been once a wonderful though wild loveliness. As I looked into those serpent eyes; trained for a long life to fascinate in fortune-telling simple dove-girls, I could readily understand the implicit faith with which many writers in the olden time spoke of the “fascination” peculiar to female glances. “The multiplication of women,” said the rabbis, “is the increase of witches,” for the belles in Israel were killing girls, with arrows, the bows whereof are formed by pairs of jet-black eyebrows joined in one. And thus it was that these black-eyed beauties, by mashing [108] men for
many generations, with shafts shot sideways and most wantonly, at last sealed their souls into the corner of their eyes, as you have heard before. Cotton Mather tells us that these witches with peaked eye-corners could never weep but three tears out of their long-tailed eyes. And I have observed that such tears, as they sweep down the cheeks of the brunette witches, are also long-tailed, and recall by their shape and glitter the eyes from which they fell, even as the daughter recalls the mother. For all love’s witchcraft lurks in flashing eyes,—lontan del occhio lontan dal’ cuor.
It is a great pity that the pigeon-eye-peaks, so pretty in young witches, become in the old ones crow’s-feet and crafty. When I greeted the woman, she answered in Romany, and said she was a Stanley from the North. She lied bravely, and I told her so. It made no difference in any way, nor was she hurt. The brown boy, who seemed like a goblin, umber-colored fungus, growing by a snaky black wild vine, sat by her and stared at me. I was pleased, when he said tober, that she corrected him, exclaiming earnestly, “Never say tober for road; that is canting. Always say drom; that is good Romanes.” There is always a way of bringing up a child in the way he should go,—though it be a gypsy one,—and drom comes from the Greek dromos, which is elegant and classical. Then she began to beg again, to pass the time, and I lectured her severely on the sin and meanness of her conduct, and said, with bitterness, “Do dogs eat dogs, or are all the Gorgios dead in the land, that you cry for money to me? Oh, you are a fine Stanley! a nice Beshaley you, to sing mumpin and mongerin, when a half-blood Matthews