“Come burn your incense, ye godlike graces,
Come, Cupid, dip your darts in light;
Unloose her starry zone, chaste Venus,
And trim the bride for the bridal night.”
“‘None of your vulgar chants, minion, I tell thee; but stuffed with spiced words, and shining with gods and garters and stars and precious stones, and odors thickly dropping; a noble strain indeed.’ The maiden smiled, nodded acquiescence, and, tripping homeward, renewed her homely and interrupted song, till the riverbank and the ancient towers acknowledged, with their sweetest echoes, the native charms of her voice.
“‘I marvel much,’ said the hoary portress, ‘at the idle love for strange and incredible stories which possesses as with a demon the peasants of this district. Not only have they given a saint, with a shirt of haircloth and a scourge, to every cavern, and a druid with his golden sickle and his mistletoe to every circle of shapeless stones, but they have made the Vernons, the Cavendishes, the Cockaynes, and the Foljambes erect on every wild place crosses or altars of atonement for crimes which they never committed; unless fighting ankle-deep in heathen blood, for the recovery of Jerusalem and the holy sepulchre, required such outlandish penance. They cast, too, a supernatural light round the commonest story; if you credit them, the ancient chapel bell of Haddon, safely lodged on the floor for a century, is carried to the top of the turret, and, touched by some invisible hand, is made to toll forth midnight notes of dolor and woe, when any misfortune is about to befall the noble family of Rutland. They tell you, too, that wailings of no earthly voice are heard around the decayed towers and along the garden terraces, on the festival night of the saint who presided of old over the fortunes of the name of Vernon. And no longer agone than yesterday, old Edgar Ferrars assured me that he had nearly as good as seen the apparition of the King of the Peak himself, mounted on his visionary steed, and with imaginary horn and hound and halloo pursuing a spectre stag over the wild chase of Haddon. Nay, so far has vulgar credulity and assurance gone, that the great garden entrance, called the Knight’s porch, through which Dora Vernon descended step by step among her twenty attendant maidens, all rustling in embroidered silks, and shining and sparkling like a winter sky, in diamonds, and such-like costly stones,——to welcome her noble bridegroom, Lord John Manners, who came cap in hand with his company of gallant gentlemen——’
“‘Nay, now, dame Foljambe,’ interrupted the husbandman, ‘all this is fine enough, and lordly too, I’ll warrant; but thou must not apparel a plain old tale in the embroidered raiment of thy own brain, nor adorn it in the precious stones of thy own fancy. Dora Vernon was a lovely lass, and as proud as she was lovely: she bore her head high, dame; and well she might, for she was a gallant knight’s daughter; and lords and dukes, and what not, have descended from her. But, for all that, I cannot forget that she ran away in the middle of a moonlight night with young Lord John Manners, and no other attendant than her own sweet self. Ay, dame, and for the diamonds, and what not, which thy story showers on her locks and her garments, she tied up her berry brown locks in a menial’s cap, and ran away in a mantle of Bakewell brown, three yards for a groat. Ay, dame, and instead of going out regularly by the door, she leapt out of a window; more by token she left one of her silver-heeled slippers fastened in the grating, and the place has ever since been called the Lady’s Leap.’
“Dame Foljambe, like an inexperienced rider, whose steed refuses obedience to voice and hand, resigned the contest in despair, and allowed her rustic companion to enter full career into the debatable land, where she had so often fought and vanquished in defence of the decorum of the mode of alliance between the houses of Haddon and Rutland.
“‘And now, dame,’ said the husbandman, ‘I will tell thee the story in my own and my father’s way. The last of the name of Vernon was renowned far and wide for the hospitality and magnificence of his house, for the splendor of his retinue, and more for the beauty of his daughters, Margaret and Dorothy. This is speaking in thy own manner, dame Foljambe; but truth’s truth. He was much given to hunting and hawking, and jousting, with lances either blunt or sharp; and though a harquebuss generally was found in the hand of the gallant hunters of that time, the year of grace 1560, Sir George Vernon despised that foreign weapon; and well he might, for he bent the strongest bow, and shot the surest shaft, of any man in England. His chase-dogs, too, were all of the most expert and famous kinds, his falcons had the fairest and most certain flight; and though he had seen foreign lands, he chiefly prided himself in maintaining unimpaired the old baronial grandeur of his house. I have heard my grandsire say, how his great-grandsire told him, that the like of the Knight of Haddon, for a stately form and a noble, free, and natural grace of manner, was not to be seen in court or camp. He was hailed, in common tale and in minstrel song, by the name of the King of the Peak; and it is said his handsome person and witchery of tongue chiefly prevented his mistress, good Queen Bess, from abridging his provincial designation with the headsman’s axe.