THE KING OF THE PEAK.
BY ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.
It happened once in a northern county that I found myself at a farmer’s fireside, and in company which the four winds of heaven seemed to have blown together. The farmer was a joyous old man; and the evening, a wintry one, and wild with wind and snow, flew away with jest and mirth and tale and song. Our entertainer had no wish that our joy should subside; for he heaped the fire till the house shone to its remotest rafter, loaded his table with rustic delicacies, and once when a pause ensued after the chanting of one of Robin Hood’s ballads, he called out, “Why stays the story, and what stops the rhyme? Have I heated my hearth, have I spread my tables and poured forth my strong drink, for the poor in fancy and the lame in speech? Up, up; and give me a grave tale or a gay, to gladden or sadden the present moment, and lend wings to the leaden feet of evening time. Rise, I say: else may the fire that flames so high; the table which groans with food, for which water and air and earth have been sought; and the board that perfumes you with the odor of ale and mead,——may the first cease to warm, and the rest to nourish ye.”
“Master,” said a hale and joyous personage, whose shining and gladsome looks showed sympathy and alliance with the good cheer and fervent blood of merry old England, “since thy table smokes, and thy brown ale flows more frankly for the telling of a true old tale, then a true old tale thou shalt have; shame fall me if I balk thee, as the peasant folks say, in the dales of bonny Derby.
“Those who have never seen Haddon Hall, the ancient residence of the Vernons of Derbyshire, can have but an imperfect notion of the golden days of old England. Though now deserted and dilapidated, its halls silent, the sacred bell of its chapel mute; though its tables no longer send up the cheering smell of roasted boars and spitted oxen; though the music and the voice of the minstrel are silenced, and the light foot of the dancer no longer sounds on the floor; though no gentle knights and gentler dames go trooping hand in hand, and whispering among the twilight groves, and the portal no longer sends out its shining helms and its barbed steeds,——where is the place that can recall the stately hospitality and glory of former times, like the Hall of old Haddon?
“It happened on a summer evening, when I was a boy, that several curious old people had seated themselves on a little round knoll near the gate of Haddon Hall; and their talk was of the Vernons, the Cavendishes, the Manners, and many old names once renowned in Derbyshire. I had fastened myself to the apron-string of a venerable dame, at whose girdle hung a mighty iron key, which commanded the entrance of the hall; her name was Dolly Foljambe; and she boasted her descent from an ancient red cross knight of that name, whose alabaster figure, in mail, may be found in Bakewell church. This high origin, which, on consulting family history, I find had not the concurrence of clergy, seemed not an idle vanity of the humble portress; she had the straight frame, and rigid, demure, and even warlike cast of face, which alabaster still retains of her ancestor; and had she laid herself by his side, she might have passed muster, with an ordinary antiquarian, for a coeval figure. At our feet the river Wye ran winding and deep; at our side rose the hall huge and gray; and the rough heathy hills, renowned in Druidic and Roman and Saxon and Norman story, bounded our wish for distant prospects, and gave us the mansion of the Vernons for our contemplation, clear of all meaner encumbrances of landscape.
“‘Ah! dame Foljambe,’ said an old husbandman, whose hair was whitened by acquaintance with seventy winters, ‘it’s a sore and a sad sight to look at that fair tower and see no smoke ascending. I remember it in a brighter day, when many a fair face gazed out at the windows, and many a gallant form appeared at the gate. Then were the days when the husbandman could live,——could whistle as he sowed, dance and sing as he reaped, and could pay his rent in fatted oxen to my lord and in fatted fowls to my lady. Ah! dame Foljambe, we remember when men could cast their lines in the Wye; could feast on the red deer and the fallow deer, on the plover and the ptarmigan; had right of the common for their flocks, of the flood for their nets, and of the air for their harquebuss. Ah! dame, old England is no more the old England it was, than that hall, dark and silent and desolate, is the proud hall that held Sir George Vernon, the King of the Peak, and his two lovely daughters, Margaret and Dora. Those were days, dame; those were days!’ And as he ceased, he looked up to the tower, with an eye of sorrow, and shook and smoothed down his white hairs.