“But will play the rogue when he thinks it won’t be talked of,” rejoined I. “Shams and realities are wonderfully alike. Do you know, even that black-coated biped, the ostrich, can make a roar just like a lion’s?”
As I crossed over from my bed-room next morning to the main building, I found the grass-plot in front of the house thronged by peasants who had come to church, while in the centre of them was the priest in his Lutheran cloak and elaborate frill. The washing and starching of one of these ruffs costs a shilling. The widow of a clergyman in Bergen is a great adept in getting them up, and it is no uncommon thing for them to come to her by steamer from a distance of one hundred and forty English miles.
The congregation were in church when I entered with the ladies. We sat altogether in a square pew on a level with the chancel dais. This mingling of the sexes, however, was not permitted, of course, among the primitive bonders: the men being on one side of the interior, the women on the other, reminding me of the evening parties in a famous University town. The former wore most of them short seamen’s jackets, though a few old peasants adhered to the antique green coat of singular cut, while their grey locks, which were parted in the centre of the forehead, streamed patriarchally over their shoulders, shading their strongly-marked countenances. The female side was really very picturesque. The head-dress is a white kerchief, elaborately crimped or plaited, but by some ingenious contrivance shaped in front somewhat like the ladies’ small bonnets of the present day, with one corner falling gracefully down behind, like the topping of the Carolina ducks on the water in St. James’s Park. Another part of this complicated piece of linen, which is not plaited, covers the forehead like a frontlet, almost close down to the eyebrows, so that at a distance they looked just like so many nuns. Nevertheless, they were the married women of the audience. The spinsters’ head-dress was more simple. They wore no cap at all. The back hair, which is braided in two bands or tails with an intermixture of red tape, is brought forward on either side of the head and round the temples just on a level with the front hair. For my part, I much admired the clean and classic cut which some of their heads exhibited in consequence. Most of the females wore tight-fitting scarlet bodices edged with green.
On either side of their bosom were six silver hooks, to hold a cross chain of the same metal. The snow-white sleeves of the chemise formed a conspicuous feature in the sparkling parterre. One woman wore a different cap from the rest: its upper part was shaped just like a glory, or nimbus; this is done by inserting within a light piece of wood of that shape. Her ornaments, too, were not plain silver, but gilt. She was from Strandebarm, which I passed yesterday on the Fjord, the scene of a celebrated national song—“Bonde i Bryllups Gaarden.”
Much psalm-singing prevailed out of Bishop Kingo, of Funen’s, psalm-book. The priest then read the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, with the traditional, I suppose, but what sounded to me very frightful, intonation. The sermon was not extempore.
“He is a tolerable preacher,” said a peasant, with quite the “Habitans in sicco” tone of criticism, “but it is out of a book, and not out of his hoved (head), like priest So-and-so, on the other side of the Fjord.”
Very small and very red babies, not many hours old,[32] I believe—such is the almost superstitious eagerness with which these good folk rush to have that sacred rite administered—were now brought to be christened. No font was visible; there was, however, an angel suspended by a cord from the roof, with deep, flesh-coloured legs and arms, and a gilt robe. In its right hand was a bowl, in its left a book. The glocker, or clerk, a little man in a blue sailor’s jacket, here dispatched a girl for some water, which was brought, and poured into the bowl, and the ceremony proceeded; which being concluded, the angel was pulled up again midway to the ceiling.[33]
The priest then examined some young men and women, who stood on either side of the aisle, he walking up and down in the intervals of the questions.