"Nevertheless," said I to S——, after dinner, "I am going back again to-night, to see that abbey by moonlight. I intend to walk the whole figure while I am about it."
Just on the verge of twilight I stepped out, to see what the town afforded in the way of relics. To say the truth, my eye had been caught by some cunning little tubs and pails in a window, which I thought might be valued in the home department. I went into a shop, where an auld wife soon appeared, who, in reply to my inquiries, told me, that the said little tubs and pails were made of plum tree wood from Dryburgh Abbey, and, of course, partook of the sanctity of relics. She and her husband seemed to be driving a thriving trade in the article, and either plum trees must be very abundant at Dryburgh, or what there are must be gifted with that power of self-multiplication which inheres in the wood of the true Cross. I bought them in blind faith, however, suppressing all rationalistic doubts, as a good relic hunter should.
I went up into a little room where an elderly woman professed to have quite a collection of the Melrose relics. Some years ago extensive restorations and repairs were made in the old abbey, in which Walter Scott took a deep interest. At that time, when the scaffolding was up for repairing the building, as I understood, Scott had the plaster casts made of different parts, which he afterwards incorporated into his own dwelling at Abbotsford. I said to the good woman that I had understood by Washington Irving's account, that Scott appropriated bona fide fragments of the building, and alluded to the account which he gives of the little red sandstone lion from Melrose. She repelled the idea with great energy, and said she had often heard Sir Walter say, that he would not carry off a bit of the building as big as his thumb. She showed me several plaster casts that she had in her possession, which were taken at this time. There were several corbels there; one was the head of an old monk, and looked as if it might have been a mask taken of his face the moment after death; the eyes were hollow and sunken, the cheeks fallen in, the mouth lying helplessly open, showing one or two melancholy old stumps of teeth. I wondered over this, whether it really was the fac-simile of some poor old Father Ambrose, or Father Francis, whose disconsolate look, after his death agony, had so struck the gloomy fancy of the artist as to lead him to immortalize him in a corbel, for a lasting admonition to his fat worldly brethren; for if we may trust the old song, these monks of Melrose had rather a suspicious reputation in the matter of worldly conformity. The impudent ballad says,—
"O, the monks of Melrose, they made good, kail
On Fridays, when they fasted;
They never wanted beef or ale
As long as their neighbors' lasted."
Naughty, roistering fellows! I thought I could perceive how this poor Father Francis had worn his life out exhorting them to repentance, and given up the ghost at last in despair, and so been made at once into a saint and a corbel.
There were fragments of tracery, of mouldings and cornices, and grotesque bits of architecture there, which I would have given a good deal to be the possessor of. Stepping into a little cottage hard by to speak to the guide about unlocking the gates, when we went out on our moonlight excursion at midnight, I caught a glimpse, in an inner apartment, of a splendid, large, black dog. I gave one exclamation and jump, and was into the room after him.
"Ah," said the old man, "that was just like Sir Walter; he always had an eye for a dog."