CHAPTER XVII.
THE BRIDAL AT BELTANE.
Slowly at length with no consenting will,
And eyes averse, she stretch'd her beauteous hand,
To that detested bridegroom, and received
The nuptial blessing, to her anguish'd heart,
Worse than a malediction. Then burst forth
Grief impotent.
Attila, King of the Huns.
Now came sweet May with its flowers and sunshine. Yellow buttercups sprinkled with gold the sides of Arthur's seat, and the blue hyacinth and the mountain-daisy unfolded their petals on the steep slopes of Salisbury. The mavis and the merle sang merrily in the abbey orchards and old primeval oaks that shaded the grey walls of Holyrood; and sheltered by the thorn hedges that, in its ancient garden, grew like thick and impervious ramparts, the flowers of summer that Mary loved so well, were all, like herself, in the noon of their beauty and fragrance.
And now came Beltane-eve, when this soft season of sunshine and perfume was welcomed by those ancient merry-makings of which we read in Polydore Virgil, and which were a remnant of those joyous rites offered to the Flora of the Romans, and the great fire-god of the Scandinavians and the Celtæ—when the stern and mysterious Druids of Emona and Iona collected the dew of the morning, and sprinkled it on the fair-haired savages of Caledonia, as they blessed them in the name of the god of fire—the Beal of Scandinavia, and the Baal of the Moabites and Chaldeans.
Blooming Beltane came, but not as of old; for there was no maypole on the burgh links, or at the abbey-cross, and no queen of the May or stout Robin Hude to receive the homage of happy hearts; for the thunders of the reformed clergy had gone forth like a chill over the land, and the same iron laws that prevented the poor "papist" from praying before the symbol of his redemption, punished the merry for dancing round a garlanded tree.
Yet there were some remnants of other days that could not be repressed; and fires of straw were lit in the yard of many a castle and homestead, through which, as a charm against witchcraft, all the cattle were driven, amid furious fun and shouts of laughter; while the bluff laird regaled his vassals, and the bonneted farmer his sun-burned hinds, on pease-bannocks and nut-brown ale. Every old woman still marked her Beltane-bannock with the cross of life and the cipher of death, and covering it with a mixture of meal, milk and eggs, threw two pieces over her left shoulder at sunrise, saying as she did so—
"This for the mist and storm,
To spare our grass and corn;
This for the eagle and gled,
To spare the lamb and kid."
Door-lintels were still decorated with twigs of rowan-tree tied crosswise with red thread; and though the idolatrous Beltane-fire blazed on the summits of the Calton and Blackford, (as on St. Margaret's day they do still on those of Dairy in Ayrshire,) there was not the same jollity in the land; for as a mist from the ocean blights the ripening corn, so had the morose influence of the new clergy cast a gloom upon the temper, the manners, and the habits of the people—a gloom that is only now fading away, though its shadow still lingers in the rural valleys of the south and west.
But there is much to relate, and we must be brief.