In the days of James III. the shrine enjoyed its ancient fame—pure and undefiled; and Father Fairlie, the Franciscan who then occupied the hermitage, afterwards attained a great age, for he was the immediate predecessor of the Father Thomas referred to in the pasquil of Knox. Though a pious enthusiast in some respects, he was not at all one of those who thought
"To merit heaven by making earth a hell."
He had been a soldier in his youth, and fought in the Douglas wars; so he said his office daily and never omitted his prayers, or withheld kind advice from those who sought his shrine; and yet withal, he enjoyed the various good things of this life that came his way. Thus, though he went abroad barefooted and wore the grey woollen gown and cowl, with the knotted girdle prescribed by his patron St. Francis of Assisi, he was one of the most sleek and well fed of the brotherhood in Scotland.
It was towards the afternoon of that stormy day described in a recent chapter. From the Firth a cool wind blew over the sandy knolls and broomy hollows of Musselburgh Links; the old woods of Pinkey and the venerable oaks around the Chapel of Loretto moaned in the rising wind, and their damp foliage whistled drearily. The sky wore a dingy grey hue to the eastward, darkening as it approached the horizon, which served as a background, and against which the white curling waves of the Firth rose and fell, while the bitter surf boomed far along the echoing shore.
No less than three substantial burgess-wives of the "honest town" had been at the shrine on this morning, craving the prayers of the hermit; one for the recovery of her spouse, who was a leper on Inchkeith; a second that her child might be cured of the croup; and a third that her husband might escape from the Turks, who had taken him prisoner in the Levant, all of which Father Fairlie promised should be done "without delay, if they had faith;"—however, each had what was of more importance to him, a basket of viands, ready cooked, which they deposited and departed.
The hermit, after a long and sorrowful contemplation of a daintily roasted duck and side of lamb, was compelled (the day being Friday) to content himself with a couple of pounds of kippered salmon, five or six buttered eggs, and a quart of Rhenish wine for dinner; after which he stroked his paunch, made a sign of the cross three times, and blessed the three burgess-wives in his heart. He then drew his grey cowl over his face, and walked forth upon the beach for the double purpose of gaining an appetite for supper and saying "his office," or daily set of prescribed prayers in Latin; though some persons who were envious of the popularity enjoyed by Friar Fairlie among the maids, wives, and widows of the honest town—for so was Musselburgh named, par excellence, by the Regent Randolph in 1333—averred that he knew no more of Latinity than a few scraps, with which he incessantly interlarded his conversation; and as the said scraps sounded very mysterious and holy, they were not without having a due and potent effect upon the simple-minded folks who heard them. Some were rash enough to assert that at vespers he had been heard in his hermitage singing, "Jollie Martin," and that old ditty which became so famous in the time of James V.—
"Bill wilt thou come by a lute
And belt thee in Sanct Francis cord;"
but all this we verily believe to have been mere scandal, raised by the chaplains of other oratories in the burgh, who belonged to rival orders, and were envious of the fame enjoyed by the poor Franciscan hermit and his shrine at Loretto, without the gate.
The attention of our new friend the recluse was divided between his daily office, which he repeated drowsily and mechanically, and in watching the lowering of the sky and sea, on which a boat with her large lug-sail squared was running straight for the beach which bordered the links.
She cut through the water, riding over, or cleaving asunder the waves with her sharp prow, and throwing on each side a continual shower of spray; the helmsman steered her straight for the shore, and being aware that the tide was ebbing, beached her firmly into the soft sand, while at the same moment two companions whom he had on board reduced the sail, hauled down the yard, and struck the mast. They then threw over the anchor, to keep her fast when the tide floated her again; and stepping into the surf in their long boots which came above the knee, they crossed the links (or downs, as they would be called in England) and approached the observant friar.