Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2

by John Wilson

THIRD CANTICLE.

The Raven! In a solitary glen sits down on a stone the roaming pedestrian, beneath the hush and gloom of a thundery sky that has not yet begun to growl, and hears no sounds but that of an occasional big rain-drop, plashing on the bare bent; the crag high overhead sometimes utters a sullen groan—the pilgrim, starting, listens, and the noise is repeated, but instead of a groan, a croak—croak—croak! manifestly from a thing with life. A pause of silence! and hollower and hoarser the croak is heard from the opposite side of the glen. Eyeing the black sultry heaven, he feels the warm plash on his face, but sees no bird on the wing. By-and-by something black lifts itself slowly and heavily up from a precipice, in deep shadow; and before it has cleared the rock-range, and entered the upper region of air, he knows it to be a Raven. The creature seems wroth to be disturbed in his solitude, and in his strong straight-forward flight aims at the head of another glen; but he wheels round at the iron barrier, and, alighting among the heather, folds his huge massy wings, and leaps about as if in anger, with the same savage croak—croak—croak! No other bird so like a demon—and should you chance to break a leg in the desert, and be unable to crawl to a hut, your life is not worth twenty-four hours' purchase. Never was there a single hound in Lord Darlington's packs, since his lordship became a mighty hunter, with nostrils so fine as those of that feathered fiend, covered though they be with strong hairs or bristles, that grimly adorn a bill of formidable dimensions, and apt for digging out eye-socket and splitting skull-structure of dying man or beast. That bill cannot tear in pieces like the eagle's beak, nor are its talons so powerful to smite as to compress—but a better bill for cut-and-thrust—- push, carte, and tierce—the dig dismal and the plunge profound—belongs to no other bird. It inflicts great gashes; nor needs the wound to be repeated on the same spot. Feeder foul and obscene! to thy nostril upturned "into the murky air, sagacious of thy quarry from afar," sweeter is the scent of carrion, than to the panting lover's sense and soul the fragrance of his own virgin's breath and bosom, when, lying in her innocence in his arms, her dishevelled tresses seem laden with something more ethereally pure than "Sabean odours from the spicy shores of Araby the Blest."

The Raven dislikes all animal food that has not a deathy smack. It cannot be thought that he has any reverence or awe of the mystery of life. Neither is he a coward; at least, not such a coward as to fear the dying kick of a lamb or sheep. Yet so long as his victim can stand, or sit, or lie in a strong struggle, the raven keeps aloof—hopping in a circle that narrows and narrows as the sick animal's nostrils keep dilating in convulsions, and its eyes grow dimmer and more dim. When the prey is in the last agonies, croaking, he leaps upon the breathing carcass, and whets his bill upon his own blue-ringed legs, steadied by claws in the fleece, yet not so fiercely inserted as to get entangled and fast. With his large level-crowned head bobbing up and down, and turned a little first to one side and then to another, all the while a self-congratulatory leer in his eye, he unfolds his wings, and then folds them again, twenty or thirty times, as if dubious how to begin to gratify his lust of blood; and frequently, when just on the brink of consummation, jumps off side, back, or throat, and goes dallying about, round and round, and off to a small safe distance, scenting, almost snorting, the smell of the blood running cold, colder, and more cold. At last the poor wretch is still; and then, without waiting till it is stiff, he goes to work earnestly and passionately, and taught by horrid instinct how to reach the entrails, revels in obscene gluttony, and preserves, it may be, eye, lip, palate, and brain, for the last course of his meal, gorged to the throat, incapacitated to return thanks, and with difficulty able either to croak or to fly.

The Raven, it is thought, is in the habit of living upwards of a hundred years, perhaps a couple of centuries. Children grow into girls, girls into maidens, maidens into wives, wives into widows, widows into old decrepit crones, and crones into dust; and the Raven who wons at the head of the glen, is aware of all the births, baptisms, marriages, deathbeds, and funerals. Certain it is—at least so men say—that he is aware of the deathbeds and the funerals. Often does he flap his wings against door and window of hut, when the wretch within is in extremity, or, sitting on the heather-roof, croaks horror into the dying dream. As the funeral winds its way towards the mountain cemetery he hovers aloft in the air—or, swooping down nearer to the bier, precedes the corpse like a sable saulie. While the party of friends are carousing in the house of death, he too, scorning funeral-baked meats, croaks hoarse hymns and dismal dirges as he is devouring the pet-lamb of the little grandchild of the deceased. The shepherds maintain that the Raven is sometimes heard to laugh. Why not, as well as the hyena? Then it is that he is most diabolical, for he knows that his laughter is prophetic of human death. True it is, and it would be injustice to conceal the fact, much more to deny it, that Ravens of old fed Elijah; but that was the punishment of some old sin committed by Two who before the Flood bore the human shape, and who, soon as the Ark rested on Mount Ararat, flew off to the desolation of swamped forests and the disfigured solitude of the drowned glens. Dying Ravens hide themselves from daylight in burial-places among the rocks, and are seen hobbling into their tombs, as if driven thither by a flock of fears, and crouching under a remorse that disturbs instinct, even as if it were conscience. So sings and says the Celtic superstition—muttered to us in a dream—adding that there are Raven ghosts, great black bundles of feathers, for ever in the forest, night-hunting in famine for prey, emitting a last feeble croak at the blush of dawn, and then all at once invisible.

There can be no doubt that that foolish Quaker, who some twenty years ago perished at the foot of a crag near Red Tarn, "far in the bosom of Helvyllyn," was devoured by ravens. We call him foolish, because no adherent of that sect was ever qualified to find his way among mountains when the day was shortish, and the snow, if not very deep, yet wreathed and pit-falled. In such season and weather, no place so fit for a Quaker as the fireside. Not to insist, however, on that point, with what glee the few hungry and thirsty old Ravens belonging to the Red Tarn Club must have flocked to the Ordinary! Without asking each other to which part this, that, or the other croaker chose to be helped, the maxim which regulated their behaviour at table was doubtless, "First come, first served." Forthwith each bill was busy, and the scene became animated in the extreme. There must have been great difficulty to the most accomplished of the carrion in stripping the Quaker of his drab. The broad-brim had probably escaped with the first intention, and after going before the wind half across the unfrozen Tarn, capsized, filled, and sunk. Picture to yourself so many devils, all in glossy black feather coats and dark breeches, with waistcoats inclining to blue, pully-hawlying away at the unresisting figure of the follower of Fox, and getting first vexed and then irritated with the pieces of choking soft armour in which, five or six ply thick, his inviting carcass was so provokingly insheathed! First a drab duffle cloak—then a drab wraprascal—then a drab broadcloth coat, made in the oldest fashion—then a drab waistcoat of the same—then a drab under-waistcoat of thinner mould—then a linen-shirt, somewhat drabbish—then a flannel-shirt, entirely so, and most odorous to the nostrils of the members of the Red Tarn Club. All this must have taken a couple of days at the least; so, supposing the majority of members assembled about eight A.M. on the Sabbath morning, it must have been well on to twelve o'clock on Monday night before the club could have comfortably sat down to supper. During these two denuding days, we can well believe that the President must have been hard put to it to keep the secretary, treasurer, chaplain, and other office-bearers, ordinary and extraordinary members, from giving a sly dig at Obadiah's face, so tempting in the sallow hue and rank smell of first corruption. Dead bodies keep well in frost; but the subject had in this case probably fallen from a great height, had his bones broken to smash, his flesh bruised and mangled. The President, therefore, we repeat it, even although a raven of great age and authority, must have had inconceivable difficulty in controlling the Club. The croak of "Order!—order!—Chair!—chair!"—must have been frequent; and had the office not been hereditary, the old gentleman would no doubt have thrown it up, and declared the chair vacant. All obstacles and obstructions having been by indefatigable activity removed, no attempt, we may well believe, was made by the seneschal to place the guests according to their rank, above or below the salt, and the party sat promiscuously down to a late supper. Not a word was tittered during the first half-hour, till a queer-looking mortal, who had spent several years of his prime of birdhood at old Calgarth, and picked up a tolerable command of the Westmoreland dialect by means of the Hamiltonian system, exclaimed, "I'se weel nee brussen—there be's Mister Wudsworth—Ho, ho, ho!" It was indeed the bard, benighted in the Excursion from Patterdale to Jobson's Cherry-Tree; and the Red Tarn Club, afraid of having their orgies put into blank verse, sailed away in floating fragments beneath the moon and stars.

But over the doom of one true Lover of Nature let us shed a flood of rueful tears; for at what tale shall mortal man weep, if not at the tale of youthful genius and virtue shrouded suddenly in a winding-sheet wreathed of snow by the pitiless tempest! Elate in the joy of solitude, he hurried like a fast-travelling shadow into the silence of the frozen mountains, all beautifully encrusted with pearls, and jewels, and diamonds, beneath the resplendent night-heavens. The din of populous cities had long stunned his brain, and his soul had sickened in the presence of the money-hunting eyes of selfish men, all madly pursuing their multifarious machinations in the great mart of commerce. The very sheeted masts of ships, bearing the flags of foreign countries, in all their pomp and beauty sailing homeward or outward-bound, had become hateful to his spirit—for what were they but the floating enginery of Mammon? Truth, integrity, honour, were all recklessly sacrificed to gain by the friends he loved and had respected most—sacrificed without shame and without remorse—repentance being with them a repentance only over ill-laid schemes of villany—plans for the ruination of widows and orphans, blasted in the bud of their iniquity. The brother of his bosom made him a bankrupt—and for a year the jointure of his widow-mother was unpaid. But she died before the second Christmas—and he was left alone in the world. Poor indeed he was, but not a beggar. A legacy came to him from a distant relation—almost the only one of his name—who died abroad. Small as it was, it was enough to live on—and his enthusiastic spirit gathering joy from distress, vowed to dedicate itself in some profound solitude to the love of Nature, and the study of her Great Laws. He bade an eternal farewell to cities at the dead of midnight, beside his mother's grave, scarcely distinguishable among the thousand flat stones, sunk, or sinking into the wide churchyard, along which a great thoroughfare of life roared like the sea. And now, for the first time, his sorrow flung from him like a useless garment, he found himself alone among the Cumbrian mountains, and impelled in strong idolatry almost to kneel down and worship the divine beauty of the moon, and "stars that are the poetry of heaven."

Not uninstructed was the wanderer in the lore that links the human heart to the gracious form and aspects of the Mighty Mother. In early youth he had been intended for the Church, and subsequent years of ungrateful and ungenial toils had not extinguished the fine scholarship that native aptitude for learning had acquired in the humble school of the village in which he was born. He had been ripe for College when the sudden death of his father, who had long been at the head of a great mercantile concern, imposed it upon him, as a sacred duty owed to his mother and his sisters, to embark in trade. Not otherwise could he hope ever to retrieve their fortunes—and for ten years for their sake he was a slave, till ruin set him free. Now he was master of his own destiny—and sought some humble hut in that magnificent scenery, where he might pass a blameless life, and among earth's purest joys prepare his soul for heaven. Many such humble huts had he seen during that one bold, bright, beautiful spring winter-day. Each wreath of smoke from the breathing chimneys, while the huts themselves seemed hardly awakened from sleep in the morning-calm, led his imagination up into the profound peace of the sky. In any one of those dwellings, peeping from sheltered dells, or perched on wind-swept eminences, could he have taken up his abode, and sat down contented at the board of their simple inmates. But in the very delirium of a new bliss, the day faded before him—twilight looked lovelier than dream-land in the reflected glimmer of the snow—and thus had midnight found him, in a place so utterly lonesome in its remoteness from all habitations, that even in summer no stranger sought it without the guidance of some shepherd familiar with the many bewildering passes that stretched away in all directions through among the mountains to distant vales. No more fear or thought had he of being lost in the wilderness, than the ring-dove that flies from forest to forest in the winter season, and, without the aid even of vision, trusts to the instinctive wafting of her wings through the paths of ether.

As he continued gazing on the heavens, the moon all at once lost something of her brightness—the stars seemed fewer in number—and the lustre of the rest as by mist obscured. The blue ethereal frame grew discoloured with streaks of red and yellow—and a sort of dim darkness deepened and deepened on the air, while the mountains appeared higher, and at the same time further off, as if he had been transported in a dream to another region of the earth. A sound was heard, made up of far-mustering winds, echoes from caves, swinging of trees, and the murmur as of a great lake or sea beginning to break on the shore. A few flakes of snow touched his face, and the air grew cold. A clear tarn had a few minutes before glittered with moonbeams, but now it had disappeared. Sleet came thicker and faster, and ere long it was a storm of snow. "O God! my last hour is come!" and scarcely did he hear his own voice in the roaring tempest.

Men have died in dungeons—and their skeletons been found long years afterwards lying on the stone floor, in postures that told through what hideous agonies they had passed into the world of spirits. But no eye saw, no ear heard, and the prison-visitor gathers up, as he shudders, but a dim conviction of some long horror from the bones. One day in spring—long after the snows were melted—except here and there a patch like a flock of sheep on some sunless exposure—a huge Raven rose heavily, as if gorged with prey, before the feet of a shepherd, who, going forward to the spot where the bird had been feeding, beheld a rotting corpse! A dog, itself almost a skeleton, was lying near, and began to whine at his approach. On its collar was the name of its master—a name unknown in that part of the country—and weeks elapsed before any person could be heard of that could tell the history of the sufferer. A stranger came and went—taking the faithful creature with him that had so long watched by the dead—but long before his arrival the remains had been interred; and you may see the grave, a little way on from the south gate, on your right hand as you enter, not many yards from the Great Yew-Tree in the churchyard of——, not far from the foot of Ullswater.

Gentle reader! we have given you two versions of the same story—and pray, which do you like the best? The first is the most funny, the second the most affecting. We have observed that the critics are not decided on the question of our merits as a writer; some maintaining that we are strongest in humour—others, that our power is in pathos. The judicious declare that our forte lies in both—in the two united, or alternating with each other. "But is it not quite shocking," exclaims some scribbler who has been knouted in Ebony, "to hear so very serious an affair as the death of a Quaker in the snow among mountains, treated with such heartless levity? The man who wrote that description, sir, of the Ordinary of the Red Tarn Club, would not scruple to commit murder!" Why, if killing a scribbler be murder, the writer of that—this—article confesses that he has more than once committed that capital crime. But no intelligent jury, taking into consideration the law as well as the fact—and it is often their duty to do so, let high authorities say what they will—would for a moment hesitate, in any of the cases alluded to, to bring in a verdict of "Justifiable homicide." The gentleman or lady who has honoured us so far with perusal, knows enough of human life, and of their own hearts, to know also that there is no other subject which men of genius—and who ever denied that we are men of genius?—have been accustomed to view in so many ludicrous lights as this same subject of death; and the reason is at once obvious—yet recherché—videlicet, Death is, in itself and all that belongs to it, such a sad, cold, wild, dreary, dismal, distracting, and dreadful thing, that at times men talking about it cannot choose but laugh!