[28] This tradition is the basis of the drama called "The Yorkshire Tragedy," and was adopted by Ainsworth in his "Romance of Rookwood."
[29] 2nd Ser., p. 21.
[30] A curious legend is related by Roger de Hoveden, which shows the antiquity of the Wakefield mills. "In the year 1201, Eustace, Abbot of Flaye, came over into England, preaching the duty of extending the Sabbath from three o'clock p.m. on Saturday to sunrising on Monday morning, pleading the authority of an epistle written by Christ himself, and found on the altar of St. Simon at Golgotha. The people of Yorkshire treated the fanatic with contempt, and the miller of Wakefield persisted in grinding his corn after the hour of cessation, for which disobedience his corn was turned into blood, while the mill-wheel stood immovable against all the water of the Calder."
CHAPTER VII.[ToC]
CURIOUS SECRETS.
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"And now I will unclasp a secret book, And to your quick-conceiving discontent I'll read your matter deep and dangerous." |
| 1. Henry IV., Act 1., sc. 3. |
"The Depository of the Secrets of all the World" was the inscription over one of the brazen portals of Fakreddin's valley, reminding us of what Ossian said to Oscar, when he resigned to him the command of the morrow's battle, "Be thine the secret hill to-night," referring to the Gaelic custom of the commander of an army retiring to a secret hill the night before a battle to hold communion with the ghosts of departed heroes. But, as it has been often remarked of secrets—both political and social—they are only too frequently made to be revealed, a truth illustrative of Ben Jonson's words in "The Case is Unaltered "—