THE FISHERMAN AND THE FIDDLER;
OR,
"DON'T SAY SO TILL YOU ARE SURE."
It is a long day since Zed Marrowby and Phil Garrett passed quietly away from this wilderness of confusion and wrong, and their names are well-nigh forgotten. But they were, each of them, so unlike other folk in their way of life, and in their old-fashioned habits of thinking and talking, that there is no wonder they have slipped out of the world's memory as well as out of the world itself. Two odd old fellows they were deemed for many a year, albeit there are few happier old fellows, upon the whole, than they were. And who were they?
Zed was an humble fishermen on the Trent, and never knew what it was to be possessed, at once, of twenty shillings in his life. His father was called Zedekiah, but the son never reached that long-name dignity. Zed was taught the art and mystery of fishing with an angle, fishing with set lines and hooks, fishing with nets—in brief, all kinds of fresh-water fishing, when a boy, by his father,—whose father and grandfather before him were each and all fishermen. Zed was a bachelor all his life long, and that means fourscore and five; and Zed never had but one bosom-friend, and that was blind Phil Garrett the fiddler.
Phil could not trace his ancestry in an uninterrupted line for several generations like his friend Zed. In fact, it may seem strange to a world so wise as the world is now-a-days, but Phil Garrett never knew who was his own father! His earliest recollections were of hard usage by all around him save his mother, who herself died of hard usage, and left him to the ruthless world, a blind orphan at a tender age. There was as great doubt about Phil's true Christian name as there was about his parentage: some said it was Philip, and others said it ought to be Philander; here and there one contended it must be Philibert, while his godmother, Abigail, inclined to believe it was Philemon, but even she could not justly remember—for, as she used to say, "the parson quite took away her recollection of it, by hemming and hawing, and being so long about the trifling matter of sprinking the child—and all the while she was pretty sartain the christening-cake would be burnt under the wood-ashes, for she made it herself, and placed it under the dish at the last moment, in order that it might not be spoilt while they were at church." However, Phil contrived to teach himself to play on the fiddle when a boy, and thereby managed to win his own living, without ever seeing the sun, or knowing exactly, either his own name, or the name of his father.
Zed and Phil were nearly of an age, and became attached to each other when they were in their teens: indeed, from that period of life they were inseparable, except on special occasions. It was a singular companionship, was that of Zed Marrowby, the fisherman, and blind Phil Garrett, the fiddler. As soon as day broke, through spring, summer, and autumn, Zed might be seen wending his way among the osiers, on the banks of old Trent, towards his small narrow boat; and blind Phil, with his fiddle-case under his arm, might be seen leaning on Zed's left shoulder, and hurrying along with him. No matter how heavily it rained, or strongly it blew, the two happy old fellows were as constant in their time of rising, and of their embarkation, as the sun was in mounting above the east, unless Phil happened to be engaged for a wedding or a wake, for the blind fiddler was in high request for all the rustic rejoicings around Torksey, where the singular companions lived—I mean, at Marton, and Sturton, and Fenton, and Newton, on the Lincolnshire side of the Trent; and not less at Laneham, and Dunham, and Drayton, and Rampton, and Leverton, on the side of merry Nottinghamshire.
Winter, you would say, would be but a dreary season for the two old cronies, since it would put a stop to their voyaging, and, by confining them within doors, would make them impish and melancholy. But you are wrong, if you say so. There were nets and lines to make and to mend, and the past to recount, and the future to reckon upon; and Phil would play on his fiddle while Zed would sing, and when Phil's arm was weary with scraping, and Zed's throat was sore with piping, Zed would listen till he fell asleep with Phil telling ghost-stories and fairy-tales, and love-ditties and robber-ventures,—all of which he had learned from his godmother, old Abigail Cullsimple, at once the most famous herb-woman, midwife, and tale-teller, in her own day and generation, for threescore miles round about ancient Torksey on the Trent,—nay, it were perilous to assert that she ever had an equal, in these three combined qualifications, throughout the whole region of Lindsey.
It would take some thousands of pages to narrate half the adventures in rain and fair weather, of the fisherman and fiddler, during their threescore years of friendship. Let it suffice to take up their life-story for some two or three days of the last summer they spent together in this world, commencing with a fine morning in which they unmoored their little boat somewhat earlier than usual, in order to reach Littleborough for a wedding, before the turn of the tide. The morning was such a delicious one, that, old as they were, the two old voyagers could not restrain their feeling of pleasure at the balmy and refreshing effect it had upon their weather-beaten frames; and, blind as poor Phil was, you could not have failed, had you seen his expressive face when under very pleasurable emotion, to discern that it scarcely needs the language of eyes to demonstrate the heart's happiness. Their little skiff darted like a fowl along the stream, so finely did opening nature seem to nerve the old men's arms, and puff their little sail; the very fishes seemed scarcely to have time to take alarm while the oars plashed amid the liquid silver, but darted and gambolled after each other,—the rapid dace and the delicate bleak, and the golden-finned perch,—every moment to the surface of the stream, exulting, as it seemed, in the solar glory. It was a morning to fill with music every human soul that has any music in itself. The sweet matin lute of the lark thrilled through the heavens, and the still sweeter voice of the blythe milk-maid, as she tripped it, fresh and rosy, over the lea, was heard waking the echoes with her plaintive love-melody. Zed and Phil were too true children of Nature to disobey her influences, and thus chanted their hearts' sedate joy, as they bent at the oar:—
"Merrily we go, my man—
Merrily with the tide!
Catch the breezes while you can—