We are told that Edwin’s father and sister were bitterly opposed to their love. The poor youth pined away. When he was dying Emma was permitted to see him, but the cruel sister would scarcely allow her to bid him a word of farewell. Returning home, she heard the passing bell toll for the death of her lover—
| Just then she reached, with trembling step, Her aged mother’s door— “He’s gone!” she cried, “and I shall see That angel face no more!” “I feel, I feel this breaking heart Beat high against my side”— From her white arm down sunk her head; She, shivering, sighed, and died. |
The lovers were buried the same day and in the same grave. In the year 1848, Dr. F. Dinsdale, F.S.A., editor of the “Ballads and Songs of David Mallet,” etc., erected a simple but tasteful monument to the memory of the lovers, bearing the following inscription:—
Rodger Wrightson, junr., and Martha Railton, both of Bowes; buried in one grave. He died in a fever, and upon tolling of his passing bell, she cry’d out My heart is broken and in a few hours expired, purely thro’ love, March 15, 1714-15. Such is the brief and touching record contained in the parish register of burials. It has been handed down by unvarying tradition that the grave was at the west end of the church, directly beneath the bells. The sad history of these true and faithful lovers forms the subject of Mallet’s pathetic ballad of “Edwin and Emma.”[5]
In Middleton Tyas Church, near Richmond, is the following:—
This Monument rescues from Oblivion
the Remains of the Reverend John Mawer, D.D.,
Late vicar of this Parish, who died Nov. 18, 1763, aged 60.
As also of Hannah Mawer, his wife, who died
Dec. 20th, 1766, aged 72.
Buried in this Chancel.
They were persons of eminent worth.
The Doctor was descended from the Royal Family
of Mawer, and was inferior to none of his illustrious
ancestors in personal merit, being the greatest
Linguist this Nation ever produced.
He was able to speak & write twenty-two Languages,
and particularly excelled in the Eastern Tongues,
in which he proposed to His Royal Highness
Frederick Prince of Wales, to whom he was firmly
attached, to propagate the Christian Religion
in the Abyssinian Empire; a great and noble
Design, which was frustrated by the
Death of that amiable Prince; to the great mortification of
this excellent Person, whose merit meeting with
no reward in this world, will, it’s to be hoped, receive
it in the next, from that Being which Justice
only can influence.