The marriage ceremony was performed in the Abbey, before Morel, the Lord Abbot, and glad assembled thousands. The town and the surrounding hills became a scene of joy. The bale-fires blazed from every hill; music echoed in the streets; and from every house, while the light of tapers gleamed, was heard the sounds of dance and song. The Scottish maiden and the French courtier danced by the side of the Jed together. But chief of all the festive scene was the assembly in the hall of the royal castle. At the farther end of the apartment, elevated on a purpled covered dais, sat King Alexander, with the hand of his bridal queen locked in his. On each side were ranged, promiscuously, the Scottish and the French nobility, with their wives, daughters, and sisters. Music lent its influence to the scene, and the strains of a hundred instruments blended in a swell of melody.
Thrice a hundred tapers burned suspended from the roof, and on each side of the hall stood twenty men with branches of blazing pine. Now came the morris dance, with the antique dress and strange attitudes of the performers, which was succeeded by a dance of warriors in their coats of mail, and with their swords drawn. After these a masque, prepared by Thomas the Rymer, who sat on the right hand of the King, followed; and the company laughed, wept, and wondered, as the actors performed their parts before them.
But now came the royal dance; the music burst into a bolder strain, and lord and lady rose, treading the strange measure down the hall, after the King and his fair Queen. Louder, and yet more loud the music pealed; and, though it was midnight, the multitude without shouted at its enlivening strains. Blithely the dance went on, and the King well nigh forgot the measure as he looked enraptured in the fair face of his beauteous bride.
He turned to take her hand in the dance, and in its stead the bony fingers of a skeleton were extended to him. He shrank back aghast; for royalty shuddereth at the sight of Death as doth a beggar, and, in its presence, feeleth his power to be as the power of him who vainly commanded the waves of the sea to go back. Still the skeleton kept true measure before him—still it extended to him its bony hand. He fell back, in horror, against a pillar where a torch-bearer stood. The lovely Queen shrieked aloud, and fell as dead upon the ground. The music ceased—silence fell on the multitude—they stood still—they gazed on each other. Dismay caused the cold damp of terror to burst from every brow, and timid maidens sought refuge and hid their faces on the bosom of strangers. But still, visible to all, the spectre stood before the king, its bare ribs rattling as it moved, and its finger pointed towards him. The music, the dancers, became noiseless, as if Death had whispered—"Hush!—be still!" For the figure of death stood in the midst of them, as though it mocked them, and no sound was heard save the rattling of the bones, the moving of its teeth, and the motion of its fingers before the king.
The lord abbot gathered courage, he raised his crucifix from his breast, he was about to exorcise the strange spectre, when it bent its grim head before him, and vanished as it came—no man knew whither.
"Let the revels cease!" gasped the terror-stricken king; and they did cease. The day had begun in joy, it was ended in terror. Fear spread over the land, and while the strange tale of the marriage spectre was yet in the mouths of all men, yea before six months had passed, the tidings spread that the good King Alexander, at whom the figure of Death had pointed its finger, was with the dead, and his young queen a widow in a strange land.
The appearance of the spectre became a tale of wonder amongst all men, descending from generation to generation, and unto this day it remains a mystery. But, on the day after the royal festival at Jedburgh, Patrick Douglas, the learned soldier, took the vows, and became a monastic brother at Melrose; and, though he spoke of Jolande in his dreams, he smiled, as if in secret triumph, when the spectre that had appeared to King Alexander was mentioned in his hearing.
THE SIMPLE MAN IS THE BEGGAR'S BROTHER.
"Many a time," said Nicholas Middlemiss, as he turned round the skirts and the sleeve of his threadbare coat to examine them, "many a time have I heard my mother say to my faither—'Roger, Roger (for that was my faither's name,) the simple man is the beggar's brother.' But, notwithstanding my mother's admonitions, my faither certainly was a very simple man. He allowed people to take him in, even while they were laughing in his face at his simplicity. I dinna think that ever there was a week but that somebody or other owrereached him, in some transaction or other; for every knave, kennin' him to be a simpleton, (a nosey-wax, as my mother said,) always laid their snares to entrap Roger Middlemiss—and his family were the sufferers. He had been a manufacturer in Langholm for many a long year, and at his death he left four brothers, a sister and mysel', four hundred pounds each. Be it remembered, however, that his faither before him left him near to three thousand, and that was an uncommon fortune in those days, a fortune I may say that my faither might have made his bairns dukes by. Had he no been a simple man, his family might have said that they wouldna ca' the Duke o' Buccleuch their cousin. But he was simple—simplicity's sel'—(as my mother told him weel about it)—and he didna leave his bairns sae meikle to divide among them, as he had inherited from their grandfaither. Yet, if, notwithstanding his opportunities to make a fortune, he did not even leave us even what he had got, he at least left us his simpleness unimpaired. My brothers were honest men—owre honest, I am sorry to say, for the every-day transactions of this world—but they always followed the obliging path, and kept their face in a direction, which, if they had had foresight enough to see it, was sure to land them in, or on,(just as ye like to take the expression,) their native parish. Now, this is a longing after the place o' one's birth for which I have no ambition; but on the parish it did land my brothers. My sister, too, was a poor simple thing, that married a man who had a wife living when he married her; and, after he had got every shilling that she had into his possession, he decamped and left her.