“Then longe folk to go on pilgrimages,
And palmers for to seeke strange strands
To ferne hallows couth in sundry lands.”
In the good old times, when a man wanted a little change from the bosom of his family—in those days a somewhat restricted bosom—he went on a crusade, or a pilgrimage.
What if he did spend his time and substance on that which, from a worldly standpoint, profited not—absenting himself from home and friends for periods of time lengthy enough to afford a modern wife good grounds for a divorce—was it not all meritorious? Heaven, he fondly believed, would more than pay his travelling expenses by a large cheque to his credit on the next world, whilst he had the pleasure of the journey in this: an ingenious method of seeing something of both! And so he donned his pilgrim weeds, and his “cockle hat and shoon”—as all good chroniclers tell us—and hied him off to Canterbury or Cologne, Rome, Jerusalem, or Timbuctoo. Mrs. Pilgrim was left at home to play “patience,” and to keep the house and bairns. She was generally a long-suffering creature, but sometimes she did get into mischief. She could not always spin yarn, so she occasionally varied her task by weaving nets—traps for the unwary who was not a pilgrim.
But if she got into mischief, she paid the penalty; my lord invariably cut off her head with his scimitar when he returned home—if she waited for that—and there was an end of the matter. There was no Divorce Court in the good old days, and a woman’s head did not count for much. But these slight casualties never diminished the ardour of the pilgrim spirit: the pilgrim increased and multiplied, and sought new shrines as well as new wives. To slightly vary the words of the poet, “Shrine after shrine his rising raptures fill. But still he sighs—for shrines are wanting still.” The law of supply and demand, however, worked as surely then as now; and as pilgrims increased to venerate, objects increased to be venerated. There is a good story told by the Arabs—it was given by Dr. Samuel Jessup in one of his contributions to “Picturesque Palestine” some years ago—and it is an apt illustration of this supply and demand principle.
“ran away with his master’s donkey.”
There was a certain Sheik-Mohammed who, once upon a time, was the keeper of a “wely” or shrine, supposed by the faithful to be the tomb of an eminent Saint, and so largely frequented by them that the Sheik grew rich from their costly offerings. His servant Ali, however, receiving but a small share of the profits, ran away to the south of the Jordan, taking with him his master’s donkey. The animal died on the way, and Ali, having covered his body with a heap of stones, sat down in despair. A passer-by enquired the cause of his sorrow, and Ali replied that he had just found the tomb of an eminent Saint; the man kissed the stones, gave Ali a present, and passed on his way.