[THE BRIDAL OF TRIERMAIN.]
A LEGEND OF THE VALE OF ST. JOHN.
IN travelling from Ambleside to Keswick, after passing Wythburn Chapel, the high road winds by the base of Helvellyn and the margin of the Lake of Thirlmere, or Leatheswater, which latter it afterwards leaves by a very steep ascent, exhibiting, in all their grandeur, the Fells of Borrowdale. Arrived at the top of this ascent, a very exquisite landscape presents itself below, extending over the Vale of Legberthwaite; or, more euphoniously and modernly, the Vale of St. John's.
In the midst of this valley is a fantastic pile of rocks, which, from their resemblance to the walls and towers of a dilapidated and time-worn fortress, are known as the Castle Rock. Hutchinson, in his Excursion to the Lakes, describes this singular scene with much poetic feeling. "We now gained the Vale of St. John's," he says, "a very narrow dell, hemmed in by mountains, through which a small brook makes many meanderings, washing little enclosures of grass-ground, which stretch up the rising of the hills. In the widest part of the dale you are struck with the appearance of an ancient ruined castle, which seems to stand upon the summit of a little mount, the mountains around forming an amphitheatre. This massive bulwark shows a front of various towers, and makes an awful, rude, and Gothic appearance, with its lofty turrets and ragged battlements; we traced the galleries, the bending arches, the buttresses. The greatest antiquity stands characterised in its architecture; the inhabitants near it assert it is an antediluvian structure.
"The traveller's curiosity is roused, and he prepares to make a nearer approach, when that curiosity is put upon the rack by his being assured that, if he advances, certain genii who govern the place, by virtue of their supernatural art and necromancy, will strip it of all its beauties, and, by enchantment, transform the magic walls. The vale seems adapted for the habitation of such beings; its gloomy recesses and retirements look like haunts of evil spirits. There was no delusion in the report; we were soon convinced of its truth; for this piece of antiquity, so venerable and noble in its aspect, as we drew near changed its figure and proved no other than a shaken massive pile of rocks, which stand in the midst of this little vale, disunited from the adjoining mountains, and have so much the real form and resemblance of a castle, that they bear the name of the Castle Rocks of St. John."
"The inhabitants to this day," says Mackay, "believe these rocks to be an antediluvian structure, and assert that the traveller, whose curiosity is aroused, will find it impossible to approach them, as the guardian genii of the place transform the walls and battlements into naked rocks when any one draws near." Nothing, in the whole range of mythological fable, could be more beautiful than this popular superstition, which ascribes the disappearance of "the castle," on a near approach, to supernatural agency. Frigid philosophy would say, these fragments of rock, when viewed from afar, bear strong resemblance to an old fortress; but on approaching nearer the illusion vanishes, and they are found to be a shapeless mass of stone. Poetry clothes this fact in beautiful imagery; she warns the intruder to survey the structure at a distance; for should he have the temerity to advance upon it, the incensed genii of the place will, by spells "of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion," transform its fair proportions into a mis-shapen pile of rocks. This pleasing fiction emanated from the same poetical spirit that wrought, in the elder days of Greece, the splendid fable of Aurora, in her saffron-coloured robe, opening the gates of the morning to the chariot of the sun.
The genius of Sir Walter Scott has rendered the beautiful Vale of St. John classic ground, by having selected it for the principal scene of his "Bridal of Triermain." This is purely a tale of chivalry of Arthur's days, when midnight fairies danced the maze; and it is at the fantastic Castle Rock that Sir Walter represents King Arthur's amorous dalliance with its fairy inhabitants in their halls of enchantment, when he was on his way to Carlisle. Our limits will not admit the whole of "The Bridal of Triermain." We give, however, such portions as will sufficiently connect the thread of the narrative, in which it will be observed that Sir Roland de Vaux, the Baron of Tremain, is introduced. This branch of Vaux, with its collateral alliances, is now represented by the family of Braddyl, of Conishead Priory, near Furness Abbey.
THE BRIDAL OF TRIERMAIN.
Where is the Maiden of mortal strain,
That may match with the Baron of Trierman?
She must be lovely, and constant, and kind,
Holy and pure, and humble of mind,
Blithe of cheer and gentle of mood,
Courteous, and generous, and noble of blood—
Lovely as the sun's first ray
When it breaks the clouds of an April day;
Constant and true as the widow'd dove,
Kind as a minstrel that sings of love;
Pure as the fountain in rocky cave,
Where never sunbeam kissed the wave;
Humble as maiden that loves in vain,
Holy as hermit's vesper strain;
Gentle as breeze that but whispers and dies,
Yet blithe as the light leaves that dance in its sighs;
Courteous as monarch the morn he is crowned,
Generous as spring-dews that bless the glad ground;
Noble her blood as the currents that met
In the veins of the noblest Plantagenet;
Such must her form be, her mood, and her strain,
That shall match with Sir Roland of Triermain.
Sir Roland de Vaux he hath laid him to sleep,
His blood it was fevered, his breathing was deep.
He had been pricking against the Scot,
The foray was long and the skirmish hot;
His dinted helm and his buckler's plight
Bore token of a stubborn fight.