Kitabı oku: «Marmion», sayfa 11
line 453. ave, an address to the Virgin Mary, beginning ‘Ave Maria’; creed, a profession of faith, beginning with Credo. It has been objected to this line that the creed is not an essential part of the rosary, and that ten aves and one paternoster would have been more accurate. It should, however, be noticed that both Friar John and young Selby know more of other matters than the details of religious devotion.
Stanza XXVII. line 459. ‘A Palmer, opposed to a Pilgrim, was one who made it his sole business to visit different holy shrines; travelling incessantly, and subsisting by charity: whereas the Pilgrim retired to his usual home and occupations, when he had paid his devotions at the particular spot which was the object of his pilgrimage. The Palmers seem to have been the Quaestionarii of the ancient Scottish canons 1242 and 1296. There is in the Bannatyne MS. a burlesque account of two such persons, entitled, “Simmy and his Brother.” Their accoutrements are thus ludicrously described (I discard the ancient spelling): -
“Syne shaped them up, to loup on leas,
Two tabards of the tartan;
They counted nought what their clouts were
When sew’d them on, in certain.
Syne clampit up St. Peter’s keys,
Made of an old red gartane;
St. James’s shells, on t’other side, shews
As pretty as a partane
Toe,
On Symmye and his brother.”‘-SCOTT.
With this account of the Palmer, cp. ‘Piers the Plowman,’ v. 523: -
‘He bare a burdoun ybounde with a brode liste,
In a withewyndes wise ywounden aboute.
A bolle and a bagge he bare by his syde;
An hundredth of ampulles on his hatt seten,
Signes of Synay and shelles of Galice;
And many a cruche on his cloke and keyes of Rome,
And the vernicle bifore for men shulde knowe,
And se bi his signes whom he soughte hadde.’
In connexion with this, Prof. Skeat draws attention to the romance of Sir Isumbras and to Chaucer’s Prol. line 13.
line 467. Loretto, in Ancona, Italy, is the site of a sanctuary of the Virgin, entitled Santa Casa, Holy House, which enjoys the reputation of having been the Virgin’s residence in Nazareth, and the scene of the Annunciation, &c.
Stanza XXVIII. line 483. haggard wild is a twofold adj. in the Elizabethan fashion, like ‘bitter sweet,’ ‘childish foolish,’ and other familiar examples.
line 490. Science appears to support this theory. See various examples in Sir Erasmus Wilson’s little work, ‘Healthy Skin.’ Many of the cases are within the writer’s own knowledge, and all the others are historical or otherwise well authenticated. He mentions Sir T. More the night before his execution; two cases reported by Borellus; three by Daniel Turner; one by Dr. Cassan; and in a note he recalls John Libeny, a would-be assassin of the Emperor of Austria, ‘whose hair turned snow-white in the forty-eight hours preceding his execution.’ See ‘Notes and Queries,’ 6th S. vols. vi. to ix., and 7th S. ii. Not only fear but sorrow is said to cause the hair to turn white very suddenly. Byron makes his Prisoner of Chillon say that his white hairs have not come to him
‘In a single night,
As men’s have grown from sudden fears.’
Stanza XXIX. line 506. ‘St. Regulus (Scottice, St. Rule), a monk of Patrae, in Achaia, warned by a vision, is said, A. D. 370, to have sailed westward, until he landed at St. Andrews, in Scotland, where he founded a chapel and tower. The latter is still standing; and, though we may doubt the precise date of its foundation, is certainly one of the most ancient edifices in Scotland. A cave, nearly fronting the ruinous castle of the Archbishops of St. Andrews, bears the name of this religion person. It is difficult of access; and the rock in which it is hewed is washed by the German Ocean. It is nearly round, about ten feet in diameter, and the same in height. On one side is a sort of stone altar; on the other an aperture into an inner den, where the miserable ascetic, who inhabited this dwelling, probably slept. At full tide, egress and regress are hardly practicable. As Regulus first colonised the metropolitan see of Scotland, and converted the inhabitants in the vicinity, he has some reason to complain that the ancient name of Killrule (Cella Reguli) should have been superseded, even in favour of the tutelar saint of Scotland. The reason of the change was, that St. Rule is said to have brought to Scotland the relics of Saint Andrew.’-SCOTT.
line 509. ‘St. Fillan was a Scottish saint of some reputation. Although Popery is, with us, matter of abomination, yet the common people still retain some of the superstitions connected with it. There are in Perthshire several wells and springs dedicated to St. Fillan, which are still places of pilgrimage and offerings, even among the Protestants. They are held powerful in cases of madness; and, in some of very late occurrence, lunatics have been left all night bound to the holy stone, in confidence that the saint would cure and unloose them before morning. [See various notes to the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.]’-SCOTT.
line 513. Cp. Macbeth, v. 3. 40: -
‘Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?’
and Lear, iii. 4. 12: -
‘The tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there.’
Stanza XXX. line 515. With ‘midnight draught,’ cp. Macbeth’s ‘drink,’ ii. 1. 31, and the ‘posset,’ ii. 2. 6. See notes to these passages in Clarendon Press Macbeth.
Stanza XXXI. line 534. ‘In Catholic countries, in order to reconcile the pleasures of the great with the observances of religion, it was common, when a party was bent for the chase, to celebrate mass, abridged and maimed of its rites, called a hunting-mass, the brevity of which was designed to correspond with the impatience of the audience.’-Note to ‘The Abbot,’ new edition.
line 538. Stirrup-cup, or stirrup-glass, is a parting-glass of liquor given to a guest when on horseback and ready to go.
INTRODUCTION TO CANTO SECOND
The Rev. John Marriott, A. M., to whom this introductory poem is dedicated, was tutor to George Henry, Lord Scott, son of Charles, Earl of Dalkeith, afterwards fourth Duke of Buccleuch and sixth of Queensberry. Lord Scott died early, in 1808. Marriott, while still at Oxford, proved himself a capable poet, and Scott shewed his appreciation of him by including two of his ballads at the close of the ‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.’ The concluding lines of this Introduction refer to Marriott’s ballads.
line 2. ‘Ettrick Forest, now a range of mountainous sheep-walks, was anciently reserved for the pleasure of the royal chase. Since it was disparked, the wood has been, by degrees, almost totally destroyed, although, wherever protected from the sheep, copses soon arise without any planting. When the King hunted there, he often summoned the array of the country to meet and assist his sport. Thus, in 1528, James V “made proclamation to all lords, barons, gentlemen, landward-men, and freeholders, that they should compear at Edinburgh, with a month’s victuals, to pass with the King where he pleased, to danton the thieves of Tiviotdale, Annandale, Liddisdale, and other parts of that country; and also warned all gentlemen that had good dogs to bring them, that he might hunt in the said country as he pleased: The whilk the Earl of Argyle, the Earl of Huntley, the Earl of Athole, and so all the rest of the gentlemen of the Highland, did, and brought their hounds with them in like manner, to hunt with the King, as he pleased.
‘“The second day of June the King past out of Edinburgh to the hunting, with many of the nobles and gentlemen of Scotland with him, to the number of twelve thousand men; and then past to Meggitland, and hounded and hawked all the country and bounds; that is to say, Crammat, Pappert-law, St. Mary-laws, Carlavirick, Chapel, Ewindoores, and Langhope. I heard say, he slew, in these bounds, eighteen score of harts.” PITSCOTTIE’S History of Scotland, folio edition, p. 143.
‘These huntings had, of course, a military character, and attendance upon them was part of the duty of a vassal. The act for abolishing ward or military tenures in Scotland, enumerates the services of hunting, hosting, watching and warding, as those which were in future to be illegal.’-SCOTT.
lines 5-11. Cp. Wordsworth’s ‘Thorn’: -
‘There is a Thorn-it looks so old,
In truth, you’d find it hard to say
How it could ever have been young,
It looks so old and grey.’
There is a special suggestion of antiquity in the wrinkled, lichen-covered thorn of a wintry landscape, and thus it is a fitting object to stir and sustain the poet’s tendency to note ‘chance and change’ and to lament the loss of the days that are no more. The exceeding appropriateness of this in a narrative poem dealing with departed habits and customs must be quite apparent. The thorn grows to a very great age, and many an unpretentious Scottish homestead receives a pathetic grace and dignity from the presence of its ancestral thorn-tree.
line 15. The rowan is the mountain ash. One of the most tender and haunting of Scottish songs is Lady Nairne’s ‘Oh, Rowan tree!’-
‘How fair wert thou in summer time, wi’ a’ thy clusters white,
How rich and gay thy autumn dress, wi’ berries red and bright.’
line 27. There are some notable allusions in the poets to the moonlight baying of dogs and wolves. Cp. Julius Caesar, iv. 3. 27: -
‘I had rather be a dog and bay the moon.’
See also Shield’s great English song, ‘The Wolf’: -
‘While the wolf, in nightly prowl,
Bays the moon with hideous howl!’
One of the best lines in English verse on the wolf-both skilfully onomatopoeic and suggestively picturesque-is Campbell’s, line 66 of ‘Pleasures of Hope’: -
‘The wolf’s long howl from Oonalaska’s shore.’
line 30. Cp. the movement of this line with line 3 in ‘Sang of the Outlaw Murray’: -
‘There’s hart and hynd, and dae and rae.’
line 31. ‘Grene wode’ is a phrase of the ‘Robyn Hode Ballads.’ Cp.: -
‘She set her on a gode palfray,
To grene wode anon rode she.’
line 32. The ruins of Newark Castle are above the confluence of the Ettrick and the Yarrow, on the latter river, and a few miles from Selkirk. Close by is Bowhill, mentioned below, 73. See Prof. Minto’s ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel’ (Clarendon Press), pp. 122-3. In the days of the ‘last minstrel’ it was appropriate to describe this ‘riven’ relic as ‘Newark’s stately tower.’
line 33. James II built Newark as a fortress.
line 41. The gazehound or greyhound hunts by sight, not scent. The Encyclopedic Dictionary quotes Tickell ‘On Hunting’: -
‘See’st thou the gazehound! how with glance severe
From the close herd he marks the destined deer.’
line 42. ‘Bratchet, slowhound.’-SCOTT. The older spelling is brachet (from brach or brache), as: -
‘Brachetes bayed that best, as bidden the maystarez.’
Sir Gaw. and the Green Knyght, 1603.
In contrast with the gazehound the brachet hunts by scent.
line 44. Cp. Julius Caesar, iii. I. 273, ‘Let slip the dogs of war.’
line 48. Harquebuss, arquebus, or hagbut, a heavy musket. Cp. below, V. 54.
line 49. Cp. Dryden’s ‘Alexander’s Feast,’ ‘The vocal hills reply.’
line 54. Yarrow stream is the ideal scene of Border romance. See the Border Minstrelsy, and cp. the works of Hamilton of Bangour, John Leyden, Wordsworth’s Yarrow poems, the poems of the Ettrick Shepherd, Prof. Veitch, and Principal Shairp. John Logan’s ‘Braes of Yarrow’ also deserves special mention, and many singers of Scottish song know Scott Riddell’s ‘Dowie Dens o’ Yarrow.’
line 61. Holt, an Anglo-Saxon word for wood or grove, has been a favourite with poet’s since Chaucer’s employment of it (Prol. 6): -
‘Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breethe
Enspired hath in every holte and heethe
The tendre croppes.’
See Dr. Morris’s Glossary to Chaucer’s Prologue, &c. (Clarendon Press).
line 68. Cp. Wordsworth’s two Matthew poems, ‘The Two April Mornings’ and ‘The Fountain’; also Matthew Arnold’s ‘Thyrsis’-
‘Too rare, too rare grow now my visits here!
But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick;
And with the country-folk acquaintance made
By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick,
Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay’d.’
line 82. Janet in the ballad of ‘The Young Tamlane’ in the Border Minstrelsy. The dissertation Scott prefixed to this ballad is most interesting and valuable.
line 84. See above, note on Rev. J. Marriott.
line 85. Scott was sheriff-substitute of Selkirkshire. As the law requires residence within the limits of the sheriffdom, Scott dwelt at Ashestiel at least four months of every year. Prof. Veitch, in his descriptive poem ‘The Tweed,’ writes warmly on Ashestiel, as Scott’s residence in his happiest time: -
‘Sweet Ashestiel! that peers ‘mid woody braes,
And lists the ripple of Glenkinnon’s rill-
Fair girdled by Tweed’s ampler gleaming wave-
His well loved home of early happy days,
Ere noon of Fame, and ere dark Ruin’s eve,
When life lay unrevealed, with hopeful thrill
Of all that might be in the reach of powers
Whose very flow was a continued joy-
Strong-rushing as the dawn, and fresh and fair
In outcome as that morning of the world,
Which gilded all his kindled fancy’s dream!’
line 88. Harriet, Countess of Dalkeith, afterwards Duchess of Buccleuch. A suggestion of hers led to the composition of the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel.’ See Prof. Minto’s Introduction to Clarendon Press edition of the poem, p. 8.
lines 90-93. ‘These lines were not in the original MS.’-LOCKHART.
line 106. ‘The late Alexander Pringle, Esq., of Whytbank-whose beautiful seat of the Yair stands on the Tweed, about two miles below Ashestiel.’-LOCKHART.
line 108. ‘The sons of Mr. Pringle of Whytbank.’-LOCKHART.
line 113. Cp. VI. 611, below.
line 115. ‘There is, on a high mountainous ridge above the farm of Ashestiel, a fosse called Wallace’s Trench.’-SCOTT.
line 124. Cp. Gray’s ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,’ especially lines 6l-2: -
‘These shall the fury Passions tear,
The vultures of the mind.’
lines 126-33. Cp. Wordsworth variously, particularly in the Matthew poems, the Ode on Intimations of Immortality, and Tintern Abbey, especially in its last twenty-five lines: -
‘Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk,’ &c.
line 143. Cp. I Kings xix. 12.
lines 147-73. ‘This beautiful sheet of water forms the reservoir from which the Yarrow takes its source. It is connected with a smaller lake, called the Loch of the Lowes, and surrounded by mountains. In the winter, it is still frequented by flights of wild swans; hence my friend Mr. Wordsworth’s lines: -
“The swan on sweet St. Mary’s lake
Floats double, swan and shadow.”
Near the lower extremity of the lake are the ruins of Dryhope tower, the birth-place of Mary Scott, daughter of Philip Scott of Dryhope, and famous by the traditional name of the Flower of Yarrow. She was married to Walter Scott of Harden, no less renowned for his depredations than his bride for her beauty. Her romantic appellation was, in latter days, with equal justice, conferred on Miss Mary Lilias Scott, the last of the elder branch of the Harden family. The author well remembers the talent and spirit of the latter Flower of Yarrow, though age had then injured the charms which procured her the name. The words usually sung to the air of “Tweedside,” beginning “What beauties does Flora disclose,” were composed in her honour.’-SCOTT.
Quoting from memory, Scott gives ‘sweet’ for still in Wordsworth’s lines. Mr. Aubrey de Vere, in ‘Essays Chiefly on Poetry,’ ii. 277, reports an interview with Wordsworth, in which the poet, referring to St. Mary’s Lake, says: ‘The scene when I saw it, with its still and dim lake, under the dusky hills, was one of utter loneliness; there was one swan, and one only, stemming the water, and the pathetic loneliness of the region gave importance to the one companion of that swan-its own white image in the water.’ For a criticism, deeply sympathetic and appreciative, of Scott’s description of St. Mary’s Loch in calm, see Prof. Veitch’s ‘Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry,’ ii. 196. The scene remains very much what it was in Scott’s time, ‘notwithstanding that the hand of the Philistine,’ says Prof. Veitch, ‘has set along the north shore of St. Mary’s, as far as his power extended, a strip of planting.’
line 177. ‘The chapel of St. Mary of the Lowes {de lacubus} was situated on the eastern side of the lake, to which it gives name. It was injured by the clan of Scott, in a feud with the Cranstouns; but continued to be a place of worship during the seventeenth century. The vestiges of the building can now scarcely be traced; but the burial-ground is still used as a cemetery. A funeral, in a spot so very retired, has an uncommonly striking effect. The vestiges of the chaplain’s house are yet visible. Being in a high situation, it commanded a full view of the lake, with the opposite mountain of Bourhope, belonging, with the lake itself, to Lord Napier. On the left hand is the tower of Dryhope, mentioned in a preceding note.’-SCOTT.
line 187. See ‘Il Penseroso,’ line 167.
line 197. Cp. Thomson’s ‘Winter,’ line 66: -
‘Along the woods, along the moorish fens,
Sighs the sad genius of the coming storm;
And up among the loose disjointed cliffs,
And fractured mountains wild, the brawling brook
And cave, presageful, send a hollow moan,
Resounding long in listening fancy’s ear.’
line 204. ‘At one corner of the burial-ground of the demolished chapel, but without its precincts, is a small mound, called Binrams Corse, where tradition deposits the remains of a necromantic priest, the former tenant of the chaplainry. His story much resembles that of Ambrosio in “The Monk,” and has been made the theme of a ballad by my friend Mr. James Hogg, more poetically designed the Ettrick Shepherd. To his volume, entitled “The Mountain Bard,” which contains this, and many other legendary stories and ballads of great merit, I refer the curious reader.’-SCOTT.
line 239. ‘Loch-skene is a mountain lake, of considerable size, at the head of the Moffat-water. The character of the scenery is uncommonly savage; and the earn, or Scottish eagle, has, for many ages, built its nest yearly upon an islet in the lake. Loch-skene discharges itself into a brook, which, after a short and precipitate course, falls from a cataract of immense height and gloomy grandeur, called, from its appearance, the “Grey Mare’s Tail.” The “Giant’s Grave,” afterwards mentioned, is a sort of trench, which bears that name, a little way from the foot of the cataract. It has the appearance of a battery designed to command the pass.’-SCOTT.
Cp. ‘Loch Skene,’ a descriptive and meditative poem by Thomas Tod Stoddart, well known as poet and angler on the Borders during the third quarter of the nineteenth century: -
‘Like a pillar of Parian stone,
That in some old temple shone,
Or a slender shaft of living star,
Gleams that foam-fall from afar;
But the column is melted down below
Into a gulf of seething snow,
And the stream steals away from its whirl of hoar,
As bright and as lovely as before.’
CANTO SECOND
lines 1-6. The earlier editions have a period at the end of line 5, and neither Scott himself nor Lockhart changed that punctuation. But, undoubtedly, the first sentence ends with line 11, ‘roll’d’ in the second line being a part, and not a finite verb. Mr. Rolfe is the first to punctuate the passage thus.
line 9. ‘The Abbey of Whitby, in the Archdeaconry of Cleaveland, on the coast of Yorkshire, was founded A. D. 657, in consequence of a vow of Oswy, King of Northumberland. It contained both monks and nuns of the Benedictine order; but, contrary to what was usual in such establishments, the abbess was superior to the abbot. The monastery was afterwards mined by the Danes, and rebuilded by William Percy, in the reign of the Conqueror. There were no nuns there in Henry the Eighth’s time, nor long before it. The ruins of Whitby Abbey are very magnificent.’-SCOTT.
line 10. ‘Lindisfarne, an isle on the coast of Northumberland, was called Holy Island, from the sanctity of its ancient monastery, and from its having been the episcopal seat of the see of Durham during the early ages of British Christianity. A succession of holy men held that office: but their merits were swallowed up in the superior fame of St. Cuthbert, who was sixth bishop of Durham, and who bestowed the name of his “patrimony” upon the extensive property of the see. The ruins of the monastery upon Holy Island betoken great antiquity. The arches are, in general, strictly Saxon, and the pillars which support them, short, strong, and massy. In some places, however, there are pointed windows, which indicate that the building has been repaired at a period long subsequent to the original foundation. The exterior ornaments of the building, being of a light sandy stone, have been wasted, as described in the text. Lindisfarne is not properly an island, but rather, as the Venerable Bede has termed it, a semi-isle; for, although surrounded by the sea at full tide, the ebb leaves the sands dry between it and the opposite coast of Northumberland, from which it is about three miles distant.’-SCOTT.
The monastery, of which the present ruins remain, was built, between 1093 and 1120, by Benedictine monks under the direction of William Carileph, Bishop of Durham. There were sixteen bishops in Holy Island between St. Aidan (635 A. D.) and Eardulph (875 A. D.). The Christians were dispersed after the violent inroad of the Danes in 868, and for two centuries Lindisfarne suffered apparent relapse. Lindisfarne (Gael. farne, a retreat) signifies ‘a place of retreat by the brook Lindis.’ The name Holy Island was given by Carileph’s monks, to commemorate, they said, ‘the sacred blood which had been shed by the Danes.’ See Raine’s ‘History of North Durham,’ F. R. Wilson’s ‘Churches of Lindisfarne,’ and Mr. Keeling’s ‘Lindisfarne, or Holy Island: its History and Associations.’
line 17. Cp. Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner’: -
‘The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The farrow followed free.’
line 20. For Saint Hilda, see below, note on line 244.
Stanza II. line 33. sea-dog, the seal.
line 36. still. Cp. above, I. 430.
line 44. A Novice is one under probation for a term extending to at least a year, and it may extend to two or three years, after which vows are either taken or declined.
Stanza IV. line 70. Benedictine school. St. Benedict founded his order-sometimes, because of their dark garb, called Black Friars-in the beginning of the sixth century. Benedict of Aniana, in the eighth century, reformed the discipline of the order.
line 74. Cp. Chaucer’s Prioress in the Prologue: -
‘And sikerly sche was of gret disport,
And ful plesaunt, and amyable of port.’
Stanza V. line 90. Cp. Spenser’s Una, ‘Faery Queene,’ I. iv: -
‘A lovely Ladie rode him faire beside.
* * *
As one that inly mournd, so was she sad,
And heavie sat upon her palfrey slow.’
Stanza VI. With this ‘brown study,’ cp. Wordsworth’s ‘Reverie of Poor Susan.’
Stanza. VII. line 114. Reference to the lion of ‘Faery Queene,’ I. iii: -
‘Forsaken Truth long seekes her love,
And makes the Lyon mylde.’
line 124. bowl and knife. Poisoning and stabbing.
Stanza VIII. Monk-Wearmouth. A monastery, founded here in 674 A. D., was destroyed by the Danes in the ninth century, and restored after the Norman Conquest. For Tynemouth, see below, 371, Seaton-Delaval, the seat of the Delavals, who by marriage came into possession of Ford Castle. Widderington. It was a ‘squyar off Northombarlonde, Ric. Wytharynton,’ that showed notable valour and persistent endurance at Chevy Chase: -
‘For Wetharryngton my harte was wo,
That ever he slayne shulde be;
For when both his leggis wear hewyne in te,
He knyled and fought on hys kne.’
Butler, fully appreciating this doughty champion, uses him in a descriptive illustration, ‘Hudibras,’ I. iii. 95: -
‘As Widdrington, in doleful dumps,
Is said to fight upon his stumps.’
Widderington Castle, with the exception of one tower, was destroyed by fire. Warkworth Castle is about a mile from the mouth of the Alne, and is the seat of the Duke of Northumberland. Bamborough, the finest specimen of a feudal castle in the north of England, is said to have been founded by King Ida about the middle of the sixth century. Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, purchased the Bamborough estates between 1709 and 1720, and left them for charitable purposes. This charity maintains, inter alia, a national school in the village of Bamborough, and an officer to fire a cannon from the dangerous rocks every fifteen minutes in foggy weather, besides providing for the education of thirty girls within the castle walls.
Stanza IX. line 164. battled. See above, I. 4.
Stanza X. line 173. Pointed or Gothic architecture came in towards the end of the twelfth century.
Stanza XII. line 215. Suppose we = Let us suppose. This is an Elizabethanism. Cp. Macbeth, i. I. 10: -
‘Hover through the fog and filthy air,’
where hover = hover we.
Stanza XIII. line 234. Scott quotes from ‘A True Account,’ circulated at Whitby, concerning the consequences of a boar-hunt on Eskdale-side, belonging to the Abbot of Whitby. The boar, being hard pressed, made for a hermitage and died just within the door. Coming up, the three leaders-William de Bruce, Lord of Uglebarnby, Ralph de Percy, Lord of Smeaton, and a freeholder named Allatson-in their disappointment and wrath set upon the hermit, whom they fatally wounded. When the abbot afterwards came to the dying hermit, and told him his assailants would suffer extreme penalty for their ruthless conduct, the hermit asked the gentlemen to be sent for, and said he would pardon them on certain conditions. ‘The gentlemen being present bade him save their lives. – Then said the hermit, “You and yours shall hold your lands of the Abbot of Whitby, and his successors, in this manner: That, upon Ascension-day, you, or some of you, shall come to the wood of the Stray-heads, which is in Eskdale-side, the same day at sun-rising, and there shall the abbot’s officer blow his horn, to the intent that you may know where to find him; and he shall deliver unto you, William de Bruce, ten stakes, eleven strout stowers, and eleven yethers, to be cut by you, or some of you, with a knife of one penny price: and you, Ralph de Percy, shall take twenty-one of each sort, to be cut in the same manner; and you, Allatson, shall take nine of each sort, to be cut as aforesaid, and to be taken on your backs and carried to the town of Whitby, and to be there before nine of the clock the same day before mentioned. At the same hour of nine of the clock, if it be full sea, your labour and service shall cease; and if low water, each of you shall set your stakes to the brim, each stake one yard from the other, and so yether them on each side with your yethers; and so stake on each side with your strout stowers, that they may stand three tides, without removing by the force thereof. Each of you shall do, make, and execute the said service, at that very hour, every year, except it be fall sea at that hour; but when it shall so fall out, this service shall cease. You shall faithfully do this, in remembrance that you did most cruelly slay me; and that you may the better call to God for mercy, repent unfeignedly of your sins, and do good works. The officer of Eskdale-side shall blow, Out on you! Out on you! Out on you! for this heinous crime. If you, or your successors, shall refuse this service, so long as it shall not be full sea at the aforesaid hour, you or yours shall forfeit your lands to the Abbot of Whitby, or his successors. This I entreat, and earnestly beg, that you may have lives and goods preserved for this service: and I request of you to promise, by your parts in Heaven, that it shall be done by you and your successors, as is aforesaid requested; and I will confirm it by the faith of an honest man.”-Then the hermit said, “My soul longeth for the Lord: and I do as freely forgive these men my death, as Christ forgave the thieves on the cross.” And, in the presence of the abbot and the rest, he said moreover these words: “In manus tuos, Domine, commendo spiritum meum, a vinculis enim mortis redemisti me, Domine veritatis, Amen.”-So he yielded up the ghost the eighth day of December, anno Domini 1159, whose soul God have mercy upon. Amen.
‘“This service,” it is added, “still continues to be performed with the prescribed ceremonies, though not by the proprietors in person. Part of the lands charged therewith are now held by a gentleman of the name of Herbert.”‘-SCOTT.
line 244. Edelfled ‘was the daughter of King Oswy, who, in gratitude to Heaven for the great victory which he won in 655, against Penda, the pagan King of Mercia, dedicated Edelfleda, then but a year old, to the service of God, in the monastery of Whitby, of which St. Hilda was then abbess. She afterwards adorned the place of her education with great magnificence.’-SCOTT.
line 251. ‘These two miracles are much insisted on by all ancient writers who have occasion to mention either Whitby or St. Hilda. The relics of the snakes, which infested the precincts of the convent, and were at the abbess’s prayer not only beheaded but petrified, are still found about the rocks, and are termed by Protestant fossilists, Ammonitae.
‘The other miracle is thus mentioned by Camden: “It is also ascribed to the power of her sanctity, that these wild geese, which, in the winter, fly in great flocks to the lakes and rivers unfrozen in the southern parts, to the great amazement of every one, fall down suddenly upon the ground, when they are in their flight over certain ‘neighbouring fields hereabouts: a relation I should not have made, if I had not received it from several credible men. But those who are less inclined to heed superstition, attribute it to some occult quality in the ground, and to somewhat of antipathy between it and the geese, such as they say is betwixt wolves and scyllaroots: for that such hidden tendencies and aversions, as we call sympathies and antipathies, are implanted in many things by provident Nature for the preservation of them, is a thing so evident, that everybody grants it.” Mr. Chariton, in his History of Whitby, points out the true origin of the fable, from the number of sea-gulls that, when flying from a storm, often alight near Whitby; and from the woodcocks, and other birds of passage, who do the same upon their arrival on shore, after a long flight.’-SCOTT.
