Читать книгу Waverley; Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since - Walter Scott - Страница 34

Who, noteless as the race from which he sprung,

Saved others' names, but left his own unsung.

The sweetness of her voice, and the simple beauty of her music, gave all the advantage which the minstrel could have desired, and which his poetry so much wanted. I almost doubt if it can be read with patience, destitute of these advantages; although I conjecture the following copy to have been somewhat corrected by Waverley, to suit the taste of those who might not relish pure antiquity:—

ST. SWITHIN'S CHAIR.

On Hallow-Mass Eve, ere ye boune ye to rest,

Ever beware that your couch be blessed;

Sign it with cross, and sain it with bead,

Sing the Ave, and say the Creed.

For on Hallow-Mass Eve the Night-Hag will ride,

And all her nine-fold sweeping on by her side,

Whether the wind sing lowly or loud,

Sailing through moonshine or swathed in the cloud.

The Lady she sat in St. Swithin's Chair,

The dew of the night has damped her hair:

Her cheek was pale—but resolved and high

Was the word of her lip and the glance of her eye.

She muttered the spell of Swithin bold,

When his naked foot traced the midnight wold,

When he stopped the Hag as she rode the night,

And bade her descend, and her promise plight.

He that dare sit on St. Swithin's Chair,

When the Night-Hag wings the troubled air,

Questions three, when he speaks the spell,

He may ask, and she must tell.

The Baron has been with King Robert his liege,

These three long years in battle and siege;

News are there none of his weal or his woe,

And fain the Lady his fate would know.

She shudders and stops as the charm she speaks;—

Is it the moody owl that shrieks?

Or is it that sound, betwixt laughter and scream,

The voice of the Demon who haunts the stream?

The moan of the wind sunk silent and low,

And the roaring torrent ceased to flow;

The calm was more dreadful than raging storm,

Then the cold grey mist brought the ghastly form!

… …

'I am sorry to disappoint the company, especially Captain Waverley, who listens with such laudable gravity; it is but a fragment, although I think there are other verses, describing the return of the Baron from the wars, and how the lady was found "clay-cold upon the grounsill ledge."'

'It is one of those figments,' observed Mr. Bradwardine, 'with which the early history of distinguished families was deformed in the times of superstition; as that of Rome, and other ancient nations, had their prodigies, sir, the which you may read in ancient histories, or in the little work compiled by Julius Obsequens, and inscribed by the learned Scheffer, the editor, to his patron, Benedictus Skytte, Baron of Dudershoff.'

'My father has a strange defiance of the marvellous, Captain Waverley,' observed Rose, 'and once stood firm when a whole synod of Presbyterian divines were put to the rout by a sudden apparition of the foul fiend.'

Waverley looked as if desirous to hear more.

Must I tell my story as well as sing my song?—Well.—Once upon a time there lived an old woman, called Janet Gellatley, who was suspected to be a witch, on the infallible grounds that she was very old, very ugly, very poor, and had two sons, one of whom was a poet, and the other a fool, which visitation, all the neighbourhood agreed, had come upon her for the sin of witchcraft. And she was imprisoned for a week in the steeple of the parish church, and sparingly supplied with food, and not permitted to sleep, until she herself became as much persuaded of her being a witch as her accusers; and in this lucid and happy state of mind was brought forth to make a clean breast, that is, to make open confession of her sorceries, before all the Whig gentry and ministers in the vicinity, who were no conjurers themselves. My father went to see fair play between the witch and the clergy; for the witch had been born on his estate. 'And while the witch was confessing that the Enemy appeared, and made his addresses to her as a handsome black man—which, if you could have seen poor old blear-eyed Janet, reflected little honour on Apollyon's taste—and while the auditors listened with astonished ears, and the clerk recorded with a trembling hand, she, all of a sudden, changed the low mumbling tone with which she spoke into a shrill yell, and exclaimed, "Look to yourselves! look to yourselves! I see the Evil One sitting in the midst of ye." The surprise was general, and terror and flight its immediate consequences. Happy were those who were next the door; and many were the disasters that befell hats, bands, cuffs, and wigs, before they could get out of the church, where they left the obstinate prelatist to settle matters with the witch and her admirer, at his own peril or pleasure.'

'RISU SOLVUNTUR TABULAE,' said the Baron: 'when they recovered their panic trepidation, they were too much ashamed to bring any wakening of the process against Janet Gellatley.' [The story last told was said to have happened in the south of Scotland; but—CEDANT ARMA TOGAE—and let the gown have its dues. It was an old clergyman, who had wisdom and firmness enough to resist the panic which seized his brethren, who was the means of rescuing a poor insane creature from the cruel fate which would otherwise have overtaken her. The accounts of the trials for witchcraft form one of the most deplorable chapters in Scottish story.]

This anecdote led to a long discussion of

All those idle thoughts and fantasies,

Devices, dreams, opinions unsound,

Shows, visions, soothsays, and prophecies,

And all that feigned is, as leasings, tales, and lies.

With such conversation, and the romantic legends which it produced, closed our hero's second evening in the house of Tully-Veolan.