From Gretna Green to Land's End Part 6

Two of them sleep in the old Church of St. Michael, under a bra.s.s that states in a stanza ending as abruptly as human life itself:

"Here lyeth the body of Perkin a Legh That for King Richard the death did die, Betray'd for righteousness; And the bones of Sir Peers his sone, That with King Henrie the fift did wonne In Paris."

I have read that Sir Perkin was knighted at Crecy and Sir Peers at Agincourt, and that they were kinsmen of Sir Uryan Legh of Adlington, the Spanish Lady's Love.

"Will ye hear a Spanish Lady, How she wooed an Englishman?

Garments gay and rich as may be, Decked with jewels, she had on."

This Sir Uryan was knighted by Ess.e.x at the siege of Calais, and it was then, apparently, that the poor Spanish lady, beautiful and of high degree, lost her heart. The Elizabethan ballad, whose wood-cut shows a voluminously skirted dame entreating an offish personage in a severely starched ruff, tells us that she had fallen, by some chance of war, into his custody.

"As his prisoner there he kept her; In his hands her life did lie; Cupid's bands did tie them faster By the liking of an eye.

"But at last there came commandment For to set all ladies free, With their jewels still adorned, None to do them injury."

But freedom was no boon to her.

"Gallant Captain, take some pity On a woman in distress; Leave me not within this city For to die in heaviness."

In vain he urges that he is the enemy of her country.

"Blessed be the time and season That you came on Spanish ground; If you may our foes be termed, Gentle foes we have you found."

He suggests that she would have no difficulty in getting a Spanish husband, but she replies that Spaniards are "fraught with jealousy."

"Still to serve thee day and night My mind is prest; The wife of every Englishman Is counted blest."

He objects that it is not the custom of English soldiers to be attended by women.

"I will quickly change myself, If it be so, And like a page will follow thee Where e'er thou go."

But still he makes excuse:

"I have neither gold nor silver To maintain thee in this case, And to travel is great charges, As you know, in every place."

She puts her fortune at his disposal, but he has. .h.i.t upon a new deterrent:

"On the seas are many dangers, Many storms do there arise, Which will be to ladies dreadful And force tears from watry eyes."

She implies that she would gladly die, even of seasickness, for his sake, and at that the truth breaks forth:

"Courteous lady, leave this folly; Here comes all that breeds this strife:-- I in England have already A sweet woman to my wife.

"I will not falsify my vow For gold nor gain, Nor yet for all the fairest dames That live in Spain."

Her reply, with its high Spanish breeding, puts his blunt English manners to shame:

"Oh how happy is that woman That enjoys so true a friend.

Many happy days G.o.d lend her!

Of my suit I'll make an end.

"Commend me to that gallant lady; Bear to her this chain of gold; With these bracelets for a token; Grieving that I was so bold.

"I will spend my days in prayer, Love and all her laws defy; In a nunnery I will shroud me, Far from any company.

"But e'er my prayer have an end, Be sure of this,-- To pray for thee and for thy Love I will not miss.

"Joy and true prosperity Remain with thee!"

"The like fall unto thy share, Most fair lady!"

This ballad, which Shakespeare might have bought for a penny "at the Looking-gla.s.s on London bridge" and sung to the tune of "Flying Fame,"

is still a favourite throughout Cheshire.

But we are driving from Macclesfield up into the Cheshire highlands,--velvety hills, green to the top, all smoothed off as trim as sofa-cushions and adorned with ruffles of foliage. Nature is a neat housekeeper even here in the wildest corner of Cheshire. What was once savage forest is now tranquil grazing-ground, and the walls that cross the slopes and summits, dividing the sward into separate cattle-ranges, run in tidy parallels. But most of the county is flat,--so flat that it all can be viewed from Alderly Edge, a cliff six hundred and fifty feet high, a little to the west of Macclesfield.

Along the Mersey, the Lancastrian boundary, rise the cl.u.s.tered chimneys of Cheshire's cotton towns. Yet cotton is not the only industry of this northern strip. The neighbourhood of Manchester makes market-gardening profitable; potatoes and onions flourish amain; and Altrincham, a pleasant little place where many of the Manchester mill-owners reside, proudly contributes to their felicity its famous specialty of the "green-top carrot."

I suppose these cotton-lords only smile disdainfully at the tales of the old wizard who keeps nine hundred and ninety-nine armed steeds in the deep caverns of Alderly Edge, waiting for war. What is his wizardry to theirs! But I wonder if any of them are earning a sweeter epitaph than the one which may be read in Alderly Church to a rector, Edward Shipton, M.A.,--it might grieve his gentle ghost, should we omit those letters,--who died in 1630:

"Here lies below an aged sheep-heard clad in heavy clay, Those stubborne weedes which come not of unto the judgment day.

Whilom hee led and fed with welcome paine his careful sheepe, He did not feare the mountaines' highest tops, nor vallies deep, That he might save from hurte his fearful flocks, which were his care.

To make them strong he lost his strengthe, and fasted for their fare.

How they might feed, and grow, and prosper, he did daily tell, Then having shew'd them how to feed, he bade them all farewell."

Good men have come out of Cheshire. In the Rectory House of Alderly was born Dean Stanley. Bishop Heber is a Cheshire worthy, as are the old chroniclers, Higden and Holinshead. Even the phraseology of Cheshire wills I have fancied peculiarly devout, as, for instance, Matthew Legh's, in 1512:

"_Imprimis_, I bequeath my sole to almightie G.o.d and to his blessed moder seynt Mary, and to all the selestiall company in heaven, and my bodi to be buried in the Chappell of Seynt Anne within the parish Church of Handley or there where it shall please almightie G.o.d to call for me at his pleasure."

The men of Cheshire have on occasion, and conspicuously during the Civil War, approved themselves for valour. When the royalist garrison of Beeston Castle, the "other hill" of this pancake county, was at last forced to accept terms from the Roundhead troops, there was "neither meat nor drink found in the Castle, but only a piece of a turkey pie, two biscuits, and a live pea-c.o.c.k and pea-hen."

Yet Cheshire is famed rather for the virtues of peace,--for thrift, civility, and neighbourly kindness. An early-seventeenth-century "Treatise on Cheshire" says: "The people of the country are of a nature very gentle and courteous, ready to help and further one another; and that is to be seen chiefly in the harvest time, how careful are they of one another." A few years later, in 1616, a native of the county wrote of it not only as producing "the best cheese of all Europe," but as blessed with women "very friendly and loving, painful in labour, and in all other kind of housewifery expert."

The accepted chronicler of Cheshire womanhood, however, is Mrs.

Gaskell. As we lingered along the pleasant streets of Knutsford--her Cranford--and went in and out of the quiet shops, we blessed her memory for having so delectably distilled the lavender essences of that sweet, old-fashioned village life. She had known it and loved it all the way from her motherless babyhood, and she wrote of it with a tender humour that has endeared it to thousands. Our first Knutsford pilgrimage was to her grave beside the old Unitarian chapel, for both her father and her husband were clergymen of that faith. We had seen in Manchester--her Drumble--the chapel where Mr. Gaskell ministered, and had read her "Mary Barton," that sympathetic presentation of the life of Lancashire mill-hands which awoke the anger and perhaps the consciences of the manufacturers. She served the poor of Manchester not with her pen alone, but when our war brought in its train the cotton famine of 1862-63, she came effectively to their relief by organizing sewing-rooms and other means of employment for women.

Husband and wife, fulfilled of good works, now rest together in that sloping little churchyard which we trod with reverent feet.

It must be confessed that Knutsford is becoming villaized. It has even suffered the erection, in memory of Mrs. Gaskell, of an ornate Italian tower, which Deborah certainly would not have approved. It was not May-day, so we could not witness the Knutsford revival of the May-queen court, and we looked in vain for the Knutsford wedding sand.

On those very rare occasions when a bridegroom can be found, the kith and kin of the happy pair make a welcoming path for Hymen by trickling coloured sands through a funnel so as to form a pavement decoration of hearts, doves, true-love knots, and the like, each artist in front of his own house. But no minor disappointments could break the Cranford spell, which still held us as we drove out into the surrounding country. How sunny and serene! With what awe we pa.s.sed the timbered mansions of the county families! What green hedgerows! What golden harvest-fields! What pink roses clambering to the cottage-thatch! What gardens, and what pastures on pastures, grazed over by sleek kine that called to mind Miss Matty's whimsical old lover and his "six and twenty cows, named after the different letters of the alphabet."

Here in central Cheshire we ought not to have been intent on scenery, but on salt, for of this, as of silk, our smiling county has almost a monopoly. And only too soon the blue day was darkened by the smoke of Northwich, the princ.i.p.al seat of the salt trade and quite the dirtiest town in the county. The valley of the Weaver, the river that crosses Cheshire about midway between its northern boundary, the Mersey, and its southern, the Dee, has the richest salt-mines and brine-springs of England. The salt towns, whose chimneys belch blackness at intervals along the course of the stream, are seen at their best, or worst, in Northwich, though Nantwich, an ancient centre of this industry, has charming traditions of the village hymn that used to be sung about the flower-crowned pits, especially the "Old Brine," on Ascension Day, in thanksgiving for the salt. We tried to take due note of railways and ca.n.a.ls, docks and foundries, and the queer unevenness of the soil caused by the mining and the pumping up of brine,--such an uncertain site that the houses, though bolted, screwed, and b.u.t.tressed, continually sag and sink. The mines themselves are on the outskirts of the town, and we looked at the ugly sheds and scaffoldings above ground, and did our best to imagine the strange white galleries and gleaming pillars below. There was no time to go down because it had taken our leisurely Knutsford coachman till ten o'clock to get his "bit of breakfast." Dear Miss Matty would have been gentle with him, and so we strove not to glower at his unbending back, but to gather in what we could, as he drove us to the train, of the beauties by the way.

We left the salt to the care of the Weaver, which was duly bearing it on, white blocks, ruddy lumps, rock-salt and table-salt, to Runcorn and to Liverpool. We put the brine-pits out of mind, and enjoyed the lovely fresh-water meres, social resorts of the most amiable of ducks and the most dignified of geese, which dot the Cheshire landscape. We had visited Rostherne Mere on our way out, and caught a glint from the fallen church-bell which a Mermaid rings over those dim waters every Easter dawn. We paused at Lower Peover for a glimpse of its black-and-white timbered church, deeply impressive and almost unique as an architectural survival. Among its curiosities we saw a chest hollowed out of solid oak with an inscription to the effect that any girl who can raise the lid with one arm is strong enough to be a Cheshire farmer's wife. St.u.r.dy arms they needs must have, these Cheshire women, for the valley of the Weaver, like the more southerly Vale of Dee, is largely given up to dairy farms and to the production of cheeses. A popular song betrays the county pride: