Tales and Legends of the English Lakes Part 23

Not far from that fair sight whereon The pleasure-house is reared, As story says, in antique days, A stern-brow'd house appeared; Foil to a jewel rich in light There set, and guarded well; Cage for a bird of plumage bright, Sweet voiced, nor wishing for a flight Beyond her native dell.

To win this bright bird from her cage, To make this gem their own, Came barons bold, with store of gold, And knights of high renown; But one she prized, and only one; Sir Eglamore was he; Full happy season, when was known, Ye dales and hills! to you alone Their mutual loyalty.

Known chiefly, Aira! to thy glen, The brook, and bowers of holly; Where pa.s.sion caught, what nature taught, That all but love is folly; Where fact and fancy stooped to play, Doubt came not, nor regret, To trouble hours that wing their way, As if through an immortal day, Whose sun could never set.

But in old times love dwelt not long Sequester'd with repose; Best throve the fire of chaste desire, Fanned by the breath of foes.

"A conquering lance is beauty's test, And proves the lover true;"

So spake Sir Eglamore, and pressed The drooping Emma to his breast, And looked a blind adieu.

They parted,--Well with him it fared Through wide-spread regions errant; A knight of proof in love's behoof, The thirst of fame his warrant: And she her happiness can build On woman's quiet hours; Though faint, compared with spear and shield, The solace beads and ma.s.ses yield, And needlework and flowers.

Yet blest was Emma when she heard Her champion's praise recounted; Though brain would swim, and eyes grow dim, And high her blushes mounted; Or when a bold heroic lay She warbled from full heart; Delightful blossoms for the May Of absence! but they will not stay, Born only to depart.

Hope wanes with her, while l.u.s.tre fills Whatever path he chooses; As if his...o...b.. that owns no curb, Received the light hers loses.

He comes not back; an ampler s.p.a.ce Requires for n.o.bler deeds; He ranges on from place to place, Till of his doings is no trace, But what her fancy breeds.

His fame may spread, but in the past Her spirit finds its centre; Clear sight she has of what he was, And that would now content her.

"Still is he my devoted knight?"

The tear in answer flows; Month falls on month with heavier weight; Day sickens round her, and the night Is empty of repose.

In sleep she sometimes walked abroad, Deep sighs with quick words blending, Like that pale queen, whose hands are seen With fancied spots contending; But she is innocent of blood: The moon is not more pure That shines aloft, while through the wood She threads her way, the sounding flood Her melancholy lure.

While 'mid the fern-brake sleeps the doe, And owls alone are waking, In white arrayed glides on the maid, The downward pathway taking, That leads her to the torrent's side, And to a holly bower; By whom on this still night descried?

By whom in that lone place espied?

By thee, Sir Eglamore!

A wandering ghost, so thinks the knight, His coming step has thwarted, Beneath the boughs that heard their vows, Within whose shade they parted.

Hush, hush, the busy sleeper see!

Perplexed her fingers seem, As if they from the holly tree Green twigs would pluck, as rapidly Flung from her to the stream.

What means the spectre? Why intent To violate the tree, Thought Eglamore, by which I swore Unfading constancy?

Here am I, and to-morrow's sun, To her I left, shall prove That bliss is ne'er so surely won As when a circuit has been run Of valour, truth, and love.

So from the spot whereon he stood He moved with stealthy pace; And, drawing nigh with his living eye, He recognised the face: And whispers caught, and speeches small, Some to the green-leaved tree, Some mutter'd to the torrent-fall:-- "Roar on, and bring him with thy call; I heard, and so may he!"

Soul-shattered was the knight, nor knew If Emma's ghost it were, Or bodying shade, or if the maid Her very self stood there.

He touched; what followed who shall tell?

The soft touch snapped the thread Of slumber--shrieking back she fell, The stream it whirled her down the dell Along its foaming bed.

In plunged the knight!--when on firm ground The rescued maiden lay; Her eyes grew bright with blissful light, Confusion pa.s.sed away; She heard, ere to the throne of grace Her faithful spirit flew, His voice--beheld his speaking face; And, dying, from his own embrace, She felt that he was true.

So was he reconciled to life: Brief words may speak the rest; Within the dell he built a cell, And there was sorrow's guest; In hermit's weeds repose he found, From vain temptations free, Beside the torrent dwelling, bound By one deep heart-controlling sound, And awed to piety.

Wild stream of Aira, hold thy course, Nor fear memorial lays, Where clouds that spread in solemn shade, Are edged with golden rays!

Dear art thou to the light of heaven, Though minister of sorrow; Sweet is thy voice at pensive even; And thou, in lovers' hearts forgiven, Shalt take thy place with Yarrow.

THE BRIDAL OF TRIERMAIN.

A LEGEND OF THE VALE OF ST. JOHN.

In travelling from Ambleside to Keswick, after pa.s.sing 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 gra.s.s-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 ma.s.sive 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 b.u.t.tresses. The greatest antiquity stands characterised in its architecture; the inhabitants near it a.s.sert 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 a.s.sured 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 n.o.ble in its aspect, as we drew near changed its figure and proved no other than a shaken ma.s.sive 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 a.s.sert 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 superst.i.tion, 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 ma.s.s 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 cla.s.sic ground, by having selected it for the princ.i.p.al 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 n.o.ble 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; n.o.ble her blood as the currents that met In the veins of the n.o.blest 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 p.r.i.c.king 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.

All in the castle must hold them still, Harpers must lull him to his rest, With the slow soft tunes he loves the best, Till sleep sink down upon his breast, Like the dew on a summer hill.

It was the dawn of an autumn day, The sun was struggling with frost-fog gray, That like a silvery c.r.a.pe was spread Round Skiddaw's dim and distant head, And faintly gleamed each painted pane Of the lordly halls of Triermain, When that Baron bold awoke.

Starting he woke, and loudly did call, Rousing his menials in bower and hall, While hastily he spoke.

"Hearken, my minstrels! Which of ye all Touched his harp with that dying fall, So sweet, so soft, so faint, It seem'd an angel's whisper'd call To an expiring saint?

And hearken, my merry-men! What time or where Did she pa.s.s, that maid with her heavenly brow, With her look so sweet and her eyes so fair, And her graceful step and her angel air, And the eagle-plume in her dark-brown hair, That pa.s.s'd from my bower e'en now!"

Answer'd him Richard de Bretville; he Was chief of the Baron's minstrelsy-- "Silent, n.o.ble chieftain, we Have sat since midnight close, When such lulling sounds as the brooklet sings, Murmur'd from our melting strings, And hush'd you to repose, Had a harp-note sounded here, It had caught my watchful ear, Although it fell as faint and shy As bashful maiden's half-formed sigh, When she thinks her lover near."

Answer'd Philip of Fasthwaite tall, He kept guard in the outer-hall-- "Since at eve our watch took post, Not a foot has thy portal cross'd; Else had I heard the steps, though low, And light they fell, as when earth receives, In morn of frost, the wither'd leaves That drop when no winds blow."--

"Then come thou thither, Henry, my page, Whom I saved from the sack of Hermitage, When that dark castle, tower, and spire, Rose to the skies a pile of fire, And redden'd all the Nine-stane Hill, And the shrieks of death, that wildly broke Through devouring flame and smothering smoke, Made the warrior's heart-blood chill.

The trustiest thou of all my train, My fleetest courser thou must rein, And ride to Lyulph's tower, And from the Baron of Trierman Greet well that Sage of power.

He is sprung from Druid sires, And British bards that tuned their lyres To Arthur's and Pendragon's praise, And his who sleeps at Dunmailraise.[17]

Gifted like his gifted race, He the characters can trace, Graven deep in elder time Upon Helvellyn's cliffs sublime: Sign and sigil well doth he know, And can bode of weal and woe, Of kingdoms' fall, and fate of wars, From mystic dreams and course of stars.

He shall tell if middle earth To that enchanting shape gave birth, Or if 'twas but an airy thing, Such as fantastic slumbers bring, Fram'd from the rainbow's varying dyes, Or fading tints of western skies.

For, by the blessed rood I swear, If that fair form breathe vital air, No other maiden by my side Shall ever rest De Vaux's bride!"

The faithful Page he mounts his steed, And soon he cross'd green Irthing's mead, Dash'd o'er Kirkoswald's verdant plain, And Eden barr'd his course in vain.

He pa.s.s'd red Penrith's Table round,[18]

For feats of chivalry renown'd, Left Mayburgh's mound[19] and stones of power, By Druids raised in magic hour, And traced the Eamont's winding way, Till Ulfo's lake[20] beneath him lay.