Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume X Part 5

Anne threw back her veil, and, with her face uncovered, cast herself at the feet of Bruce. The a.s.sembled lords fixed their eyes upon the damsel, as she occupied a position which exhibited the graces of her perfect figure, and the intelligence of her beautiful face lighted up with feelings which moved the hearts of the sternest warriors around. They were struck with the full blaze of a beauty that was not excelled by the fairest woman of Scotland in her day, and whispers went round among them that told eloquently the effect she had produced by the sudden display of her charms.

"Is this the reward, my liege," she said, in a clear, tuneful voice, "that is due to me for my humble efforts in behalf of the success of thine arms? Is this the faith of the Brace, whose name has filled the nations as the trumpet resounds within the palisades when honour is to be sought and won?"

A smile played upon the face of the king. The quick, dark eye of the maiden searched his heart, and was satisfied. A mantling blush, accompanied by a smile that seemed to respond to the humour of the king, enhanced her beauty, and showed that she understood the play that was enacted by the n.o.ble monarch.

"It is the privilege of beauty," said the king, still smiling, "to inspire its possessor with an unshaken faith in the sanctions of the brave. We are not oblivious, fair Anne of Ghent, of our promise, as this will testify." And he undid her own riband from his arm, and put it around the neck of the supplicant. "The colour of this streamer shall afterwards be that of the banner of Perth. Thy father is safe in life and limb; but tell us, fair damsel, what other method could we have adopted, to gratify our sense of justice and our love of beauty, than to show thy father that he owes his safety to thee, and to make thee throw off the veil that concealeth so fair a face?"

At this moment, one of the French squires, with his left eye bound up by a green riband, advanced to the feet of the king, and stood for a moment surveying the countenance of the supplicant.

"By the patron saint of the house of Leon," cried the Frenchman, "it is my fair queen of the lists! Knowest thou this silken band, lady, by which my left orb is occluded, and my affections bound to the giver?"

"If thou art Rolande de Leon," said Anne, as she rose, by the hand of the king, "thou canst tell if that gift was bestowed by my hands. To that valiant squire, Anne of Ghent did once award the humble pledge of a silken band, which was to remain on his temples till he achieved a feat of arms."

"Ha, well timed!" cried Bruce. "Hear the command of thy liege sovereign. We command Anne of Ghent to give the light of heaven to that occluded organ, which is so well ent.i.tled to see the glitter of the sword of knighthood, and the charms of her who restores it to its natural rights."

Anne proceeded, amidst the applause of the lords, to obey the commands of the king. With a firm hand, but a palpitating heart, she undid the bandage, as the Frenchman knelt at her feet.

"Rise not yet," said Bruce, when he saw the operation concluded; and, taking his sword, he touched the back of the squire, and p.r.o.nounced the words, "Rise, Sir Rolande de Leon, one of the bravest knights that it has been our good fortune to see fighting under the blue banner of Scotland."

The knight rose, amidst the acclamation of the n.o.bles. The clerk again proceeded with his monotonous vocation of calling out the names of the citizens. Peter, with his daughter, accompanied by Sir Rolande, left the court-room, and proceeded to his house, where, after proper explanations, the Fleming saw no reason to regret the taking of the city. On that same day, William Oliphant was beheaded. The town was quickly restored to order; and, before Bruce's army again set out on a new expedition, Anne of Ghent became the lady of Sir Rolande de Leon.

This brave knight accompanied Bruce through all his engagements, taking frequent opportunities, throughout the wars, of stealing a few days of the society of his fair Anne of Ghent. In a short time he was covered with honours; and, by the end of Scotland's period of direst strife and danger, old Peter of Ghent died, leaving a large fortune to his daughter. The couple, we have reason to believe, retired afterwards to a castle somewhere in Perthshire, to enjoy the peace and happiness of a domestic life, after so many toils and dangers. We have somewhere seen the arms afterwards adopted by the knight, in which _three Lioncels rampant topaz_ figure on a _field sapphire_, _crest_, wreathed with a _riband vert_. The wreath we may easily understand; nor can we be at any loss for the derivation of the young Lions, seeing that, according to our authority, Anne bore Sir Rolande three sons, whose descendants, under the name of Lion, long lived in Perthshire; and, if we are not led astray by old writs, they afterwards intermarried with the Lions of Strathmore.

THE PROFESSOR'S TALES.

PEAT-CASTING TIME.

In the olden times, there were certain fixed occasions when labour and frolic went hand in hand--when professional duty and kind-hearted glee mutually kissed each other. The "rocking" mentioned by Burns--

"On Fastening's E'en we had a rocking"--

I still see in the dim and hazy distance of the past. It is only under the refractive medium of vigorous recollection that I can again bring up to view (as the Witch of Endor did Samuel) those images that have been reposing, "'midst the wreck of things that were," for more than fifty years. Yet my early boyhood was familiar with these social senile and juvenile festivities. _There_ still sits Janet Smith, in her toy-mutch and check-ap.r.o.n, projecting at intervals the well-filled spindle into the distance. Beside her is Isabel Kirk, elongating and twirling the yet unwound thread. Nanny Nivison occupies a _creepy_ on the further side of the fire (making the third Fate!), with her shears. Around, and on bedsides, are seated Lizzy Gibson, with her favoured lad; Tam Kirkpatrick, with his jo Jean on his knee; Rob Paton the stirk-herd; and your humble servant. And "now the crack gaes round, and who so wilful as to put it by?" The story of past times; the report of recent love-matches and miscarriages; the gleeful song, bursting unbid from the young heart, swelling forth in beauty and in brightness like the waters from the rock of Meribah; the occasional female remonstrance against certain _welcome_ impertinences, in shape of, "Come now, Tam--nane o'

yer nonsense." "Will! I say, be peaceable, and behave yersel afore folk.

'Od, ye'll squeeze the very breath out o' a body."

"Till, in a social gla.s.s o' strunt, They parted off careering On sic a night."

"Ye've heard a lilting at our ewes-milking."

How few of the present generation have ever heard of this "lilting,"

except in song. It is the gayest and sunniest season of the year. The young lambs, in their sportive whiteness, are coursing it, and bleating it, responsive to their dams, on the hill above. The old ewes on the plain are marching--

"The labour much of man and dog"--

to the pen or fold. The response to the clear-toned bleat of their woolly progeny is given, anon and anon, in a short, broken, low ba.s.s. It is the raven conversing with the jack-daw! All is bustle, excitement, and badinage.

"Weer up that ewe, Jenny, la.s.s. Wha kens but her woo may yet be a blanket for you and ye ken wha to sleep in!"

"Haud yer tongue, Tammie, and gang hame to yer books and yer schoolin.

Troth, it will be twa days ere the craws dirty your kirk riggin!"

Wouf, wouf, wouf!--hee, hee, hee!--hoch, hoch, hoch!--there _in_ they go, and _in_ they are, their h.o.r.n.y heads wedged over each other, and a trio of stout, well-made damsels, with petticoats tied up "_a la breeches_," tugging away at their well-filled dugs.

"Troth, Jenny, that ewe will waur ye; 'od I think ye hae gotten haud o'

the auld tup himsel. He's as powerfu, let me tell ye, as auld Francie, wham ye kissed sae snug last nicht ayont the peat-mou."

"Troth, at weel, Tam, ye're a fearfu liar. They wad be fonder than I am o' c.o.c.k birds wha wad gie tippence for the st.i.te o' a howlet."

"Howlet here, howlet there, Jenny, ye ken weel his auld bra.s.s will buy you a new pan."

At this crisis the crack becomes general and inaudible from its universality, mixed as it is with the bleating of ewes, the barking of dogs, together with the singing of herd-laddies and of your humble servant.

Harvest is a blithe time! May all the charms of "Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on him" who shall first invent a reaping-machine!

The best of all reaping-machines is "the human _arm_ divine," whether brawny or muscular, or soft and rounded. The old woman of sixty sits all year long at her domestic occupations--you would deem her incapable of any out-door exertions; but, at the sound of the harvest-horn, she renews her youth, and sallies forth into the harvest-field, with hook over shoulder, and a heart buoyant with the spirit of the season, to take her place and drive her rig with the youngest there. The half-grown boy and girl of fourteen are mingled up in duty and in frolic, in jest and jibe, and jeer and laugh, with the stoutest and the most matured.

Mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, and, above and beyond all, "lads and la.s.ses, lovers gay!" mix and mingle in one united band, for honest labour and exquisite enjoyment; and when at last the joyous kirn is won--when the maiden of straw is borne aloft and in triumph, to adorn for twelve months the wall of the farmer's ben--when the rich and cooling curds-and-cream have been ram-horn-spooned into as many mouths as there are persons in the "toun"--then comes the mighty and long-antic.i.p.ated festival, the roasted ox, the stewed sheep, the big pot enriched with the cheering and elevating draught, the punch dealt about in ladles and in jugs, the inspiring fiddle, the maddening reel, and the Highland fling.

"_We_ cannot but remember such things were, And were most dear to us!"

Hay harvest, too, had its soft and delicate tints, resembling those of the grain harvest. As the upper rainbow curves and glows with fainter colouring around the interior and the brighter, so did the hay harvest of yore antic.i.p.ate and pre-figure, as it were, the other. The hay tedded to the sun; the barefooted la.s.s, her locks floating in the breeze, her cheeks redolent of youth, and her eyes of joy, scattering or collecting, carting or ricking, the sweetly-scented meadow produce, under a June sun and a blue sky!

"Oh, to feel as I have felt, Or be what I have been!"

The favoured lover, namely, of that youthful purity, now in its fourteenth summer--myself as pure and all unthinking of aught but affection the most intense, and feelings the most soft and unaccountable.

"Ah, little did thy mother think, That day she cradled thee, What lands thou hadst to travel in, What death thou hadst to dee!"

Poor Jeanie Johnston! I have seen her, only a few weeks ago, during the sittings of the General a.s.sembly, sunk in poverty, emaciated by disease, the wife of an old soldier, himself disabled from work, tenanting a dark hovel in Pipe's Close, Castlehill of Edinburgh.

In the upper district of Dumfries-shire--the land of my birth, and of all those early a.s.sociations which cling to me as the mistletoe to the oak, and which are equally hallowed with that druidical excrescence--there are no coals, but a superabundance of moss; consequently peat-fires _are_ very _generally_ still, and _were_, at the time of which I speak, _universally_, made use of; and a peat-fire, on a cold, frosty night of winter, when every star is glinting and goggling through the blue, or when the tempest raves, and

"There's no a star in a' the cary,"

is by no means to be despised. To be sure, it is short-lived--but then it kindles soon; it does not, it is true, entertain us with fantastic and playful jets of flame--but then its light is full, united, and steady; the heat which it sends out on all sides is superior to that of coals. Wood is sullen and sulky, whether in its log or f.a.ggot form. It eats away into itself, in a cancer ignition. But the blazing peat--

"The bleezing ingle, and the clean hearth-stane"--

is the very soul of cheerfulness and comfort. But then peats must be prepared. They do not grow in hedges, nor vegetate in meadows.

They must be cut from the black and consolidated moss; and a peculiarly-constructed spade, with a sharp edge and crooked ear, must be made use of for that purpose; and into the field of operation must be brought, at casting-time, the spademen, with their spades; and the barrowmen, and women, boys, and girls, with their barrows; and the breakfast sowans, with their creamy milk, cut and crossed into circles and squares; and the dinner stew, with its sappy potatoes and gusty-onioned mutton fragments; and the rest at noon, with its active sports and feats of agility, and, in particular, with its jumps from the moss-brow into the soft, marshy substance beneath--and _thereby hangs my tale_, which shall be as short and simple as possible.

One of the loveliest visions of my boyhood is Nancy Morrison. She was a year or so older than me; but we went and returned from school together.

She was the only daughter of a poor widow woman, who supported herself, in a romantic glen on the skirts of the Queensberry Hills, by bleaching or whitening webs. In those days, the alkalis and acids had not yet superseded the slower progress of whitening green linen by soap-boiling, tramping, and alternate drying in the sun, and wetting with pure running water. Many is the time and oft that Nanny and I have wielded the watering-pan, in this fairy, sunny glen, all day long. Whilst the humble-bee boomed past us, the mavis occupied the thorn-tree, and the mother of Nanny employed herself in some more laborious department of the same process, Nanny and I have set us down on the greensward--_in tenaci gramine_--played at chucks, "head him and cross him," or some such amus.e.m.e.nt. At school, Nanny had ever a faithful defender and avenger in me; and I have even purloined apples and gooseberries from the castle garden--and all for the love I bore "to my Nanny, oh!"