Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XIV Part 11

"Ay, and for Marion, the maid of Kimmerghame!" cried George, the brother of Sir Patrick; "and the Sinclairs shall wear stout bucklers and belts to boot, that this sword pierce not."

The party being marshalled, they took their way across the Lammermuirs with the brothers Sir Patrick and George Hume at their head. It was shortly after daybreak when they appeared before Herdmanstone Castle; and the Lady Margaret was the first to perceive their approach.

"Sister!" she cried; "see! see! aid is at hand--the banner of the Humes is waving over the fields of Herdmanstone."

"Ye dream, sister!" said Marion, starting from her couch.

"Nay, I dream not," retorted Margaret. "Arise; through the grey light I perceive the plume of Sir Patrick Hume, and the gay jacket which my sister wrought for his brother."

Marion sprang forward to the place where her sister stood; they thrust their hands from the window, to encourage their deliverers to the rescue, while Sir Patrick and his brother answered them back, crying, "We come! we come! The haughty and cruel Sinclair shall repent in blood."

The trumpets of the Humes sounded; and, as if prepared for the approaching conflict, within a few minutes, more than fifty retainers of Sir William Sinclair were in arms. Ignorant of the number of their foes, they rushed forth to meet them, hand to hand, and sword to sword.

Long the strife was desperate--it was even doubtful; but, at length, superiority of numbers, on the part of the Humes, prevailed; the retainers of Sir William were routed in all directions, and his castle was a.s.sailed, even to its threshold. "To the rescue of the fair maidens!" shouted the Humes. Independent of the immediate retainers of Sir William Sinclair, however, his neighbours came to his aid; and although they were at first as two to one, the conflict had not lasted long when the Humes became the weaker party. The battle raged keenly--swords were broken in the grasp of their owners--the strong war-horse kicked upon the ground, in the agony of death, indenting the earth with its hoofs as it died, leaving the impression of its agony--their wounded men grappled with, and reviled each other, as though they had been foreigners or aliens--spears were broken, and shields clanked against each other--while the war-shout and the dying groan mingled together. Victory seemed still to be doubtful; for, though the Humes fought bravely, and their leaders led them on as with the heroism of despair, yet every minute the numbers of their adversaries increased, while theirs, if the expression might be used, became fewer and more few.

Yet there were two spectators of the conflict who beheld it with feelings that may not, that cannot be described. Now, the one beheld the plume which she had adorned for her betrothed husband severed by the sword of an enemy; while the other saw the gay jerkin which she had weaved for hers tarnished with blood. They perceived also what we might term the ebbing and flowing of the deadly feud--the retreating and the driving back; and they were spectators also of the wounded, the dying, and the dead. They saw the party in whom their hopes were fixed gradually overpowered--they beheld them fall back beneath the swords of their opponents, disputing inch by inch as they retired, and their hearts fell within them. When hope, fear, and anxiety were wrought to their highest point of endurance, and the party in whom their trust lay seemed to be vanquished, and were driven back, at that period, Johnny Faa, and a number of his followers, rushed to their succour.

"Hurrah!" exclaimed the wanderer, "for the braw la.s.ses o' Polwarth and Kimmerghame! Fight, ye Humes! fight! There is a prize before ye worthy a clour on the crown, or even a stab through the brisket."

The approach of the Faa king turned the tide of victory, and his followers shouted, "The bonny la.s.ses o' Polwarth and Kimmerghame shall be free!"

"For ever, ay, and a day after it," cried Sir William, "shall the man inherit a cow's mailing, and a cow to boot, upon the lands o'

Herdmanstone, who this day brings me upon his sword the head o' ane o'

the birkies o' Wedderburn."

Sir William, however, became a suppliant for mercy beneath the red sword of Patrick Hume; and his life being granted, the Sinclairs gave their arms into the hands of their opponents. The young brothers each rushed into the house, to the rescue of the captive damsels; and Margaret and Marion each fell upon the neck of the man she loved.

On arriving at Polwarth, they were met by the glad villagers, with whom the fair ladies joined hands, and they danced together in joy around a thorn-tree, upon the village green.

In a few weeks, each of the maidens gave her hand to her deliverer--Margaret to Sir Patrick, and Marion to his brother George. On their marriage-day, the gay dance at the thorn upon the green was resumed, and a festive crowd tripped joyously around it, blessing the bride of Polwarth and her fair sister, Marion of Kimmerghame; and the music to which they that day danced proceeded from the pipes of King Johnny Faa, who, with half-a-dozen of his people, sat each with a pair of union pipes beneath his arm, and discoursing "most eloquent music,"

without "fee, favour, or reward," save that they were partakers of the good things which were that day plentifully circulated upon Polwarth Green.

In concluding this account of the co-heiresses of Polwarth and Kimmerghame, it is only necessary to add, that, from her union with Hume of Wedderburn, the fair Margaret became the progenitor of the future Earls of Marchmont.

THE FESTIVAL.

In most of the villages on the southern Border, and particularly in part of Northumberland, together with Norham and Islandshires, there are what are called annual feasts. In the manner in which they are now kept, they resemble the _Wakes_ or _Revels_ which are held in various parts of England. They were originally religious festivals, and are still commemorated upon the anniversary of the saint to which the church or religious house in the village, or with which it was connected, was in olden times dedicated. They have long ago lost their religious character, and joviality has a.s.sumed the place of seriousness.

Nevertheless, although, for more than a century, these feasts have been attended with much boisterous merriment, there is still much connected with them that we respect and revere. They came, as it were, whispering the good, the G.o.dlike admonition of Scripture--"Let brotherly love continue." For in those days, brethren and the children of a family meet together from afar beneath a father's or a brother's roof--the grandsire and the grandson sit at the table together--and the words of the inspired royal bard, that it is good and pleasant for brethren to dwell together in unity, are exemplified. They are seasons of mutual forgiveness, and of the exchange of family love. They are also seasons for which a many a parent's heart longs eagerly; and although they are what may be termed changeable feasts, they fall on days which they all know without the aid of an almanack; for there is no calendar so true as a father's or mother's heart. They are days to which many a mother looks forward, as to the time when she will press an absent son or daughter to her bosom--when a father shall give them the right hand of welcome, and in the fulness of his joy press his teeth upon his lip to conceal his emotion, while a stranger tear steals out, and seeks a home upon his cheek. They are, in every house, days in which the "fatted calf" is killed; and each village or feast has its own particular dainty, according to the season. At one is the luscious grilse (on that occasion baked instead of boiled); at another, dishes of fruit; and at a third, the roast goose. But each feast has its particular viands, and of them the poorest make an effort to partake. They are not as the Christmas feast was of old, when the rich fed the poor and their dependants at their table, and regaled each with a "smack of the good black jack;" but they are days on which the very poorest strive to make a feast for themselves, and to see _their own_ around their humble board.

We confess, however, that these feasts do not present sunny pictures exclusively; there are many who, as we have hinted, crown them with boisterous merriment. It was an ancient custom to elect, on the morning after the feast, a _Mayor_, or _Lord of the Festival_, whose word was law, and who was the sovereign dispenser of fun and frolic, and against whose command there was no appeal. The farce of "_The Mayor of Garret_"

furnishes a correct example of this species of rustic revelry. We are not yet very old; but are old enough to remember the time when the mayor, or lord of the festivities referred to, was chosen in accordance with the words of Burns--

"Wha first beside his chair shall fa', Let him be king among us a'!"

But it is long since the treatment of a master of the revels ceased even to be decent--we would say merciful. In most places he is no longer paraded as an absolute monarch upon the shoulders of his subjects, but as the slave of the mult.i.tude, of whom they delight to make pastime. The mayor of the village feast, "has fallen from his high estate," of dictating imperious commands for his short hour of power; and now he is generally placed in the condition of the frog in the fable, and what may be sport to his tormentors, is well-nigh death to him.

The festival from which our present story takes its rise was held in Tweedmouth (the southern suburb of Berwick), nearly seventy years ago; and, according to custom, on Margaret's day, or the following Monday.

For, although most of them are in some degree held upon the Sunday (a celebration which would "be more honoured in the breach than in the observance"), Monday may always be considered as the chief day of the feast. Now at that period there resided at Tweedmouth a Mrs Mordington, the widow of the commander of a coasting sloop, who had left her with two children, a son and daughter. The son, at the period our tale begins, was about one-and-twenty; his sister, two years younger. The son's name was George, and he was then a clerk in the office of a merchant in Gateshead. At the feast of St Margaret's, therefore--which is commemorated in Tweedmouth in July, when the sun is in the plenitude of its strength, and when the very birds, oppressed with its heat, leave the thin air and the upper branches, and, folding their wings, sit silently in the umbrageous shades, enjoying, well pleased, the coolness of their leafy shelter--George Mordington returned to Tweedside, to see his mother and his sister; yea, and there was another whom he longed not less eagerly to behold, and that was Marion Weatherly, a fair-headed maiden of nineteen, and the daughter of a master fisherman, who had the lease of some two hundred yards upon the Tweed, somewhere between where the Whitadder joins it and the bridge; but whether on the south or north side I cannot tell. As there may be thousands of the readers of these tales unacquainted with the nature of salmon fisheries, or of what is meant by having been a master fisherman in those days, I shall simply state that Mr Weatherly had taken a lease of a particular spot on one side of the Tweed, and which was in length about two hundred yards, and on that s.p.a.ce he had the right of casting out and dragging in his nets.

He had this river-farm at a very small sum annually; though, within a mile from the spot where he held it, we have known a lesser portion of fishing right in the river let for nearly two thousand pounds sterling per annum; and that, too, when the wisdom of the present generation (perhaps I ought to put the generation in the past tense) almost threw a _d.y.k.e_ across the mouth of the river, which built up what was called the _Meadow Haven_, and which haven was a gut in the rocks, by which the fish, coming in shoals from the north, entered the river; and this being built up by the _d.y.k.e_ or _pier_ aforesaid, after running their noses against a stone wall, instead of meeting with the _natural_ entrance to the river which _nature_ dictated to them to pursue, they were left, like a pack of fox-hounds that had been thrown off their scent, to seek the artificial entrance where they might find it, or for another river if they chose. Thus, the good old Tweed being half blocked up, fishing waters, in the present day, do not abound with the silver-mailed salmon, as they did in the days of Mr Weatherly. Besides, the river was then _fished_, not _harried_! It is not, therefore, wonderful that the father of Marion became a man of property.

Now, George Mordington and Marion Weatherly had known each other from childhood. I do not say that they had loved each other from that period; but they were at the same school together, and even before they left it, they were _equalled_ to each other. This _equalling_, or, as it is sometimes called, _evening_ to each other, by schoolmates or acquaintances, often goes far towards producing the wedded love of riper years. Many a match would never have been made, but for the schoolboy's or the comrade's jeer. Once name young hearts in the same breath, and you draw a magic circle round them; and, however little they may be acquainted with each other, whoever of the two may break through that circle, strikes a pa.s.sing pang into the bosom of the other. Pride feels wounded, if nothing else does; but there is a feeling deeper and more tender than pride that has been rudely touched. It does not last long; but it is keen while it lasts. I am perfectly aware that there are many who may say, "Pshaw! it is all nonsense; who cares anything about these things _now_?" No middle-aged person, I grant you. Individuals of such an age like some home truth--something that comes home to their business and their bosoms as they are; and when such a thing meets them they say, "Oh, it is very natural." Granted that _it_ is natural, why should people of middle age, yea, or of grey hairs, forget that they were once young; and that what is now "stale, flat, and unprofitable" to them, is still the feelings of thousands--is still delightful to thousands--was once _their_ feelings, and delightful to _them_? Though past the sunny heyday ourselves, we like not to hear either man or woman cry out, with the Preacher, "all is vanity!" For light is beautiful--so is the sun that sheds it forth. The fair earth, with its buds, its flowers, its leaves, its fruits, and its trees with their singing birds--they are all beautiful--exquisitely beautiful! No man can look upon the works of his Maker, without adoring, worshipping, and loving the Power that formed them. Oh, when we so look abroad upon the glorious creation that is above, beneath, and around us--when we see so much that is measureless, magnificent, and that steals forth in beauty as a bud opens, until its loveliness is revealed before the very soul; and, above all, when we think also of the kind hearts that share our sorrows and our joys, that watch over us and that throb for us, that mourn with us and rejoice with us, and that are one with us in all things--we are tempted to say that all is "not vanity," but that man is the author of his own "vexation of spirit." Now George Mordington was one who loved all the works of nature for their loveliness. He saw nothing to which his young heart would respond, "it is vanity!" He loved the very worm that crawled--writhing and dying as it crawled--over his path, and pushed it gently with his foot upon its parent earth, that it might live. Was there nothing in the scenery of his birthplace that he should admire it? There was neither the sublimity of mountains to awe him into remembrance--the majesty of wooded hills (which there might be), nor lakes where echoes died in music; but there was the Tweed, the stream of his nativity, which rushes into the arms of the ocean, like a beautiful bride that has been cast off by her parent, and falls upon the neck of her lover without adornments; and there was the rich lands of the Merse and Islandshire, for ever spread out before him, with the everlasting ocean, its calms and its storms, its placid stillness and its terrible waves--forming together a scene such as he that has once looked upon can never forget.

Through such scenes George Mordington recollected Marion Weatherly.

It has been mentioned that he was a clerk in Gateshead, and at the annual festival held in Tweedmouth, he went to visit his mother, his sister, and the fair Marion. I might--for I have often been a witness of such a scene--describe the joy of the doating mother as she beheld her son, in the youthful bloom of manhood, seated at her table. With delight sparkling in her eyes, she sat gazing on his face, until the tear of affection rose and bedimmed their radiance. On her left hand sat her son, and on her right her daughter, and her intended daughter, Marion Weatherly. Their dinner pa.s.sed over in happiness--the mother smiled to look upon her children's joy; and when "a gentle tap came to the door,"

which the daughter best understood, and blushing, responded to it, George and Marion also arose, and they went into the fields together.

They wandered to and fro in a narrow pathway, the length of which was rather less than a mile, while on each side of them the ripening grain formed _a waving wall_, giving promise of an abundant harvest. They wandered backward and forward, hand locked in hand, until the sun was lost behind Hallidon, and the stars began to steal out through the grey twilight.

When they shook hands at parting--"Now, George," said Marion, "you have your acquaintances to see, but do not remain late with them; for my sake and your mother's, do not."

"Dear Marion," said he, "wherefore remind me of this? I know that I must meet my acquaintances to-night, all of whom are my old friends, many of them my schoolfellows; I have promised to meet them--I have to leave for Newcastle to-morrow--and wherefore remind me that I should not remain late with them?"

"Oh!" she replied, "only that you will remember your character, George."

"Do not be interested about my character," said he; "I have hitherto supported it with credit to myself, and, I think, dear Marion, I may do also for the future."

He pressed his lips to hers, and, shaking her hand fervidly, they parted for the night; but before they parted, they had renewed their young vows, beneath an ash-tree, where they had sat down together (upon the footpath which is now known by the name of the "_Willow Back_"), and where he had carved their names four years before, and there he deepened the incision which recorded their initials; and, as Virgil somewhere hath it (though neither of them knew anything about Virgil), they vowed that, as the "bark expanded, their love would grow." This is a very common idea amongst love-engravers upon trees; but though a Mantuan swain might so write, a British peasant would frequently have cause to say, that, as the tree grew, and the bark expanded, so did his initials spread, and become vague, and more vague, until fog grew over them; and upon the heart, as on the tree where he had first carved his name, there was no trace left.

But George Mordington parted with Marion, and went to a street called the Kiln Hill, in which there then was an inn, known by the name of "THE SALMON." In it all the a.s.sociates of his youth were a.s.sembled; and when he entered they rose simultaneously, each offering his hand, and exclaiming, "Ah! George! my dear fellow, how are you?"

They sat long, and they drank deeply; and, while the song, the story, the jest, or the argument went round, they forgot how time and reason were flying together. It was usual for such companies not to break up until they had witnessed the election of the mayor. The heads of several of the party began to go round as well as the gla.s.s; and of this number was George Mordington. He was a youth of the most sober and temperate habits; and before he had drank off his third gla.s.s, he might have said, in the words of the song, "This is no me!" His very countenance was changed; his manner, which was, in general, backward and retiring, became bold and boisterous. Instead of his wonted silence, he was the chief orator of the company. He spoke of things of which he ought not to have spoken, and as gla.s.s succeeded gla.s.s, so did one act of folly succeed another. Some of the more sober of the company said, they "were sorry for poor Mordington--but his head could stand nothing; and," added they, "it is a pity, for he is an excellent fellow." This, however, was only the sentiment of a part of them; and as he began to exhibit fantastic tricks, and to declaim with violent gestures upon all subjects, some said that he would make an excellent _mayor_, and proposed that a cart should be procured. Against this proposal some of his acquaintances protested; but the idea pleased his own disordered fancy, and as the madness of intoxication increased, he insisted that the baccha.n.a.lian honour should be conferred upon him.

"Well done, George!" cried the more thoughtless of the party; "he is the king of good fellows, every inch of him!"

So saying, they rushed into the street, bearing him upon their shoulders; and amidst the shouts and laughter of men and boys, he was placed in a cart, his face rubbed over with soot, his hair bedaubed with flour, and a broomstick was placed in his hand as his rod of office.

"Hurrah! George Mordington is mayor!" was the cry upon the streets; and followed by a noisy mult.i.tude, he was paraded round the village, and, in conformity with ancient custom, delivered a speech at every public-house and baker's door in the place.

Old and young leave their pillows, to "see the mayor," as they term it, and hasten to the door or window, to witness his procession as he is hurled along. There were many who, as they perceived him, expressed regret to see George Mordington in such a situation, and said it would break his mother's heart.

But, as they pa.s.sed the door of Mr Weatherly, a sudden cry was heard. It was a woman's scream of agony, and as it burst forth, the maddened shout of the mult.i.tude was hushed. It struck upon the ear of George Mordington in the midst of his madness and degradation--it entered his heart. It was the cry of his betrothed Marion. He struck his hand upon his brow, and fell back in the cart as if an arrow had entered his breast. Her voice had startled him, as from a trance, into a consciousness of his shame and folly.

"He is dead!" cried the crowd--for he fell as if dead, and in a state of unconsciousness he was conveyed to his mother's house. The poor widow wept as she beheld her joy turned into shame; and as he opened his eyes and began to gaze vacantly around, his sister said unto him, but rather sorrowfully than reproachfully, "Brother! brother! who could have thought that you would have been guilty of this?"

A groan of anguish was his only reply.

"Daughter," said his mother, "do not upbraid him; he will feel anguish enough for the shame he has brought upon himself and on us, without our reproaches."

He started to his feet as he heard her voice, he thrust his fingers in his hair, he gnashed his teeth together, and howling as one in a paroxysm of insanity, exclaimed--

"What have I done? I am lost--disgraced for ever!"

"No, my son! no!" said his mother; "you have acted foolishly, very foolishly; but in time it will be forgotten."

"Never! never!" he answered; "would that the earth would swallow me up!

I am worse than a madman or a villain--I am ashamed of my existence!"