Chapter XIX: Part VII (4)

The rhyme appears to refer to the wooden bridge built in 994 at Southwark, which was destroyed in 1008 by King Olaf, the Saint of Norway, to whose glory four London churches are dedicated. Olaf had become the ally of Ethelred (the Unready), and to defeat the Danes who had captured the city he first screened his fighting ships with frameworks of osier for the protection of his men, who then rowed them up to the Bridge against the tide. They wapped and bound huge ropes or hawsers round its timber piers, swept down with the slack with the tide, and so brought the Bridge to ruin.

The first stone bridge, in building from 1196 to 1208, was partially destroyed by fire four years afterwards. A picture of the entrancing re-built Bridge of Elizabeth's time, with its chapel, its many-storied gabled houses, its haberdashers', goldsmiths' and booksellers' shops, its cut-waters or starlings and many narrow arches, its gate-house with the spiked heads atop, its drawbridge and pillory, and that strange timber mansion, with not a nail in its wood, called Nonesuch, where perhaps lived the Lord Mayor--all this may be gloated over in any old seventeenth-century map of London. (John Visscher's of 1616 shows a windmill in the Strand!) So narrow were those high arches, and so vehemently flowed the tides beneath them, that even at ebb it was dangerous for a novice to shoot them in a boat. But between Windsor and Gravesend it is said there were forty thousand watermen and wherrymen in Shakespeare's day, yelling "Eastward Ho!", or "Westward Ho!" for passengers. The Bridge was the glory of London; as the Thames it spanned was its main thoroughfare. Fire was its chief enemy; the Great Fire in 1616 and that in 1633, after which it long continued to be used though dark, dismal and dangerous. The present monster of granite, over which the people of London stream to and fro throughout the day, like ants at the flighting, was built thirty yards west of the old one and began to span the river in 1832.

70. "THIS CITY."

London, thou art of townes _A per se_[211]
Soveraign of cities, seemliest in sight,
Of high renoun, riches and royaltie;
Of lordis, barons, and many a goodly knyght;
Of most delectable lusty ladies bright;
Of famous prelatis, in habitis clericall;
Of merchauntis full of substaunce and of myght:
London, thou art the flow'r of Cities all.

Strong be thy wallis that about thee standis;
Wise be the people that within thee dwellis;
Fresh is thy ryver with his lusty strandis;
Blith be thy chirches, wele sownyng be thy bellis;
Rich be thy merchauntis in substaunce that excellis;
Fair be their wives, right lovesom, white and small;
Clere be thy virgyns, lusty under kellis[212]!
London, thou art the flow'r of Cities all....

WILLIAM DUNBAR

71. "HE OPENED HOUSE TO ALL." (line 22)

The subject being good victuals, here is the "Bill of Fare at the Christening of Mr. Constable's Child, Rector of Cockley Cley, in Norfolk, January 2, 1682."

"A whole hog's head souc'd with carrots in the mouth, and
pendants in the ears, with guilded oranges thick sett.

2 Ox^s cheekes stewed with 6 marrow bones.

A leg of Veal larded with 6 pullets.

A leg of Mutton with 6 rabbits.

A chine of bief, chine of venison, chine of mutton, chine of
veal, chine of pork, supported by 4 men.

A Venison Pasty.

A great minced pye, with 12 small ones about it.

A gelt fat turkey with 6 capons.

A bustard with 6 pluver.

A pheasant with 6 woodcock.

A great dish of tarts made all of sweetmeats.

A Westphalia hamm with 6 tongues.

A Jowle of Sturgeon.

A great charg^r of all sorts of sweetmeats with wine, and all
sorts of liquors answerable."

And here is another from that inexhaustible Tom Tiddler's ground, _Rustic Speech and Folklore_ for the "funeral meats" of a farmer who died near Whitby in 1760: "Besides what was distributed to 1,000 poor people who had 6d. each in money, there was consumed

110 dozen penny loaves,
9 large hams,
8 legs of veal,
20 stone of beef,
16 stone of mutton,
15 stone of Cheshire cheese, and
30 ankers of ale."

For me the "great dish of tarts," the "guilded oranges" and "the great charger of sweetmeats"! But after all, fine fat feasts such as these are but a Town Mouse's crumb of Wedding Cake compared to Mac Conglinnes' Vision in No. 73, which is from the Gaelic of 1100/1200 A.D., as translated by Kuno Meyer. _Bragget_, line 33, appears to have been a concoction or decoction of ale, honey, sugar and spice, of which last ambrosial ingredients (according to the old rhyme) are made little girls.

72. "AND BRING US IN GOOD ALE"

really _good_ ale, that is, before beer was made "so mortal small," 133 years before tea-leaves came from China (to be boiled and the decoction stored in a barrel); 140 before the first coffee-house in London; and even, one might be tempted to add, before milk came from the cow, for as late as 1512 the two young sons of the fifth earl of Northumberland, Lord Percy aged eleven (who afterwards loved Anne Boleyn), and his younger brother, Maister Thomas Percy, were allowed for "braikfaste" even on "Fysch," or fast Days: "Half a Loif of houshold Brede, a Manchet, a Dysch of Butter, a Pece of Saltfish, a Dysch of Sproits or iii White Herrynge," and a _Potell of Bere_, _i.e._ two quarts or Eight mugfuls.

"Hores," or heres, means _hairs_--cow's or dairymaid's. Butter is less hairy nowadays, though on the other hand we have margarine.

I thought perhaps "Godes good" referred to a "podinge" for Saturdays--a hodge-podge of the scraps and pieces left over through the week; but I find it is really an old phrase for yeast.

73.

"I' sooth a Feast of Fats" (from the Irish of the twelfth century) like that dream of the rats in the "_Pied Piper of Hamelin_" as they scuttled to their doom in the cold Weser. For a feast of _sweets_ there is Porphyrio's in the "Eve of St. Agnes:

"And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,
In blanchèd linen, smooth, and lavendered,
While he from forth the closet brought a heap
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferred
From Fez; and spicèd dainties, every one,
From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon.

These delicates he heaped with glowing hand
On golden dishes and in baskets bright
Of wreathèd silver: sumptuous they stand
In the retirèd quiet of the night,
Filling the chilly room with perfume light...."

For a banquet of enchantment there is Lamia's, and of magical fruits, poor Laura's in "_Goblin Market_"; Romeo too went feasting with the Capulets--but only his eyes; so too Macbeth, but _his_ eyes betrayed him. Bottom in his ass's ears asked only for a munch of your good dry oats, a handfull of pease, and a bottle of hay, then fell asleep before even Queen Titania could magick them up for him. As for the poor Babes, blackberries and dewberries were _their_ last supper. These are but a few of scores of banqueting delights in poetry--but to include them all would need such a larder as Jack peeped into when he sat supping in the Giant's kitchen.

74. "PIGEON HOLES, STOOL-BALL, BARLEY-BREAK."

This fragment is a patchwork of the half-forgotten. "Pigeon holes" was a ball-game, played on the green, with wooden arches and little chambers as in a dovecot--a kind of open-air bagatelle. "Stool-ball" was popular with Nancies and Franceses on Shrove Tuesday. Barley-break was in Scotland a kind of "I spy," played in a stackyard, and in England a sort of "French and English," in three marked spaces or compartments, the middle one of which was called hell. And here--while we are on the subject of old and gallant pastimes--is a brief exposition of our noble and National Game of Cricket in its _early_ days. It comes from a book with the queer title, "A Nosegay for the Trouble of Culling; or, Sports of Childhood":

"Cricket is a game universally played in England, not by boys only, for men of all ranks pique themselves on playing it with skill. In Mary-le-bone parish there is a celebrated cricket ground much frequented by noblemen and gentlemen.

The wicket consists of two pieces of wood fixed upright and kept together by another piece which is laid across the top and is called a bail; if either of these pieces of wood be thrown down by the ball the person so hitting them becomes the winner.

The ball used in this game is stuffed exceedingly hard. Many windows and valuable looking-glasses have been broken by playing cricket in a room."

It was in a cricket match in the summer of 1775, when no less than three "balls" had rolled in between a Mr. Small's two stumps without stirring the bail, that it was decided to add stump iii.

As for "tansy" (line 5), here is a recipe for it (to go with the sillabub on p. 506): "Take 15 eggs, and 6 of the whites; beat them very well; then put in some sugar, and a little sack; beat them again, and put about a pint or a little more of cream; then beat them again; then put in the juice of spinage or of primrose leaves to make it green. Then put in some more sugar, if it be not sweet enough; then beat it again a little, and so let it stand till you fry it, when the first course is in. Then fry it with a little sweet butter. It must be stirred and fryed very tender. When it is fryed enough, then put it in a dish, and strew some sugar upon it, and serve it in."

75. "MARY'S GONE A-MILKING."

And, according to Sir Thomas Overbury (who dipped his pen in nectar as well as ink), _"A Fair and Happy Milk-maid_," is "a country wench, that is so far from making herself beautiful by art, that one look of hers is able to put all facephysic out of countenance....

"She doth not, with lying long abed, spoil both her complexion and conditions, ... she rises, therefore, with chanticleer, her dame's cock, and at night makes the lamb her curfew. In milking a cow, and straining the teats through her fingers, it seems that so sweet a milk-press makes the milk the whiter or sweeter; for never came almond glove or aromatic ointment on her palm to taint it. The golden ears of corn fall and kiss her feet when she reaps them, as if they wish to be bound and led prisoners by the same hand that felled them. Her breath is her own which scents all the year long of June, like a new made haycock. She makes her hand hard with labour, and her heart soft with pity: and when winter evenings fall early (sitting at her merry wheel), she sings a defiance to the giddy wheel of fortune. She doth all things with so sweet a grace, it seems ignorance will not suffer her to do ill, being her mind is to do well.... She dares go alone and unfold sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none: yet to say truth, she is never alone, for she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones....

"Thus lives she, and all her care is she may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers stuck upon her winding-sheet."

76. "CYPRESSE BLACK AS ERE WAS CROW."

Cypresse (according to a memorandum from one of Mr. Nahum's books) is the fine cobweblike stuff we now call crape. Peaking-stickes, or poking-sticks, were gophering irons for frilling out linen, flounces, etc., etc., and not, as one might guess, curling tongs (since a pointed beard, and the V of hair on the forehead, used to be called peaks). A quoife or coif is a lady's head-dress, such as is still worn by nuns; while as for "maskes for faces," fine ladies in Shakespeare's day customarily wore them (as old pictures show) when they went to see his plays. Masks were useful too in disguising the faces of his players, when--as was the custom in the London theatres up to 1629--boys took women's parts; and in the streets eyes gleamed out of the holes in them, worn _then_ for keeping the skin fair, untanned, and unfreckled, as Julia says of herself in Shakespeare's _Two Gentlemen of Verona_:

But since she did neglect her looking-glasse,
And threw her Sun-expelling masque away,
The ayre hath starved the roses in her cheekes,
And pinched the lily-tincture of her face....

78. FAIRING. (line 5)

In this--the earliest known letter of Shelley's--he too asks for a fairing--the kickshaws and gewgaws sold in the booths of a fair--and a toothsome one; though I haven't yet been able to discover what he meant by "hunting nuts":

Monday, July 18, 1803. (Horsham).

DEAR KATE,

We have proposed a day at the pond next Wednesday; and if you
will come to-morrow morning I would be much obliged to you;
and if you could any how bring Tom over to stay all night,
I would thank you. We are to have a cold dinner over at the
pond, and come home to eat a bit of roast chicken and peas at
about nine o'clock. Mama depends upon your bringing Tom over
to-morrow, and if you don't we shall be very much disappointed.

Tell the bearer not to forget to bring me a fairing--which is
some ginger-bread, sweetmeat, hunting-nuts, and a pocket book.
Now I end.

I am _not_,

Your obedient servant,

P. B. SHELLEY

Even before Mr. Nahum's tower-room, I loved the "bonny brown hair" of this poem. Was it squirrel brown, or chestnut, or hazelnut, or autumn-beech, or heather-brown, or walnut, or old hay colour, or undappled-fawn, or dark lichen, or velvet brown, or marigold or pansy or wallflower-brown--or yet another?--every one of which would look charming beneath the rim of a round blue-ribanded "little straw hat."

80. "WIDDECOMBE FAIR."

To an eye looking down, the steeple of Widdecombe Church rises in the midst of Dartmoor like a lovely needle of ivory; and hidden beneath the turf around it lie, waiting, the bones of Tom Pearse, Bill Brewer ... Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

83. "THERE WERE THREE GIPSIES"

--and they were of England (Somerset), though to judge from this old ballad they may have padded it down from the Highlands:

There cam' Seven Egyptians on a day,
And wow, but they sang bonny!
And they sang sae sweet, and sae very complete,
Down cam' Earl Cassilis' lady.

She cam' tripping adown the stair,
And a' her maids before her;
As soon as they saw her weel-faur'd face
They cast the glamourie owre her;

They gave to her the nutmeg,
And they gave to her the ginger;
And she gave to them a far better thing,
The seven gold rings off her finger.

There was a small black cobbled-up book entitled _Glamourie_ in a red leather case in Thrae, but, alas, it was in a writing I could not easily decipher. On the fly-leaf was scrawled "H.B.", and beneath it was the following:

See, with eyes shut.
Look seldom behind thee.
In secret of selfship
Free thee, not bind thee.
Mark but a flower:
'Tis of Eden. A fly
Shall sound thee a horn
Wooing Paradise nigh.
Think close. Unto love
Give thy heart's steed the rein;
So--course the World over:
Then homeward again.

84. "WHATEVER THEY FIND THEY TAKE IT." (line 21)

There was a robber met a robber
On a rig of beans;
Says a robber to a robber,
"Can a robber tell a robber
What a robber means?"

And if not; why not? I had never seen this scrap of jingle until Mr. Ralph Hodgson gave it me. And the following version of an old game rhyme (with its rare "wood") first met my eye by the kindness of another friend, Mrs. Lyon:

"My Mother said that I never should
Play with the gypsies in the wood,
The wood was dark; the grass was green;
In came Sally with a tambourine.

I went to the sea--no ship to get across;
I paid ten shillings for a blind white horse;
I up on his back and was off in a crack,
Sally, tell my Mother I shall never come back."

86.

This lament for matchless Robin Hood, who should shine in a far better place than between "Beggars" and "Gilderoy," is the only rhyme about him in this collection. The fact is, try as I might, I could not make up my mind which I liked best of his old greenwood ballads in Mr. Nahum's book. The oldest and best were all in formidable spelling, the most of them were long, and maybe I was at last a little lazy. They are all to be found in Professor Child. And if leaving out the merry outlaw will persuade anyone to get and read _English and Scottish Ballads_, I shall have omitted him to good purpose.

87. "GILDEROY."

A pretty song about a monstrously ugly scoundrel, though handsome of feature. Gilderoy was a highwayman, sparing for his prey neither man nor woman, and if there were "roses" on his shoes, they were blood-red. At last fifty armed avengers surrounded his house at night and set on. He killed eight of them before he was captured; which, if true, was bonnie fighting. Nevertheless, such a villain he was that he was hanged, without trial, on a gibbet thirty feet high, and the bones of him (despite the last stanza of the ballad) dangled in chains forty feet above Leith Walk in Edinburgh for fifty years afterwards.

88. "AND HIS NAME WAS LITTLE BINGO."

In bounding health, it is said, a dog's nose and a woman's elbow are always cold. The reason for which is explained in a legend (referred to in Mrs. Wright's _Rustic Speech and Folk Lore_). It seems that in the midst of its forty days' riding on the Flood, the Ark one black night sprung a little leak. Father Noah having forgotten to bring his carpenter's bag on board, was at his wits' end to plug the hole in its timbers. In the beam of his rushlight he looked and he looked and he looked; and still the water came rilling in and in. His dog, Shafet, was of course standing by, head on one side, carefully watching his master. And Noah, by good chance, at last casting his eye in his direction, seized the faithful creature and, thrusting his nose into the leak, for a while stopped the flow. But Noah, a merciful man, and partial to animals, quickly perceived that in a few minutes poor Shafet would perish of suffocation, and as, by this time, his wife had descended into the fo'c'sle to see what he was about, he released his dog's nose, and, instead of it, stuffed in her charming elbow. Q.E.D.

But not all dogs are as ready--as Launce in _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ knew:

"_Launce_: 'Nay, 'twill bee this howre ere I have done weeping. All the kinde of the _Launces_, have this very fault: I have received my proportion, like the prodigious Sonne, and am going with Sir _Protheus_ to the Imperialls Court: I thinke _Crab_ my dog, be the sowrest natured dogge that lives: My Mother weeping: my Father wayling: my Sister crying: our Maid howling: our Catte wringing her hands, and all our house in a great perplexitie, yet did not this cruell-hearted _Curre_ shedde one teare: he is a stone, a very pibble stone, and has no more pitty in him then a dogge!"

90. "POOR OLD HORSE."

In the furrowed land
The toilsome and patient oxen stand.
Lifting the yoke-encumbered head,
With their dilated nostrils spread,

They silently inhale
The clover-scented gale,
And the vapours that arise
From the well-watered and smoking soil.

For this rest in the furrow after toil
Their large and lustrous eyes
Seem to thank the Lord,
More than man's spoken word.

H. W. LONGFELLOW

91. "AY ME, ALAS."

Messalina's monkey was, I should fancy, of the kind called a marmoset, "blacke and greene." "Their agilitie and manner of doing is admirable, for that they seeme to have reason and discourse to go upon trees, wherein they seeme to imitate birds." There are so few of these far fair cousins of ours in poetry that I cannot forbear adding a note of Mr. Nahum's from Sir John Maundeville's _Travels_.

"... From that City, (that is to say Cassay--the City of Heaven), men go by Water, solacing and disporting themselves, till they come to an Abbey of Monks--that is fast by--that be good religious men after their Faith and Law. In that Abbey is a great Garden and a fair, where be many Trees of diverse manner of Fruits. And in this Garden, is a little Hill, full of delectable Trees. In that Hill and in that Garden be many divers Beasts, as of Apes, Marmosets, Baboons, and many other divers Beasts. And every day, when the Monks of this Abbey have eaten, the Almoner has the remnants carried forth into the Garden, and he smiteth on the Garden Gate with a Clicket of Silver that he holdeth in his hand, and anon all the Beasts of the Hill and of divers places of the Garden, come out, a 3000 or a 4000 of them; they approach as if they were poor men come a-begging; and the Almoner's servants give them the remnants, in fair Vessels of Silver, clean over gilt. And when they have eaten, the Monk smiteth eftsoons on the Garden Gate with the Clicket; and then anon all the Beasts return again to their places that they came from. And they say that these Beasts be Souls of worthy men, that resemble in likeness the Beasts that be fair: and therefore they give them meat for the love of God."

92. "O HAPPY FLY."

And here is another of these creatures--"a sleepy fly that rubs its hands," in Mr. Hardy's words--William Blake's:

Little Fly,
Thy summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance,
And drink, and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want
Of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live
Or if I die.

But the Happy Fly is nowadays gone so dismally out of favour that it would perhaps be prudent to draw attention from him to Lovelace's "Grasshopper":

O thou that swing'st upon the waving hair
Of some well-fillèd oaten beard,
Drunk every night with a delicious tear
Dropt thee from heaven, where thou wert reared!

The joys of earth and air are thine entire,
That with thy feet and wings dost hop and fly;
And when thy poppy works, thou dost retire
To thy carved acorn-bed to lie.

Up with the day, the Sun thou welcom'st then,
Sport'st in the gilt plaits of his beams,
And all these merry days mak'st merry men,
Thyself, and melancholy streams.

93. "LO, THE BRIGHT AIR ALIVE WITH DRAGONFLIES."

There is an old dialect children's rhyme about these lightlike shimmering _stingless_ insects:

Snakestanger, snakestanger, vlee aal about the brooks;
Sting aal the bad bwoys that vor the fish looks,
Bút let the góod bwoys ketch aál the vish they can,
And car'm away whooam to vry 'em in a pan;
Bread and butter they shall yeat at zupper wi' their vish
While aal the littull bad bwoys shall only lick the dish.

And here is yet another rhyme on the _Firefly_ (from Du Bartas), which I have borrowed (with other passages as curious) from a mine of such things, _Animal Lore of Shakespeare's Time_, by Miss Emma Phipson:

"New-Spain's _cucuio_, in his forehead brings
Two burning lamps, two underneath his wings:
Whose shining rayes serve oft, in darkest night,
Th' imbroderer's hand in royall works to light:
Th' ingenious turner, with a wakefull eye,
To polish fair his purest ivory:
The usurer to count his glistring treasures:
The learned scribe to limn his golden measures."

"There is a kind of little animal of the size of prawnes," says Champlain of these tiny winged things, "which fly by night, and make such light in the air that one would say that they were so many little candles. If a man had three or four of these little creatures, which are not larger than a filbert, he could read as well at night as with a wax light."

95. "THE SALE OF THE PET LAMB."

"The Pet Lamb" by William Wordsworth is certainly of a more delicate light and colour and music than this poem. But it is much better known. And there is a secret something in the words of Mary Howitt's that wins one at once to love the writer of it.

98.

This is another translation by Kuno Meyer from the ancient Irish--just the bare bones, that is, of a poem that in its original tongue must have been many times more musical with rhyme and gentle echo and cadence; for the craft of Gaelic verse was an exceedingly delicate one.

I like it for the sake of its cat, its monk, and its age, but chiefly because it reminds me of my own far-away days at Thrae--brooding up there in solitude and silence over Mr. Nahum's books.

As for "white Pangur" and his kind, "it is needlesse," says Topsell, "to spend any time about [Puss's] loving nature to man, how she flattereth by rubbing her skinne against ones legges, how she whurleth with her voyce, having as many tunes as turnes; for she hath one voice to beg and to complain, another to testifie her delight and pleasure, another among her own kind by flattring, by hissing, by spitting, insomuch as some have thought that they have a peculiar intelligible language among themselves." So also John de Trevisa, in 1387: "The catte is a beaste of uncerten heare (hair) and colour; for some catte is white, some rede, some blacke, some skewed (piebald) and speckled in the fete and in the face and in the eares. He is a beste in youth, swyfte, plyaunte, and mery, and lepeth and reseth (rusheth) on all thynge that is tofore him; and is led by a strawe and playeth therwith. He is a right hevy beast in aege, and ful slepy, and lyeth slily in wait for myce. And he maketh a ruthefull noyse and gastfull, whan one proffreth to fyghte with another, and he falleth on his owne fete whan he falleth out of hye places."

The writings of the ancient Egyptians show that, far from detesting to wet his paws, he would then _swim_ in pursuit of fish. They painted a cat for the sound "miaou" in their hieroglyphics; gazed into his changing moon-like eyes and revered him; and embalmed him when dead.

Having borrowed him from Egypt, the Romans brought him to Britain (though we already had a wilding of our own, _Felis Catus_'), with the ass, the goat, the rabbit, the peacock, not to speak of the cherry, the walnut, the crocus, the tulip, the leek, the cucumber, etc. The Monk's Pangur, then, came of a long lineage.

So valuable were cats in _Wales_ in the eleventh century (two or three hundred years after Pangur), that their price was fixed by law: for a blind kitten a penny; for a kitten with its eyes open, twopence; for a cat of one mouse, fourpence, and so on. And to kill one of the Prince's granary cats meant payment of a fine of as much wheat as would cover up its body when suspended by its tail. In Scotland there has long been a complete Clan of Cats--apart from the witches. As for the Cheshire Cat, he grins, I imagine, not because he has nine lives, is said to be melancholy, may look at a king, and has nothing to do with Catgut, Cat's cradle, and Cat-i'-the-pan, but because he has read in a dictionary that Dick Whittington sailed off to the Isle of Rats, not with a Cat, but with _acat_ or _achat_, meaning goods for trading--Coals! Long may he grin! How but one country Gib or Tom may befriend the brightfaced Heartsease (so sturdy a little dear that it will bloom at burning noonday in a gravel path) Charles Darwin tells in his "_Origin of Species_," p. 57.

His "loving nature" to creatures _other_ than man and the heartsease is referred to in the following old Scots nursery rhyme:

There was a wee bit mousikie,
That lived in Gilberaty, O,
It couldna get a bite o' cheese,
For cheetie-poussie-cattie, O.

It said unto the cheesikie,
"Oh fain wad I be at ye, O,
If 't were na for the cruel paws
O' cheetie-poussie-cattie, O."

99. "ON WHAT WINGS DARE HE ASPIRE."

The verb _dare_ (I gather from Webster) was once used only in the past tense, the preterite; for "dare he" therefore in this poem we should now write _dared he_.

100.

Andrew Marvell has three rare charms--his poetry is wholly his own; it is as delightful as the sound of his name; and the face in his portrait is as enchanting as either.

101-2.

The Phillip of these two poems is, I suppose, the hedge-sparrow or dunnock, that gentle and happy little cousin of the warblers--as light and lovely in voice as they are on the wing. As everyone knows, a bullfinch can be taught to whistle like a baker's boy, and will become so jealous of his mistress that he will hiss and ruff with rage at every stranger. Jackdaws and magpies, too, will become friends to a friend. But a lady whom I have the happiness to know has a nightingale that was hatched in captivity, and so has never shared either the delights or the dangers of the wild. So easy is he in her company that he will perch on her pen-tip as she sits at table, and sing as if out of a garden in Damascus.

102. "HE WOULD CHIRP."

"... As she (St. Douceline) sat at meat, if anyone brought her a flower, a bird, a fruit, or any other thing that gave her pleasure, then she fell straightway into an ecstasy, and was caught up to Him Who had made these fair creatures.... One day she heard a lonely sparrow sing, whereupon she said to her companions, 'How lonely is the song of that bird!' and in the twinkling of an eye she was in an ecstasy, drawn up to God by the bird's voice...."

The above is from _A Medieval Garner_, and this, from a Note to "A Saint's Tragedy," by Margaret L. Woods: When the blessed Elizabeth "had been ill twelve days and more, one of her maids sitting by her bed heard in her throat a very sweet sound, ... and saying, 'Oh, my mistress, how sweetly thou didst sing!' she answered, 'I tell thee, I heard a little bird between me and the wall sing merrily; who with his sweet song so stirred me up that I could not but sing myself.'"

"LOVING REDBREASTS." (line 31)

My dear, do you know
How a long time ago,
Two poor little children,
Whose names I don't know,
Were stolen away
On a fine summer's day,
And left in a wood,
As I've heard people say.

And when it was night,
So sad was their plight,
The sun it went down,
And the moon gave no light!
They sobbed and they sighed,
And they bitterly cried,
And the poor little things,
They laid down and died.

And when they were dead,
The robins so red
Brought strawberry leaves,
And over them spread;
And all the day long,
They sang them this song,--
Poor babes in the wood!
Poor babes in the wood!
And don't you remember
The babes in the wood?

105. "'TIS A NOTE OF ENCHANTMENT."

It was a note of enchantment such as this that haunted the memory of Edward Thomas when he was writing his poem called _The Unknown Bird._ I give only a few lines, but the rest of the beautiful thing may be found in his _Poems_:

Oftenest when I heard him I was alone,
Nor could I ever make another hear.
La-la-la! he called seeming far-off--
As if a cock crowed past the edge of the world,
As if the bird or I were in a dream....

... O wild-raving winds! if you ever do roar
By the house and the elms from where I've a-come,
Breathe up at the window, or call at the door,
And tell you've a found me a-thinking of home."

WILLIAM BARNES

107. "LIKE A LADY BRIGHT."

"They say," says Ophelia, "they say the owle was a Baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your Table." And thus runs the story:

Our Saviour being footsore, weary and hungry one darkening evening, went into a baker's shop and asked for bread. The oven being then hot and all prepared for the baking, the mistress of the shop cut off a good-sized piece of the risen dough to bake for him. At this her fair, greedy daughter, who sate watching what was forward from a little window, upbraided her mother for this wasting of profit on such an outcast; and taking the platter out of her hands, she chopped the piece of dough into half, and half, and half again. Nevertheless when this mean small lump was put into the oven, it presently began miraculously to rise and swell until it exceeded a full quartern of wheaten bread. In alarm at this strange sight the daughter--her round blue eyes largely eyeing the stranger in the dim light--turned on her mother, and cried out: "O Mother, Mother, _Heugh, heugh, heugh_." "As thou hast spoken," said our Saviour, "so be thou: child of the Night." Whereupon, the poor creature, feathered and in the likeness of an owl, fled forth into the dark towards the woodside.

"109. THE WHITE OWL."

When night is o'er the wood
And moon-scared watch-dogs howl,
Comes forth in search of food
The snowy mystic owl.
His soft, white, ghostly wings
Beat noiselessly the air
Like some lost soul that hopelessly
Is mute in its despair.

But now his hollow note
Rings cheerless through the glade
And o'er the silent moat
He flits from shade to shade.
He hovers, swoops and glides
O'er meadows, moors and streams;
He seems to be some fantasy--
A ghostly bird of dreams.

Why dost thou haunt the night?
Why dost thou love the moon
When other birds delight
To sing their joy at noon?
Art thou then crazed with love,
Or is't for some fell crime
That thus thou flittest covertly
At this unhallowed time?

F. J. PATMORE

"111. HER SMALL SOUL." (line 23)

_Smallest_ of all shrill souls among the English birds is the wren, but she has a remote relative that dwells in the dark and enormous forests of South America, the Humming Bird, and simply for their own sakes I cannot resist borrowing two more fragments from Miss Phipson's _Animal Lore_. The first comes out of Purchas's _Pilgrimes_, and was written by Antonia Galvano of New Spain:

"There be certaine small birds named _vicmalim_, their bil is small and long. They live of the dew, and the juyce of flowers and roses. Their feathers bee small and of divers colours. They be greatly esteemed to worke gold with. They die or sleepe every yeere in the moneth of October, sitting upon a little bough in a warme and close place: they revive or wake againe in the moneth of April after that the flowers be sprung, and therefore they call them the revived birds--_Vicmalim_."

The second is Gonzalo Ferdinando de Oviedo's--his very name a string of gems:

"... I have seene that one of these birds with her nest put into a paire of gold weights [scales] altogether, hath waide no more then a _tomini_, which are in poise 24 graines, with the feathers, without the which she would have waied somewhat less. And doubtlesse, when I consider the finenesse of the clawes and feete of these birds, I know not whereunto I may better liken them then to the little birds which the lymners of bookes are accustomed to paint on the margent of church bookes, and other bookes of divine service. Their feathers are of manie faire colours, as golden, yellow, and greene, beside other variable colours. Their beake is verie long for the proportion of their bodies, and as fine and subtile as a sowing needle. They are verie hardy, so that when they see a man clime the tree where they have their nests, they fly at his face, and strike him in the eyes, comming, going, and returning with such swiftnesse, that no man should lightly beleeve it that had not seene it...."

"112. IT CAUGHT HIS IMAGE"

And Shelley:

... I cannot tell my joy, when o'er a lake
Upon a drooping bough with nightshade twined,
I saw two azure halcyons clinging downward
And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries,
With quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay
Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky....

Anyone so happy as to be able to remember Mary Coleridge as a friend, will agree that to have seen her eyes is to have seen her own pool and Shelley's lake, imaging such lovely flitting halcyons.

114. "KING PANDION HE IS DEAD."

A wild and dreadful legend is hidden here--of a King who wronged his Queen and her sister, daughters of Pandion, and how they avenged themselves upon him, sacrificing his son to their hatred. That Queen, goes this old tale, became a nightingale, her sister a swallow (crimson still dying the feathers of her throat), the evil king a hoopoe, and the firstborn was raised to life again a pheasant.

115. "A SPARHAWK PROUD"

--a little bird but of a noble family. Listen, at least, to Auceps, the Faulkner or Falconer, in "_The Compleat Angler_." [I have inserted a few full stops in a sentence that has none] "... And first, for the Element that I use to trade in, which is the Air, an Element of more worth than weight, an Element that doubtless exceeds both the Earth and Water; for though I sometimes deal in both; yet the Air is most properly mine, I and my Hawks use that most, and it yields us most recreation. It stops not the high soaring of my noble generous _Falcon_; in it she ascends to such an height, as the dull eyes of beasts and fish are not able to reach to; their bodies are too gross for such high elevations. In the Air my troops of Hawks soar up on high, and when they are lost in the sight of men, then they attend upon and converse with the gods, therefore I think my _Eagle_ is so justly styled, Joves servant in Ordinary. And that very Falcon, that I am now going to see, deserves no meaner a title, for she usually in her flight endangers her self, (like the son of _Daedalus_), to have her wings scorched by the Suns heat, she flyes so near it. But her mettle makes her careless of danger, for she then heeds nothing, but makes her nimble Pinions cut the fluid air, and so makes her high way over the steepest mountains and deepest rivers, and in her glorious carere looks with contempt upon those high Steeples and magnificent Palaces which we adore and wonder at; from which height I can make her to descend by a word from my mouth (which she both knows and obeys), to accept of meat from my hand, to own me for her Master, to go home with me, and be willing the next day to afford me the like recreation...."

120. "COME WARY ONE."

... Tak any brid,[213] and put it in a cage,
And do al thyn entente and thy corage
To fostre it tendrely with mete and drinke,
Of allè deyntees that thou canst bithinke,
And keep it al-so clenly as thou may;
Al-though his cage of gold be never so gay,
Yet hath this brid, by twenty thousand fold,
Lever in a forest, that is rude and cold,
Gon eté wormés and seich wrecchednesse.
For ever this brid wol doon his bisinesse
To escape out of his cagė, if he may;
His libertee this brid desireth ay....

GEOFFREY CHAUCER

When I was a child of eight or nine I had a kind of passion for sparrows, and used to set traps for them; but even if I succeeded in taking one alive, which was not always, I could never persuade it to live in a cage above a day or two, however much I pampered it. It drooped and died. Then, like a young crocodile, I occasionally shed tears. One fine morning, I remember, I visited a distant trap and, as usual, all but stopped breathing at discovering that it was "down." Very cautiously edging in my fingers towards the captive, I was startled out of my wits by a sudden prodigious skirring of wings, and lo and behold, I had caught--and lost--a starling. He fled away twenty yards or so, and perched on a hillock. I see him now, his feathers glistening in the sun, and his sharp head turned towards me, his eyes looking back at me, as if foe at foe. And that reminds me of the Griffons--the guardians of the mines of the one-eyed Arimaspians.

"... From that land go men toward the land of Bacharie, where be full evil folk and full cruel.... In that country be many griffounes, more plentiful than in any other country. Some men say that they have the body upward as an eagle, and beneath as a lion; and truly they say sooth that they be of that shape. But a griffoun hath the body more great, and is more strong, than eight lions, of such lions as be on this side of the world; and larger and stronger than an hundred eagles, such as we have amongst us. For a griffoun there will bear flying to his nest a great horse, if he may find him handy, or two oxen yoked together, as they go at the plough. For he hath his talons so long and so broad and great upon his feet, as though they were homes of great oxen, or of bugles (bullocks), or of kine; so that men make cups of them, to drink out of. And of their ribs, and the quills of their wings, men make bows full strong, to shoot with arrows and bow-bolts...."

But a griffoun is only a gigantic starling, so to speak; and it's a pity mine and I were enemies. "If a sparrow come before my window," wrote John Keats in one of his letters, "I take part in its existence, and pick about the gravel." Brick-traps are little help in this.

A Robin Redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a rage ...

A Skylark wounded in the wing,
A Cherubim does cease to sing ...

The wild Deer wandering here and there
Keeps the Human Soul from care ...

He who shall hurt the little Wren
Shall never be beloved by Men ...

The wanton Boy that kills the Fly
Shall feel the Spider's enmity ...

Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly,
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh ...

The Beggar's Dog and Widow's Cat,
Feed them, and thou wilt grow fat ...

To see a World in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.

WILLIAM BLAKE

... What is heaven? a globe of dew,
Filling in the morning new
Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken
On an unimagined world:
Constellated suns unshaken,
Orbits measureless, are furled
In that frail and fading sphere,
With ten millions gathered there,
To tremble, gleam, and disappear.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

The men who wrote these words, truly and solemnly meant them. They are not mere pretty flowers of the fancy, but the tough piercing roots of the tree of life that grew within their minds.

126. "COME UNTO THESE YELLOW SANDS."

This poem and many others I copied out of Mr. Nahum's book in their original spelling. At first I found the reading of some of them very troublesome. It was like looking at a dried-up flower or beetle. But there the things were; and after a good deal of trouble I not only began to read them more easily, but grew to like them thus for their own sake. First, because this was as they were actually written, before our English printers agreed to spell alike; and next, because the old words with their look of age became a pleasure to me in themselves. It was like watching the dried-up flower or beetle actually and as if by a magic of the mind coming to life. Besides, many of Shakespeare's small poems were already known to me. It touched them with newness to see them (though indeed _he_ never so saw them), as they appeared (seven years after his death), in the pages of the famous folio volume of his _Plays_ that was printed in 1623 by Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount.

Not only that; for it is curious too to see how in the old days English was constantly changing--its faded words falling like dead leaves from a tree, and new ones appearing. In a book which William Caxton printed as far back even as 1490, he says: "And certainly our language now used varieth far from that which was used and spoken when I was born. For we Englishmen be born under the domination of the moon, which is never steadfast but ever wavering, waxing one season and waneth and decreaseth another season." So in our own day words, like human beings, come into the world and pass away: and many gradually change their meanings.

For if the spelling of a word alters its effect on the eye, it must also affect the _mind_ of the reader; and I must confess that "my lovynge deare," looks to me to tell of somebody more lovable even than "my loving dear." And what about shoogar-plummes, cleere greye eies, the murrkie fogghe, the moones enravysshynge?

And what about--

"Let's goe to Bedde," says Sleepihed;
"Tarrie a while," says Slowe;
"Putte on the Panne," says Greedie Nanne,
"Wee'll suppe afore wee goe."

Not that I have _always_ kept to the old spellings. I have followed my fancy; and if anyone would like to see an old poem in its first looks that is here printed in our own way, all he need do is to go back to the book in which it first appeared.

128. "SHEE CARRIES ME ABOVE THE SKIE."

... This palace standeth in the air,
By necromancy placèd there,
That it no tempest needs to fear,
Which way soe'er it blow it;
And somewhat southward toward the noon,
Whence lies a way up to the moon,
And thence the Fairy can as soon
Pass to the earth below it.

The walls of spiders' legs are made
Well mortisèd and finely laid;
He was the master of his trade
It curiously that builded:
The windows of the eyes of cats,
And for the roof, instead of slats,
Is covered with the skins of bats,
With moonshine that are gilded....

MICHAEL DRAYTON

129. "WHO CALLS?"

... Such a soft floating witchery of sound
As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land,
Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed wing!...

S. T. COLERIDGE

133. "FOR FEAR OF LITTLE MEN."

"Terrestrial devils," says Robert Burton, "are those Lares, Genii, Fauns, Satyrs, Wood-nymphs, Foliots, Fairies, Robin Goodfellows, Trulli, etc., which as they are most conversant with men, so they do them most harm.... These are they that dance on heaths and greens ... and leave that green circle, which we commonly find in plain fields, which others hold to proceed from a meteor falling, or some accidental rankness of the ground, so nature sports herself; they are sometimes seen by old women and children.... Paracelsus reckons up many places in Germany, where they do usually walk in little coats, some two feet long. A bigger kind there is of them called with us hobgoblins, and Robin Goodfellows, that would in those superstitious times grind corn for a mess of milk, cut wood, or do any manner of drudgery work. They would mend old irons in those Aeolian isles of Lipari, in former ages, and have been often seen and heard.... Dithmarus Bleskenius, in his description of Iceland, reports for a certainty, that almost in every family they have yet some such familiar spirits.... Another sort of these there are, which frequent forlorn houses.... They will make strange noises in the night, howl sometimes pitifully, and then laugh again, cause great flame and sudden lights, fling stones, rattle chains, shave men, open doors and shut them, fling down platters, stools, chests, sometimes appear in the likeness of hares, crows, black dogs, etc." ...

135.

So too with Hazel Dorn, in the following poem by Mr. Bernard Sleigh, who has most kindly allowed me to print it here for the first time.

They stole her from the well beside the wood.
Ten years ago as village gossips tell;
One Beltane-eve when trees were all a-bud
In copse and fell.

Ominous, vast, the moon rose full and red
Behind dim hills; no leaf stirred in the glen
That breathless eve, when she was pixy-led
Beyond our ken.

For she had worn no rowan in her hair,--
Nor set the cream-bowl by the kitchen door,--
Nor whispered low the pagan faery prayer
Of ancient lore;

But trod that daisied ring in hose and shoon,
To hear entranced, their elf-bells round her ring;
The wizard spells about her wail and croon
With gathering string.

Swiftly her arms they bound in gossamer,
With elvish lures they held her soul in thrall;
With wizard sorceries enveloped her
Past cry or call.

A passing shepherd caught his breath to see
A golden mist of moving wings and lights
Swirl upwards past the red moon eeriely
To starlit heights.

While far off carollings half drowned a cry,
Mournful, remote, of "Mother, Mother dear,"
Floating across the drifting haze,--a sigh
"Farewell, Farewell!"

In the small hours of Beltane or May Day, vast fires have been wont to be kindled on the hills of the Highlands--a custom old as the Druids. Mr. Gilbert Sheldon tells me that as lately as 1899 he saw the hills round Glengariff ablaze with them. They must be set a-flame with what is called need-fire. And need-fire is made by nine men twisting a wimble of wood in a balk of oak until the friction makes sparks fly. With these they ignite dry agaric, a fungus that grows on birch-trees, and soon the blaze is reddening the countryside under the night-sky. Need-fire in a window-nook or carried in a lantern is--like iron--an invincible defence against witches and witchcraft. Beltane cakes--to be eaten whilst squatting on the hills, or dancing and watching the fire--are made out of a caudle of eggs, butter, oatmeal and milk.

"NO ROWAN IN HER HAIR."

So potent is the flower or berry or wood of the rowan or witchwood or quicken or whicken-tree or mountain ash against the wiles of the elf-folk, that dairymaids use it for cream-stirrers and cowherds for a switch.

Rowan-tree and red thread
Gar the Witches tyne their speed.

136. "TRUE THOMAS."

There are four copies in handwriting--two of them written about 1450--of a rhymed romance telling how Thomas in his youth, while dreaming daydreams under the Eildon Tree, was met and greeted by the Queen of fair Elfland. The ballad on p. 127 has been passed on from mouth to mouth.

Up to our own grandmothers' day, at least, this Thomas Rhymour of Ercildoune--a village nor far distant from where the Leader joins the Tweed--was famous as a Wise One and a Seer (a See-er--with the inward eye). He lived seven centuries ago, between 1210 and 1297. Years after he had returned from Elfland--as the ballad tells--while he sat feasting in his Castle, news was brought to him that a hart and a hind, having issued out of the forest, were to be seen stepping fair and softly down the stony street of the town, to the marvel of the people. At this, Thomas at once rose from among his guests; left the table; made down to the street; followed after these strange summoners: and was seen again no more.

"Ilka tett," line 7, means every twist or plait; a "fairlie," stanza II, is a wonder, mystery, marvel; and the "coat" in the last stanza, being of "even cloth," was finer than the finest _napless_ damask.

So, too, Young Tamlane, when a boy "just turned of nine," was carried off by the Elfin Queen: