Chapter II (2)

“Then,” said Mrs. Birdwood, “it was a mess. I am glad it was all spilt.” She heaved a sigh. “Oh, Josiah, how could you?”

“I did my level best,” he replied. “Now look here. Do you see that parcel? Open it. It is a silk gown—my Christmas present to you, all ready for you to wear to church to-morrow. It was fitted on Maggie Finch, as she is your size and shape.”

With trembling fingers Mrs. Birdwood opened the parcel and drew forth a really gorgeous silk dress.

“Oh!” she said, “and that Finch——”

“She served as dummy on which to fit it, you know.”

“And that was all that took you to Miss Thomas’s?”

“What more do you want? Not an evening dress also—low-breasted and shoulder-straps?”

“Oh! oh! oh! Josiah, I have been so wicked. I thought—but never mind what I thought. I intended to run away and desert you—fancy!—for ever.”

“Pshaw! you couldn’t do it.”

“And to take up with a commercial!”

“My dear, you couldn’t do it.”

“And his name Fisher.”

“Not a humming-bird, but a king-fisher, I suppose.”

“But in the hosiery and haberdashery line.”

“You couldn’t do it.”

“I really believe you are right,” said Mrs. Birdwood, throwing herself on his neck and bursting into tears.

“There, there, dear; that will suffice,” said Josiah.

“And,” asked his wife, “what did you think when I disappeared?”

“I didn’t think anything about it. I knew it was all right.”

“And what have you been doing without me?”

“Well, I have been trying to make up my mind whether to have a span or a lean-to conservatory.”

“You are positively incorrigible.”

“Then I tried my hand on the plum-pudding and failed. So now we shall have to do without.”

“No, ten thousand times no,” replied Mrs. Birdwood triumphantly. She went to a corner cupboard, unlocked it, produced a tin, took off the lid. “Here—here is a real plum-pudding for our happy Christmas dinner.”

“And,” said Mr. Birdwood, “I bought a sprig of mistletoe at the door, and will kiss you under it.”

A CHRISTMAS TREE

A CHRISTMAS TREE

Tom Mountstephen was dressed in his very best—a black coat, a tie of blue satin studded with veritable planets, and in it a new zodiacal sign—a fox in full career, that formed the head of a pin. Tom’s collar was so stiffly starched and so high that to turn his head and look over the top of that Wall of China was impossible. If he desired to see that which lay to his right or left, he was compelled to turn his entire body, as on a pivot.

Tom was unaccustomed to such a “rig out,” and therefore did not look happy in it. Tom in his workaday suit, of the colour of the earth, with a string tied under his knees, gathering the trouser together, and with a dusty slouched wideawake stuck at the back of his head, but on one side of that, and with his great, honest, cheery face, ever with a smile on the lips and a dancing light in his eyes—thus Tom was picturesque, delightful. But Tom in his Sunday best did not look at his best.

The day was Christmas Eve, and there was to be a supper with a dance at the Hall, given by the squire to his workmen and their families. Tom was on his way to this, with a face that shone with yellow soap and the friction of a rough towel; and not only so, but he was to attend thither Isabella Frowd, the belle of the village, and one with whom, as every one said, he had made it up, and a handsome couple they would be. “Bless y’,” said Tom, when folks asked him when it would be, “Lor’ bless y’, you know more about it than me! Go and ax Bella. She, maybe, can fix it. ’Tain’t my place, you know!” And then he laughed, and thought he had said a good thing.

Tom Mountstephen was an active, intelligent young fellow, serving as under-gardener, getting a respectable wage, and there was positively no reason why he should not marry; but he was inert in just this one particular, or unable to make up his mind.

Isabella was three years his junior, with a very delicate skin and lovely rosy complexion, fair hair, and forget-me-not blue eyes; somewhat doll-like, save in this, that a doll is never self-conscious, and self-consciousness spoke out of every look of Bella’s eyes, every turn of her head, every motion of her body. But was she to be blamed? I think not. The squire always had a pleasant word to give her; the young ladies at the Hall made much of her; every one with one voice declared that she was a beauty and the pride of the village. Under such circumstances she must have been endowed with unusual common-sense and strength of character not to have become vain and self-satisfied.

Bella lived at the Lodge, and it was her practice to open the gates when carriages drove up; and on such occasions she was quite aware that the ladies, and above all the gentlemen, looked at her, and when, immediately after passing, she saw them turn to each other and say something, then she was confident that they said: “What a pretty girl!” And being obliged to keep herself neat and nicely dressed did much towards making her attractive.

It was understood, or half-understood, that Tom would call at the Lodge on his way to the Hall and pick up Isabella, and go on with her. It was in this way. The day before, Tom had said to her: “More wu’nerful things may hap, Bell, than that I should come and fetch you away to the Hall to-morrow, and then you’ll give me the fust dance and five arter.”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t mind,” she had replied; and so it was understood that he should go for her, and that she should expect him.

“Why, whatever be you about, Polly?” exclaimed Tom Mountstephen, as he came upon a tall, pale girl with pick and spade over her shoulder.

That girl was Mary Mauduit, who lived with a frail, suffering little sister in a cottage, and supported herself by needlework and starching and washing. She had been a teacher in the school, but had been compelled to resign, owing to her sister’s health. These two were together, and they were orphans. The child could not be left.

“Why, Tom, how fine you be! Where be you a-going to?”

That is the way in the country: a question begets another before it is answered.

“I be going to the Hall; there’s grand goings on there to-night.”

“So I’ve heerd, but I didn’t mind it. And I reckon that Bella will be there too?”

“For certain. But what are you after with pick and shovel, I’d like for to know?”

“If you must know everything, Tom, it’s for little Bess.”

“Not going to dig her grave?”

Tom could have bitten his tongue out—he was mad with himself for uttering such a question. It had bounced out of his mouth without thought, and now he saw the colour rush into Mary’s face, her eyes fill, and her lips tremble.

“Hang me for an idjot!” said Tom; “I didn’t mean it; it’s just like my ways, Poll. I want to say summut smart, and just say the wrong thing always. But what be you about wi’ them tools?”

“It’s this, Tom: I thought I’d give little Bessie a Christmas tree. I’ve got a few trifles to hang on it—some oranges and nuts and a needle-case and so; and I got Mrs. Wonnacott to come in for an hour and sit wi’ she whilst I went to the plantation after a tree; the squire gave me leave,” she added in explanation and self-exculpation.

“But, dear heart alive! you don’t want pick and spade for gettin’ up a young spruce! You want the chopper or a little handsaw.”

“I don’t wish to kill the tree. I thought if I get her up by the roots I could plant her again in the garden, and she’d grow up to a big tree, and it ’ud be something to look at—every year growin’ bigger.”

“What sized tree do you want?”

“Not such a terrible big one. Just middlin’ like. I can’t have her too small, as I ain’t got no tapers like the tiny red and yaller and green ’uns they had up to the Parsonage last Christmas. I’ve only got bits o’ common candle ends, and they’d be too heavy for a mite of a tree.”

“And how will you bring back your tree and the mores (roots), Mary, wi’ soil, and pick, and all together?”

“I reckon I can make two journeys.”

“You can’t make two for the tree!”

Mary stood silent.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Polly. I’ll off with this dratted collar and put aside my new coat, and away with you to the plantation. If you go and mistake and have up a deodara or a douglas instead o’ a spruce, the squire’ll kick and scream.”

“You’re too kind, Tom; but you’ll be late for the entertainment.”

“Oh, that’s nothing—not two minutes! She’ll wait.”

He did not explain, but Polly understood that _she_ signified Bella. But she did not know that it had been understood that Tom was to fetch the pretty girl from the Lodge.

“I daresay you’ll let me put my coat and that dratted collar in your cottage? Lor’, Polly, I’m like a donkey in a pound when I’ve that there collar on, jumpin’ up and down and tryin’ to look over the wall and clear it if I can!”

A couple of minutes later Tom, divested of collar and coat, with pick and spade over his shoulder, was attending Mary Mauduit, when the head-gardener passed. He was a Scotchman, and a widower—a man of much self-confidence and independence.

“What—off, Mr. Mountstephen?”

The gardener addressed his subordinates with a “mister.” It made himself more important; marked the distance between them more emphatically.

“Yes, Mr. MacSweeny; just to take up a young spruce for she.”

“Ta-ta!” said the Scotchman condescendingly, and passed on.

“He’s been a bit snuffy wi’ me,” said Tom confidingly to his companion. “What it’s all about I can’t tell. Perhaps he guesses I knows too much; but Lor’! I’m not one to blab.”

“Perhaps he’s a little jealous,” said Mary slily; “folk do say he has been thinking about Bella. But there—’tain’t no good dreaming of going against _you_, Tom.”

“I don’t give no heed to them tales. People will talk. Besides, if he were lookin’ out for a Missus MacSweeny, I reckon he’d go after widders. Ain’t he a widderer hisself?”

“That don’t follow,” said Mary.

“Don’t it? Then it ort!” retorted Tom.

“There—don’t be snuffy wi’ me!” said Mary.

The getting up of a suitable tree and its transport to the cottage of the Mauduits was not a matter of two minutes, nor of half-an-hour.

Tom was aware that Isabella would have been kept waiting, but he relieved his mind with the consideration that she would take it for granted that he was detained by some business, and would walk on alone to the Hall; the distance was trifling. He could explain matters when he arrived, and she would at once understand the circumstances.

“I don’t see how you’re going to stick them candle ends on to the branches,” said Tom.

“I shall heat hairpins and run ’em through.”

“That’s fine!” exclaimed Mountstephen derisively; “and when the candles be burnin’ the flame’ll heat the hairpins red-hot, and they’ll melt the composite, and there’ll be a pretty mess, and the candle ends falling about on all sides and firing everything! I hope you’re insured!”

“I can manage it.”

“No, you can’t, excuse me, Polly. I reckon mother at home has got some bits of tapers from the Parsonage tree last year. Her was up there helping, and they throwed the tree away when done with; and her’s a saving woman and can’t abide no waste, and I know her pulled off and kept the remains of candles. They have wires for fastening of them on. If you don’t mind my leaving that collar here—you won’t let nothin’ damage it, nor let the cat get at it, will you, Polly?—I’ll run home and see what mother have got. I couldn’t run in that collar; ’twould be sheer impossible!”

So, instead of going on to the Hall, here was another detention. But Tom was a good-natured lad; he was not _needed_ at the Hall, and here at the cottage he was of real assistance.

After the young man had been away nearly a quarter of an hour, he returned with a small box full of portions of tapers, and some entire, and sundry little sparkling ornaments that had furnished the tree the preceding Christmas, and had been cast aside, but saved by the prudent and frugal Mrs. Mountstephen.

“And here, Polly,” said Tom, “here’s a spotted dog in china, as stood on my mantelshelf, that little Bessie be welcome to. You can set it under the tree. Now I’ll clap the tree mores into a tub, and then I’m off to the Hall.”

When Tom, reinvested in collar and coat, arrived at the Lodge and inquired for Isabella, he learnt, which did not much surprise him, that she had gone forward. So he went to the Hall by himself, not greatly concerned at being late. He knew that all who were invited would not be able to arrive punctually. There would be two “sitting-downs” to supper, and he would be in time for the second.

When he arrived, he looked about him for Isabella, and saw her seated beside the Scotch gardener, who was helping her to trifle.

With a little difficulty he made his way behind the chairs, in and out among the servants who were waiting on the guests, to where Isabella was dipping into the trifle.

“So sorry, Bella; I couldn’t help it,” said he.

“De-li-ci-ous!” said Bella.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I was speaking to Mr. MacSweeny.”

“I only want to say that I was unavoidably detained.”

“The jam is strawberry,” said Bella.

“Whole strawberries, from our own garden,” said MacSweeny.

“I’m very fond of strawberries,” observed Bella.

“So am I,” said the Scotch gardener. “Have some more. I’ll remember you in the strawberry time and send you up the first dish I ripen. Of course, I ripen ’em early—in the greenhouse. You shall have some—as soon as they are fit to be picked.”

“How good of you, Mr. MacSweeny!”

“Not at all; I live but to oblige, and _you_”—he looked round at her—“for you I would do anything.”

“Bella,” said Tom over her chair, “I really could not help it.”

“Will you please to move, Mr. Mountstephen; you are jogging my chair.”

“Do you like grapes?” asked MacSweeny. “I rather flatter myself on my grapes. I am able to keep them, too, so well. My large white Muscats—but there, you shall have some. I’ll send you up a really choice bunch. I think the second sitters down are coming in now. Miss Isabella, if you have done, we will rise and let the others take our places. Here, you, Mountstephen, can have my seat. If you have brought Mary Mauduit I have no doubt she can have Miss Frowd’s chair.”

Poor Tom did not enjoy his supper, and that over, when he sought Isabella to tender his excuses, she deliberately turned her back on him. It was clear MacSweeny had made mischief. He had told her that for the sake of that pale Polly Mauduit he had neglected to fulfil his engagement and keep his appointment.

Dancing began, and Bella sat out with the Scotch gardener, who was too serious a man to approve of the light fantastic toe; as he explained to Bella it was against his principles—“but don’t let that interfere with your enjoyment, if you wish to go to Mr. Mountstephen.”

“Oh! not at all!” said Miss Frowd.

Huffed, hurt, poor Tom withdrew. He slunk away from the Hall. Among so many, he would not be missed, and of enjoyment there was none after his rebuff. It would madden him to see how Bella “carried on” with the Scotchman.

He walked through the park, groaning, grumbling, resentful. He was not angry with himself for not keeping his appointment, nor with Polly for having detained him; but with Bella, whom he designated as a minx, and with MacSweeny, whom he termed a widdered Scottish rogue.

He left the park; he walked hastily on. Then, finding that in the agitation of his feelings he could not keep his head in one position, and that he was consequently liable to cut his throat, he halted, and took off his collar, and fastened it by the stud round his left arm above the elbow.

Presently he reached the cottage of the Mauduits, and he could see through the little window that the tree was alight; it twinkled through the panes. The temptation to turn aside, rap at the door, and enter was not to be resisted.

To his knock he received an answer, as he opened the door. The answer came from an inner room.

“It be I, Polly,” called Tom. “Just passin’, and want to see how Bessie be enjoyin’ of herself.”

“Come in—come in, Tom.”

The young man strode through the kitchen into the adjoining chamber. There lay, in her bed, the sick girl, a lovely child, with large burning dark eyes, and a hectic flame in her cheeks. She was supported in the arms of her sister, and was looking with delight at the little candles, at the oranges, and the glittering tin ornaments.

“Tom,” said Mary, “Bessie do thank you so for the spotted dog.”

“Yes, I do,” said the sick child, striving to lift herself and extend a hand to the young gardener.

“But, gracious me, Tom!” exclaimed Mary, “whatever is the meaning o’ that?” pointing to the white band round his arm. “It is like what folks put on now when in mourning—only it’s white.”

“He’s going to be married,” said the sick child.

“It is only that stiff collar; I couldn’t abear it no longer!” explained Tom.

Then the child laughed, and laughed till she coughed.

Suddenly Mary uttered a cry—Tom saw a crimson stream.

“Run, run, Tom! For Heaven’s sake run for the doctor!”

And Tom ran.

In half-an-hour he returned.

Polly was kneeling by the bed. On it lay the child, the face almost white, but yet with a little colour in the delicate cheek. Her hand held tightly that of her sister.

The doctor had not come; he was out; would not be back till morning.

Tom could not explain this; and he knew, moreover, that the surgeon could effect nothing. Without a word he knelt also by the child’s bedside. The candles were quivering to extinction on the Christmas tree. One was guttering, and sending a stream of wax over the head of the spotted dog. Then another fell twinkling through the boughs and went out. And at the same time the light went out in Bessie’s eyes.

A few days later, when the earth had closed over the child, Tom was speaking with Mary, and she said to him: “Tom, I think now I should like that Christmas tree to be planted on the little maid’s grave. Will you oblige me by doing it?” Then, after wiping her eyes: “Tom, that is a Tree of Death.”

* * * * *

The head-gardener triumphantly carried away Bella; the marriage took place within six weeks of the Christmas supper and dance. Isabella Frowd had become Mrs. Sandy MacSweeny, and was planted in the gardener’s beautiful cottage. But in all things human there comes a change. Within a very short time certain matters started to light. What these were you shall hear from the squire’s own lips, as he addressed Tom Mountstephen.

“Tom,” said the squire, his broad, rosy face very hot and agitated, “Tom, I’ve bundled MacSweeny off. I don’t see why I should have to buy the fruit I grow from the greengrocer in our market town. I don’t see why, if I purchase bulbs and greenhouse plants, they should invariably disappear, and be reported to have died. I don’t see why, if I buy flower seeds, they should come up in other folks’ gardens. I have not been able to get fruit for my table without sending to town to buy it. I have been ruined in procuring vast supplies of choice plants from nurserymen, and have not enjoyed them. MacSweeny is off. Hang it! you may not be a professional, and A1, and all that, but you are honest as daylight. I feel I can trust you, and—dash my buttons!—there is the situation vacant for you, if you choose to have it. And there is the cottage—the only disadvantage is that it is too large for you, and you are unmarried.”

“Oh, as to that, sir, that is easily remedied. I be just now on my way to the pass’n to get him to have Mary and me asked next Sunday.”

“Mary—Mary who?”

“Mary Mauduit, sir.”

“Oh, oh! I wish you joy. An excellent girl! There it is for you—the house, Tom; you and Mary shall go into it as soon as I have seen the back of MacSweeny and his Bella, and have had it whitewashed. And—hang it! Tom, here—come round to my study, and I’ll give you a cheque for ten pounds towards the furnishing.”

“I thank you, sir; I thank you with all my heart.”

“No need of thanks, Tom! Bless my soul, when a master has a trustworthy, honest servant, it is he is to be counted lucky; and unless he is an ass he will keep him. There—come round to the study.”

* * * * *

And now nearly two years have passed. And this time we see a little party coming out of the church porch. As I live! it is Tom with Mary—no longer Mauduit, but Mountstephen. But they are not alone; there is a baby in a long white robe being brought forth—a babe that had been carried into church to be christened.

As Mary stood in the autumn sunlight outside the porch, she touched Tom’s arm, and said—

“Let us go to little Bessie’s grave.”

And they went, and the baby was taken there also, over the drooping grass, wet with autumn rains.

“The poor little Christmas tree,” said Mary, “although a Tree of Death, lives. See—how hearty it appears!”

“It is no Tree of Death,” answered Tom. “See—here is the first fir-cone; it is alive, and bears seed. It is no Tree of Death, but a Tree of Life.”

Then Tom laughed.

“Mary,” said he, “I think for once in my life I’ve said a good thing.”

But Mary did not applaud.

“Tom, do you think the little fir-cone really has life in it?”

“Of course it has.”

Mary picked it, and then put it into the tiny hand of the baby.

“Look, Tom,” she said. “But for that Christmas tree you and I would never have become what we are to each other—and now, in it is the seed of life, and so on and on and on for evermore. Our baby has it, and it shall be sown, and so—really, Tom, there seems to be no end to life; it goes on for ever and for ever!”

“Amen,” responded Tom.

FOLK-PRAYERS

FOLK-PRAYERS

It is a singular fact, but fact it is, that very little of what may be termed peculiarly Romish superstition lingers among the peasantry of England; this goes far to show how very little hold such superstition had on their minds or hearts. It may be almost said that there is more of pre-Christian paganism, of usages condemned by the Catholic Church surviving, than of any practices recommended by her.

I do know, indeed, of one instance of a Cornish Methodist, who, when unable to attend his distant chapel, resorted to a rude granite cross of Brito-Roman date, and there said his prayers; but even in this case one cannot be certain that there did not linger on a reverence for the stone itself, which had been a prehistoric menhir before it was sanctified by being chipped into the sign of our salvation.

In Yorkshire, Milly (my Lady) boxes are carried about by children at Christmas: these are cradles containing dolls, one to represent the Virgin Mother, another the Divine Child; and the grocers send candles to their customers on Christmas Eve, for the lights to be burned at the Midnight Mass. But such usages are few, and have almost wholly lost their meaning, were never more than folk customs, and were never inculcated by the Church before the Reformation. The midsummer bonfires, the Yule log, the mumming at Christmas, the Maypole, the November “soul-cakes,” the “sin-eating” at funerals, and a thousand other customs are purely heathen survivals. The writer knew of a case in Yorkshire of a man who was buried in his coffin with a candle “to light him on his way to Jerusalem” and a penny “to pay the toll,” altogether a pagan reminiscence; but has never in all his experience come across any practice connected with the doctrine of purgatory, one insisted upon with immense emphasis before the Reformation, as the saying of masses for the dead brought in a large revenue for the clergy.

Superstition connected with holy wells is heathen, and was given a reluctant sanction by the Roman Church, because so deep-rooted that the people could not be weaned from it.

The custom, so common in the time of our youth, of drinking healths was a pagan one; the dead were thus saluted silently, and the Bishop of Cork in 1713 charged against it in an address to his diocese. He was answered by “A Country Curate of Ireland,” and the bishop returned to the charge in a pamphlet of two hundred and twenty pages.

In Germany, to gloss the heathenism of the custom, it was usual to drink the first cup to the memory of some saint, usually St. Gertrude, the patroness of the dead, who had stepped into the place of the Goddess Holda or Perchta.

But it is chiefly in the prayers used by the illiterate and poor among the peasantry that we would expect to find some trace of Catholicism, for the prayer employed in private and secret is precisely where no interference could affect the convictions and habits formed by ages, and communicated traditionally at the most impressible age.

Now what do we find actually? That the only prayers used by tens of thousands, only now very slowly being driven out by the Lord’s Prayer, or being abandoned because all prayer is given up, are not a Catholic reminiscence at all, but an heretical one condemned by the Papal Church.

The reader will at once know what the form is to which reference is made.

“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on.
Four posties to my bed.
Six angels are outspread,
Two to bottom, two to head,
One to watch me whilst I pray,
One to bear my soul away.”

This is the usual form; but there are verbal variations. Sometimes it stands “four corners” instead of “four posties,” and “two at the feet, and two at the head.” After the first two lines that are invariable, we have—

“Four corners to my bed,
Four angels round my head,
One to read and one to write,
Two to guard my bed at night;”

or—

“One to watch and two to pray,
One to keep all fears away.”

A much fuller form of the prayer comes from an old woman of near ninety years at Tavistock:—

“Monday morning—a new week begin,
Christ deliver our souls from sin.
Tuesday morning—nor curse nor swear,
Christ’s body for it will tear.
Wednesday morning—midst of the week,
Woe to the soul Christ does not seek.
Thursday morning—Saint Peter wrote,
‘Joy to the soul that heaven hath bote.’
Friday—Christ died on the Holy Tree,
To save other men as well as me.
Saturday—six—the evening dead.
Sunday—the books are all outspread.
God is the Branch. I am the flower.
Pray God send me that blessed hour.
Whether I be by sea or by land,
The Lord, sweet Jesus, on my right hand.
I go to bed, my sleep to take,
The Lord doth know if I shall wake.
Sleep I ever, sleep I never,
God receive my soul for ever.
Four corners to my bed,
Four angels lie outspread,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on.”

This is very curious. One may well ask where St. Peter wrote the quotation given in the eighth line. “That heaven hath bote” signifies “that hath bid or prayed for heaven.”

The prayer, or formula, is very old. In the “Towneley Mysteries,” belonging to the beginning of the sixteenth century at the very latest date that can be given, for they are sacred Mysteries which ceased to be performed after the Reformation, in the scene where the shepherds keep their watch by night on the eve of the Nativity, the third shepherd says—

“For ferd we be fryght a crosse let us kest
Cryst crosse, benedyght, east and west,
For dreede
Jesus of Nazorous
Crucyefix us,
Marcus, Andreas,
God be our spede.”

In the second scene of the _Shepherds_ the second pastor says—

“I wylle lyg downe by
For I must slepe truly.”

The third says:—

“As good a man’s son was I
As any of you,
Bot Mark, come heder, between shalle gin lyg downe.”

Mark says—

“Then myght I lett you bedene; if that you wold rowne.
No drede
Fro my top to my too,
Manus tuas commendo
Poncio Pilato
Cryst cross me spede.”

Certainly a very odd form of commendation of the soul, and a variant on that of the third shepherd.

Launcelot Sharpe, in his remarks on the “Towneley Mysteries” (_Archæol._, 1838), gives “the rural charm which, when a boy, I have often heard in Kent:—

‘Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Guard the bed that I lie on.
Four corners to my bed,
Four angels round my head.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Guard the bed that I lie on.’”

Ady, in his “Candle in the Dark, or Treatise concerning the Nature of Witches and Witchcraft,” Lond., 1656, says, “An old woman in Essex who was living in my time, she had lived also in Queen Mary’s time, and had learned thence many popish charms, one whereof was this: every night when she lay down to sleep she charmed her bed, saying—

‘Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
The bed be blest that I lye on.’

And this she would repeat three times, reposing great confidence therein, because (as she said) she had been taught it when she was a young maid by the churchmen of those times.”

In a MS. collection of notes on superstitions made by John Aubrey, which is in the British Museum, Aubrey enters—

“A PRAYER USED WHEN THEY WENT TO BED.

“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on,
And blessed guardian angels keep
Me safe from dangers whilst I sleep.”

Aubrey adds, “I remember before the civil wars people when they heard the clock strike were wont to say, ‘God grant that my last howre may be my best howre.’”

Robert Chambers, in his “Popular Rhymes of Scotland,” does not speak of this prayer as used north of the Tweed at bed-time, but says: “A curious instance of far-descended nonsense is to be found in another puerile rhyme:—

‘Matthew, Mark, Luke, John,
Haud the horse till I loup on;
Haud it fast, and haud it sure,
Till I get over the misty muir.’

Boys in Scotland say this in the course of their rollicking sports.”

This singular charm, rather than prayer, is given in a mediæval magical treatise, “The Enchiridion of Pope Leo,” which was printed at Rome in 1660. It is there called “The White Paternoster,” and runs thus in French—

“Petit Patenôtre blanche que Dieu fit, que
Dieu dit, que Dieu mit en Paradis.
Au soir m’allant coucher, je trouves trois
Anges à mon lit couchés, un aux pieds,
Deux au chevet, la bonne Vierge Marie au
Milieu, qui me dit que je me couchis,
Que rien ne doutes.…
Qui la dira trois fois au soir, trois fois au
Matin, gagnera le Paradise à la fin.”

Under the name of “The White Paternoster” it is referred to by Chaucer in the “Miller’s Tale”—

“Lord Jhesu Crist, and Seynte Benedyht,
Blesse this hous from every wikked wight,
Fro nyghtes verray, the White Paternoster,
Where wonestow now, Seynt Petre’s soster.”

“Nyghtes verray” is probably a night-were, the hobgoblin. “Were” is an old Saxon word for man, and the night-man is the ghost. In White’s “Way to the True Church,” Lond., 1624, White complains of “the prodigious ignorance” which existed among his parishioners when he entered upon his ministrations. He gives what he considers to be the “White Paternoster,” or a form of prayer used before going to bed.

“White Paternoster, Saint Peter’s brother,
What hast i the t’one hand? White booke leaves.
What hast i th’ t’other hand? Heaven gate keys.
Open heaven gates, and streike hell gates,
And let every crysan child creepe to its own mother.
White Paternoster. Amen.”

In the first edition of Wynkyn de Worde’s “Horæ Beatæ Mariæ Virginis,” 1502, a copy now in the Gough Library at Oxford has on the margin, written in a contemporary hand, “The Little Credo,” “The White Paternoster,” and “The White Benedictus,” another very curious magical formula. For an account of this see Dibdin’s “Decameron,” second day.

The “White Paternoster” is as generally in use among the peasants in France as in England. It takes various forms. In Quercy, part of our English possessions in Guyenne, it is recited nightly under another name, the “Pater d’habitude.” The patois may be thus translated:—

“Pater d’habitude,
Our Saviour salute us;
He is at our head, he is at our feet,
He is now and he is after,
He is in the bed where I lie.
Five angels there I find,
Three at bottom, two at head,
And the mother of God in the midst.
She bids me sleep so sound,
Never fear, nor flames, nor fire,
Nor sudden death at all.
I take our Saviour as my father,
The Virgin Mary as my mother,
Saint John for my cousin,
Saint Michael for my sponsor.
There are god parents four.
Whatever haps, whatever befalls,
I shall go to Paradise.”

There are, in fact, in Guyenne four Paternosters—the great one, the small one, the Pater of Nazareth, and the Pater of Habit; and these make up one complete formula. M. Daymard, who has collected the folk-songs of Quercy, the present Department of Lot, says, “Who has not heard some old woman mutter her prayers in a monotonous voice, without accent, with, however, a sort of rhythmic cadence, like the reading of poetry by children in school?” If in the course of her prayers she be interrupted and questioned relative to what she has said, and asked to repeat it, it is rarely that one can be found to continue her prayers without recommencing the recitation.

“Very often the old women do not understand what they say. They repeat words which anciently were in Latin, Romance, or French, and which, passing from mouth to mouth, have become corrupted till they cease to be comprehensible. Then they have not, as an assistance to their memory, the help of an air and of couplets; consequently they slide away into the greatest confusion. Thus it falls out that the majority of these prayers are long, disconnected, made up of patches ill-stitched together, and without affinity, without transition. There are also set phrases and elements of prayer which recur, and which each pious soul throws into her common prayers without rhyme or reason.”

One of the Quercy prayers deserves quotation, because it also is akin to something that was customary in England, the Lykewake Dirge, which is found in Aubrey’s MS., already quoted, and was first published by Sir Walter Scott. The Quercy prayer is called “La Barbe-Dieu,” _i.e._ Verbum-Dei; _barbe_ is a corruption. It runs thus:—

“The Barbe of God—who knows it, and says it not, he will lose
his soul. There behind thee lies a plank, a little plank
that’s long, not broad. The elect pass over it. The lost fall
from it and cry and groan, falling into the abyss of hell.
Learn the Barbe of God at seven years old. There is no time for
repentance when parted are body and soul.”

In a book published at Toulouse in 1673 by the Père Amilha, in the Languedoc patois, entitled “Le Tableau de la bido del parfait Chresten,” a popular book of Christian instruction in faith and morals, is a caution against superstitious practices. Among these are the following questions: “Have you tried to make a denier float on the water, whereby to detect the thief who has stolen your goods? Have you taken off the cross from the rosary, and said the Little Pater and the White Pater?”

These prayers, which were supposed to have a power to save from everlasting death by mere recitation of them, are mentioned by J. B. Thiers, in his “Treatise on Superstition,” as condemned by the Church; and he names among them the Barbe de Dieu as heretical.

Quenot, in his “Statistique de la Charente,” in 1818, gives the form in which the White Paternoster was said in that department of France—

“Dieu l’a fait, je la dit,
J’ai trouvé quatre anges couchés dans mon lit,
Deux à la tête, deux aux pieds,
Et le bon Dieu au milieu.”

The forms in which it is said throughout France are infinitely varied, but the same ideas reign throughout all, and all derived from a common source. That source is apparently Albigensian Manichæism. It seems from the questions put to these heretics that the “Perfect,” the apostle of the sect, taught a fourfold Paternoster, and taught it as a sort of charm, with the assertion, which repeatedly occurs in all these folk rhymed Paters, that they who recited it secured thereby their eternal salvation.

It is certainly—if this fourfold Albigensian Pater be the origin of our “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John”—a very curious instance of the underground growth of the heresy throughout Europe, and the hold it obtained on the poor and ignorant.

I give a remarkable instance from Lincolnshire of the glossing over of pagan usage by Christianity. I was furnished with it by the Rev. R. M. Heanley, who wrote:—

“THE VICARAGE,
UPTON GREY, WINCHFIELD,
_Nov. 16, 1890_.

“DEAR MR. BARING GOULD,—I wonder if you ever came across a
case of the following strange survival, which I met with in
the Lincolnshire marshes, as a cure for ague. It was in the
autumn of 1857 or 1858 that I had taken some quinine to a lad
who lived with his old grandmother. On my next visit the old
dame scornfully refused another bottle, and said she ‘knowed on
a soight better cure nor your mucky stuff.’ With that she took
me round the bottom of the bed and showed me three horse-shoes
nailed there, with a hammer crosswise upon them.

“On my expressing incredulity, she waxed wroth, and said,
‘Naay, lad, it’s a charm. I takes t’ mell (hammer) i’ my left
haan, and I mashys they shoon throice, and Oi sez—

‘Feyther, Son, and Holi Ghoast,
Naale the divil to this poast,
Throice I stroikes with holi crook,
Wun fur God, and wun fur Wod, and wun fur Lok.’”

“Wod is of course Woden, and Lok is the evil-god Loki of
Scandinavian mythology.”

To return to the White Paternoster. We may well question whether the Manichæan White Paternoster was not a much earlier form of incantation for blessing the bed, given a slightly Christian complexion. For in the Anglo-Saxon laws, in the “Codex Exoniensis,” is a most curious formula for blessing a field that has been blasted by witchcraft, and this bears some analogy to the blessing of the bed on which the sleeper is about to lie. According to this Anglo-Saxon authority, all sorts of seeds are cast out on the earth as an oblation to the plough. Then turves of green grass from the four corners of the field are cut in the name of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These are carried to the church and four masses said over them, and are replaced at the four corners of the field before sunset, and certain incantations recited over them. At the same time that the four corners of the field are consecrated to the four evangelists the cross of Christ is signed over the centre, just as in the French forms of the prayer of the bed the Virgin or Christ occupies the centre. One is inclined to suspect that in all this there is a reminiscence of the sun and the four quarters of the heavens, with the deities ruling them.

CRAZY JANE

CRAZY JANE

In Sussex a great bank of chalk downs stands up as if set as a natural sea-wall against the encroachments of the waves. Nothing can be conceived more barren, more dreary than this bank on its seaward slope. On the east coast of England, in Essex, in Lincoln, in Suffolk and Norfolk, the energy of man has reclaimed tracts of low-lying land from the sea, and has held back the tide by erecting sea-walls that have a long gradually-declining escarpment towards the water. Against these the waves fling themselves, are broken, run up them, lose their force, and sneak back discomfited. On the land side these walls have an abrupt fall. Now the south coast of Sussex seems by nature to have been thus constructed as a great type after which men should build and recover land. About three or four miles inland—perhaps a little more—begins what is called the Weald, a flat, rich, and beautiful land, well wooded, full of sweet villages and gentle pastures, with here and there an undulation, like a fold in green velvet, and here and there a pond occupying a deserted iron quarry. From this Wealden district rises to the south the abrupt scar of the South Downs, a mighty rampart of chalk, tilted up with its long easy slope seawards.

Did that mighty primeval ocean rage against the coast where now stand Brighton, Worthing, and Shoreham? Did that great natural sea-wall of chalk restrain its waves and protect the Weald from inundation? We cannot say.

At one point in the summit of the chalk barrier is a trench cut deep through the soft white rock, and this is called the Devil’s Dyke. The story told of it is that the enemy of mankind, looking down on the fertile Weald, envied its beauty and richness, and set to work one night to dig through the barrier, so as to let the ocean in, to submerge the fair district. But he could do this only in one night. His power to work evil was limited. If he could make his canal before cock-crow, well; but he might on no account resume the work if left incomplete in one night. Now there was a cottage on the height, and in it lived an old Goodie, who was roused by the sound of digging and delving in the night. The night was dark, dark as Erebus; she opened her casement and peeped forth. Nothing was visible, but the earth quaked under the efforts made by Mephistopheles. Then the Goodie, being an old fool, lit a candle, held it outside the window and screamed out, “Who’s there? What are you a-doing?” Now a cock saw the candle, and thinking it was the first glimmer of dawn, began to crow. Then the evil one threw away his spade and fled in a rage. And, lo! there in the dyke, is shown the half-finished work and the unejected shovelful of earth.

Such is the legend. In reality, no doubt, the dyke is a very ancient aboriginal fortification.

Now mark a wonderful provision of nature. All the rain that falls along the range of chalk hills sinks in, soaks down, and might sink away to—goodness knows where, but that, beneath the chalk lies a bed of very dense clay, through which the water cannot descend, and between the chalk and the clay is strewn a narrow film of gravel, called the greensand, there hardly thicker than your hand. When the water has percolated through the chalk hills and is stopped by the clay, out it runs, on the inland scarp, through the greensand, in a thousand crystal-cool and beautiful springs, thoroughly purified by this perfect natural filter.

On the inland flank of the South Downs, in a little coomb or valley scooped out of the chalk, gushed nine of these springs and fed a tarn or lake, not natural, but formed by an embankment thrown up to form a reservoir for a mill. Above this lake set in the lap of the Downs were clumps of Scotch pines, and a wood of beech, in spring full of the purple and the white scented wood orchis; on the Downs about grew the quaintly beautiful bee-orchis, rare elsewhere save on chalk.

In a solitary cottage under the hill, in a shady spot where the sun rarely came, lived a widow and her daughter. The widow was very infirm, crippled with rheumatism, and was allowed eighteenpence a week and a loaf by the parish. She was too weak and helpless to earn anything for herself, and she could not have subsisted, she and her child, on eighteenpence and one loaf, had it not been for certain means of acquiring money that the neighbourhood afforded. The South Down chalk hills abound in hedgehogs. They are to be found in burrows in great numbers, and at evening, when the dew is falling, the side of the down may be seen alive with these little creatures scampering about seeking their prey. The widow’s girl, Jane, a young girl uncouth in form, with low brow and dull unintelligent eyes, was clever in finding hedgehogs, and these she carried about coiled up in a basket, and sold them to people who were troubled with slugs and snails in their gardens, or with cockroaches and black-beetles in their kitchens. She got a shilling for each hedgehog, and could, had the demand required it, have found a hedgehog _per diem_, which would have brought her in 365 shillings in the year, or £18, 5s. 0d.—a handsome income. But, unfortunately, the public were not athirst for hedgehogs; and the market was soon glutted. Consequently Jane had to seek other means of earning money. She found dormice in the woods, and as there were two large schools for boys, Hurstpierpoint and Lancing, within a walk, and in schools for boys the passion for the acquisition of dormice is insatiable, “Crazy Jane,” as the dull-witted girl was called, found that she could sell at 4d. each as many dormice as she could find. But then the dormice were only to be caught when hybernating. In summer they were too wide-awake to allow themselves to be captured.

Another source of revenue was offered by the orchis plants on the Downs. Crazy Jane dug up the roots, collected bunches of the flowers, and trudged with them to Worthing or Brighton, where she was able to dispose of her flowers and of her tubers. Thus, the widow and her daughter had not merely eighteenpence and a loaf to live on, but they lived also on dormice, hedgehogs, and orchis bulbs. She had long distances to go to dispose of her goods had Crazy Jane, but what mattered that to her? She was sturdily built, strong as a horse, and disregarded all kinds of bad weather. Jane had had no schooling. She had been forced to attend the National School, but had been unable to acquire her letters; she could not write a pot-hook on the slate, or do any calculations apart from hedgehogs, dormice, and bulbs. In all particulars relative to her business she was keen, keen in exacting every penny, able to reckon up her gains; but apart from hedgehogs, dormice, and bulbs she could not count and sum. So she had been dismissed her school as mentally incapable of acquiring knowledge. This permission to her to withdraw was a great relief to Jane, for she had been the butt of ridicule to the scholars. Every dunce could crow over Jane as more stupid than himself. The witty or would-be wags poked fun at her, the malicious tortured and irritated her. Jane was usually good-natured, but when angered flew into paroxysms of mad fury that occasioned merriment to the ill-conditioned, and often provoked the interference of the master. Jane would have come off worse than she did at school had it not been for Jim Thacker, the miller’s son at Ninewells, who constituted himself her protector, and thrashed the insolent boys who tormented Crazy Jane, and screened her from their gibes.

This protection he afforded her awoke on the poor dull-witted girl’s part the liveliest devotion, a devotion that was irksome to the boy, for she followed him like a dog, shrank behind him at the least threat of annoyance, clung to him when in trouble, and was uneasy when he was out of her sight. This attracted notice in the school, and provoked merriment. She was called Jim Thacker’s dog. And like a dog she seemed—faithful, regardful, a little too demonstrative of affection, but exacting nothing for this fidelity but an occasional nod and word. It was a relief to Jim when Crazy Jane was excused school as mentally deficient; and it was a relief to her, because thenceforth she could wander unrestrained over the Downs, hunting hedgehogs and dormice, and picking flowers.

One day—it was in spring—Jim Thacker was walking near the mill pond, when he heard screams of terror and pain, apparently, and saw Crazy Jane pursued and attacked by the male swan of a pair that lived in the pond. In her search for orchis bulbs she had approached too near where the female swan was sitting on her eggs, and the male in wild fury had flown to the protection of its mate, and considering Jane as an enemy threatening his mate and eggs, had rushed at her with flapping wings and outstretched beak. An excited swan is not a foe to laugh at, the strength of its wings is so great that a blow of them has been known to break the leg of a horse; moreover, with its great beak it can nip and hurt. The flap of the great wings, the discordant notes that issued from the long neck, the menacing bill, had paralysed Jane, and in trying to flee she had stumbled over a root and fallen.

Jim snatched up a pronged stick and ran to her aid, calling to the swan. He reached her as the bird was driving at her with his bill, and thrusting the fork adroitly under the neck, held the angry bird back.

“Now Jane,” said he, “get up and run away whilst I keep the swan at bay.”

But she was so bewildered with her fright that it was some time before she could understand what to do, and when, finally, she did scramble away, she had not the strength and breath to go far, but sank among the old leaves at a little distance from the pool, sobbing, trembling, with her black hair scattered about her shoulders and face.

Jim came to her and helped her to her feet, brought her to the mill, and there his mother soothed the fears of the frightened girl, gave her milk and bread and honey, and finally dismissed her with a sixpence in her pocket.

After this, Crazy Jane became somewhat of a nuisance again, as she had been at the school. She had come to regard Jim with a veneration that almost reached adoration. He was the only person who had ever stood up for her and defended her against enemies. He had never laughed at her, played tricks with her, teased her; but had ever been ready to come to her aid when powerless to protect herself. She hung about the mill, not for milk and bread and honey, not for a sixpence, but only that she might get a sight of Jim, and receive a kind and cheery word from him. She would have overwhelmed him with hedgehogs had he been willing to have one, would have filled his boxes with dormice had he expressed the desire to have them. There was nothing she would not to do for him to show her gratitude and regard. And Jim’s mother, Mrs. Thacker, made use of the girl now and then to take messages or do commissions for her to Steyning, or to Hurst, or to Brighton, or Worthing—commissions which she executed with fidelity, and for which she doggedly, even sullenly, refused payment. It was reward enough to her to be allowed to see Jim, and to hear him say, “What an active girl you are, Jane!”