THE SLAVE GIRL'S SELF-DEVOTION.
"I say not nay, but that all day,
It is both writ and said,
That woman's faith is, as who sayeth,
All utterly decayed;
But neverthelesse, right good witnesse
In this case might be laid,
That they love true and continue--
Recorde the Not-browne mayde;
Which, when her love came her to prove,
To her to make his mone,
Wolde have him part--for in her hart
She loved him but alone."
THE NOT-BROWNE MAYDE.
How true a thing is it of the human heart, and alas! how pitiful a
thing, that use has such wondrous power over it, whether for good or
for evil; but mostly--perhaps because such is its original
nature--unto evil. Custom will harden the softest spirit to the
ice-brook's temper, and blind the clearest philosophic eye to all
discrimination, that things the most horrible to behold shall be
beheld with pleasure, and things the most unjust regarded as simple
justice, or, at least, as the inevitable course and pervading law of
nature. True as this is, in all respects, in none is it more clearly
or fatally discoverable than in every thing connected with what may be
called slavery, in the largest sense--including the subjugation, by
whatever means, not only of man to man, but even of animals to the
human race. In all such cases, it would appear that the hardening and
deteriorating influence of habit, and perhaps the unavoidable tendency
to believe every thing subordinate as in itself inferior, soon brings
the mind to regard the power to enforce and the capacity to perform,
as the rule of justice between the worker and the master.
The generally good and kind-hearted man, who has all his life been
used to see his beasts of burden dragging a few pounds' weight above
their proper and merciful load, soon comes to regard the extraordinary
measure as the proper burden, and to look upon the hapless brute,
which is pining away by inches, in imperceptible and insensible decay,
as merely performing the work, and filling the station, to perform and
fill which it was created. And so, and yet more fatally, as regards
the subjugation of man, or a class of men, to man. We commence by
degrading, and end by thinking of him as of one naturally degraded. We
reduce him to the standard and condition of a brute, then assume that
he is but a brute in feelings, intellect, capacity to acquire, and
thence argue--in the narrowest of circles--that being but a brute, it
is but right and natural to deal with him as what he is. Nor is this
tendency of the human mind limited in its operation to actual slavery;
but prevails, more or less, in relation to all servitude and
inferiority, voluntary or involuntary; so that many of the best, all
indeed but the very best, among us, come in the end to look upon all,
placed by circumstances and society in inferior positions, as
inferiors in very deed, and as naturally unequal to themselves in
every capacity, even that of enjoyment, and to regard them, in fact,
as a subordinate class of animals and beings of a lower range of
creation.
This again, still working in a circle, tends really to lower the
inferior person; and, by the tendency of association, the inferior
class; until degenerating still, as must occur, from sire to son,
through centuries, the race itself sinks from social into natural
degradation.
This had already occurred in a very great degree in the Saxon serfs of
England, who had been slaves of Saxons, for many centuries, before the
arrival of the Norman conquerors. The latter made but small
distinction, in general, between the free-born and the slave of the
conquered race, but reduced them all to one common state of misery and
real or quasi-servitude--for many, who had once been land-holders and
masters, sunk into a state of want and suffering so pitiable and so
abject, that, generation succeeding generation with neither the means
nor the ambition to rise, they became almost undistinguishable from
the original serfs, and in many instances either sold themselves into
slavery to avoid actual starvation, or were seized and enslaved, in
defiance of all law, in the dark and troublous time which followed the
Norman conquest.
There being then two classes of serfs existing on British soil, though
not recognized as different by law, or in any wise differing in
condition, Kenric, himself descended in the third degree from a
freeman and landholder, exhibited a fair specimen at the first;
although it by no means followed of course that men in his relative
position were actually superior to the progeny of those, who could
designate no point before which their ancestors were free. And this
became evident, at once, to those who looked at the characters of
Kenric the Dark, and Eadwulf the Red, of whom the former was in all
respects a man of sterling qualities, frank, bold demeanor, and all
the finer characteristics of independent, hardy, English manhood;
while the second, though his own brother, was a rude, sullen,
thankless, spiritless, obstinate churl, with nothing of the man,
except his sordid, sensual appetites, and every thing of the beast,
except his tameless pride and indomitable freedom.
It was, therefore, even with one of the better class of these
unfortunate men, a matter of personal character and temper, whether he
retained something of the relative superiority he bore to his yet more
unfortunate companions in slavery, or whether he sank self-lowered to
their level. Nothing, it is true, had either to which he might aspire;
no hope of bettering his condition; no chance of rising in the scale
of humanity. Acts of emancipation, as rewards of personal service, had
been rare even among the Saxons, since, the utmost personal service
being due by the thrall to his lord, no act of personal service,
unless in most extreme cases, could be esteemed a merit; and such
serfs as owed their freedom to the voluntary commiseration of their
owners, owed it, in the great majority of cases, to their superstition
rather than to their mercy, and were liberated on the deathbed, when
they could serve their masters in no otherwise, than in becoming an
atonement for their sins, and smoothing their path through purgatory
to paradise.
With the Normans, the chance of liberation was diminished an
hundred-fold; for the degraded race, held in utter abhorrence and
contempt, and looked upon as scarce superior to the abject Jew, was
excluded from all personal contact with their haughty lords, who
rarely so much as knew them by sight or by name--was incapable of
serving them directly, in the most menial capacity--and, therefore,
could hardly, by the wildest good fortune, hope for a chance of
attracting even observation, much less such praise as would be like to
induce the high boon of liberty.
Again, on the deathbed, the Norman knight or noble, scarce
condescending to think of his serf as a human being, could never have
entertained so preposterous an idea, as that the better or worse
usage, nay! even the life or death of hundreds of these despised
wretches could weigh either for him or against him, before the throne
of grace. So that the deathbed emancipations, which had been so
frequent before the conquest, and which were recommended and
inculcated by abbots and prelates, while abbots and prelates were of
Saxon blood, as acts acceptable on high, now that the high clergy,
like the high barons of the realm, were strangers to the children of
the soil, had fallen into almost absolute disuse.
In fact, in the twelfth century, the Saxon serf-born man had little
more chance of acquiring his freedom, than an English peasant of the
present day has of becoming a temporal or spiritual peer of the realm;
and, lacking all object for emulation or exertion, these men too often
justified the total indifference with which they were looked upon by
the owners of the soil. This fact, or rather this condition of things
in their physical and moral aspect, has been dwelt upon, somewhat at
length, in order to show how it is possible that a gentleman of the
highest birth, of intellects, acquirements, ideas of justice and
right, vastly more correct than those entertained by the majority of
his caste--a gentleman, sensitive, courteous, kindly, the very mirror
of faith and honor--should have distorted devotion so noble, faith so
disinterested, a sense of honor so high, a piety so pure, as that
displayed by Kenric the Dark, in his refusal of the bright jewel
liberty, in his eloquent assertion of his rights, his sympathies, his
spiritual essence as a man, into an act of _outrecuidance_, almost
into a personal affront to his own dignity. Yet, so it was, and alas!
naturally so--for so little was he, or any of his fellows, used to
consider his serf in the light of an arguing, thinking, responsible
being, that probably Balaam was but little more astonished when his
ass turned round on him and spoke, than was Yvo de Taillebois, when
the serf of the soil stood up in his simple dignity as a man, and
refused to be free, unless those he loved, whom it was his duty to
support, cherish, shield, and comfort, might be free together with
him. Certain it is, that he left the cottage which he had entered
full of gratitude, and eager to be the bearer of good tidings,
disappointed, exasperated against Kenric, vexed that his endeavors to
prove his gratitude had been frustrated, and equally uncertain how he
should disclose the unwelcome tidings to his daughter, and how
reconcile to his host the conduct of the Saxon, which he had remained
in the hope of fathoming, and explaining to his satisfaction.
In truth, he felt himself indignant and wounded at the unreasonable
perduracy of the man, in refusing an inestimable boon, for what he
chose to consider a cause so trivial; and this, too, though had he
himself been in the donjon of the infidel, expecting momentary death
by the faggot or the rack, and been offered liberty, life, empire,
immortality, on condition of leaving the least-valued Christian woman
to the harem of the Mussulman, he would have spurned the offer with
his most arrogant defiance.
This seemed to him much as it would seem to the butcher, if the bull,
with the knife at his throat, were to speak up and refuse to live,
unless his favorite heifer might be allowed to share his fortunes. It
appeared to him wondrous, indeed, but wondrously annoying, and almost
absurd. In no respect did it strike him as one of the noblest and most
generous deeds of self-abandonment of which the human soul is capable;
though, had the self-same offer been spurned, as the slave spurned it,
and in the very words which he had found in the rude eloquence of
indignation, by belted knight or crowned king, he had unhesitatingly
styled it an action of the highest glory, and worthy of immortal
record in herald's tale or minstrel's story. Such is the weight of
circumstance upon the noblest minds of men.
With his brow bent, and his arms folded on his breast, moodily, almost
sorrowfully, did the good knight of Taillebois wend his way back
toward the towers of Waltheofstow, making no effort to overtake his
brother-in-arms and entertainer, whom he could clearly see stalking
along before him, in no more placable mood than himself, but burying
himself on his return in his own chamber, whence he made his
appearance no more that evening; though he might hear Sir Philip
storming through the castle, till the vaulted halls and passages
resounded from barbican to battlement.
Meantime, in the lowly cottage of the serf--for the lord, though angry
and indignant, had not failed of his plighted word--the lykewake of
the dead boy went on--for that was a Saxon no less than a Celtic
custom, though celebrated by the former with a sort of stolid decorum,
as different as night is from day from the loud and barbarous orgies
of their wilder neighbors.
The consecrated tapers blazed around the swathed and shrouded corpse,
and sent long streams of light through the open door and lattices of
the humble dwelling, as though it had been illuminated for a high
rejoicing. The death hymn was chanted, and the masses sung by the gray
brothers from the near Saxon cloister. The dole to the poor had been
given, largely, out of the lord's abundance; and the voices of the
rioting slaves, emancipated from all servitude and sorrow, for the
nonce, by the humming ale and strong metheglin, were loud in praises
of their bounteous master, until, drenched and stupefied with liquor,
and drunk with maudlin sorrow, they staggered off to their respective
dens, to snore away the fumes of their unusual debauch, until aroused
at dawn by the harsh cry of the task-master.
By degrees the quiet of the calm summer night sank down over the
dwelling and garden of Kenric, as guest after guest departed, until no
one remained save one old Saxon brother, who sat by the simple coffin,
telling his beads in silence, or muttering masses for the soul of the
dead, apparently unconscious of any thing passing around him.
The aged woman had been removed, half by persuasion, half by gentle
force, from the dwelling-room, and had soon sunk into the heavy and
lethargic slumber which oftentimes succeeds to overwhelming sorrow.
The peaceful moonlight streamed in through the open door of the
cheerless home, like the grace of heaven into a disturbed and sinful
heart, as one by one the tapers flickered in their sockets and
expired. The shrill cry of the cricket, and the peculiar jarring note
of the night-hawk, replaced the droning of the monkish chants, and the
suppressed tumult of vulgar revelry; but, though there was solitude
and silence without, there was neither peace nor heart-repose within.
Sorely shaken, and cruelly gored by the stag in trunk and limbs, and
yet more sorely shaken in his mind by the agitation and excitement of
the angry scene with his master, and by the internal conflict of
natural selfishness with strong conscientious will, Kenric lay, with
his eyes wide open, gazing on his dead nephew, although his mind was
far away, with his head throbbing, and his every nerve jerking and
tense with the hot fever.
But by his side, soothing his restless hand with her caressing touch,
bathing his burning temples with cold lotions, holding the soft
medicaments to his parched lips, beguiling his wild, wandering
thoughts with gentle lover's chidings, and whispering of better days
to come, sat the fair slave girl, Edith, his promised wife, for whose
dear sake he had cast liberty to the four winds, and braved the deadly
terrors of the unforgiving Norman frown.
She had heard enough, as she entered the house at that decisive
moment, to comprehend the whole; and, if the proud and high-born
knights were at a loss to understand, much less appreciate, the noble
virtue of the serf, the poor uneducated slave girl had seen and felt
it all--felt it thrill to her heart's core, and inspire her weakness
with equal strength, equal devotion.
She had argued, she had prayed, she had implored, clinging to his
knees, that for the love of Heaven, for the love of herself, he would
accept the boon of freedom, and leave her to her fate, which would be
sweeter far to her, she swore, from the knowledge of his prosperity,
than it could be rendered by the fruition of the greatest worldly
bliss. And then, when she found prayer and supplication fruitless,
she, too, waxed strong and glorious. She lifted her hand to heaven,
and swore before the blessed Virgin and her ever-living Son, that,
would he yield to her entreaties and be free, she would be true to
him, and to him alone, forever; but should he still persist in his
wicked and mad refusal of God's own most especial gift of freedom, she
would at least deprive him of the purpose of his impious resolution,
place an impenetrable barrier between them two, and profess herself
the bride of Heaven.
At length, as he only chafed and resisted more and more, till
resistance and fever were working almost delirium--any thing but
conviction and repentance--like a true woman, she betook herself from
argument, and tears, and supplication, to comforting, consoling, and
caressing; and, had the rage and fever of his body, or the terrible
excitement of his tortured mind, been less powerful, she could not but
have won the day, in the noblest of all strifes--the strife of mutual
disinterestedness and devotion.
"O woman! in our hours of ease,
Inconstant, coy, and hard to please;
When pain and anguish rend the brow,
A ministering angel thou!"