There is not much in life pleasanter than a long ramble on the road in
leaf-green, sun-gold summer. Then it is Nature's merry-time, when fowls
in woods them maken blithe, and the crow preaches from the fence to his
friends afield, and the honeysuckle winketh to the wild rose in the hedge
when she is wooed by the little buzzy bee. In such times it is good for
the heart to wander over the hills and far away, into haunts known of
old, where perhaps some semi-Saxon church nestles in a hollow behind a
hill, where grass o'ergrows each mouldering tomb, and the brook, as it
ripples by in a darksome aldered hollow, speaks in a language which man
knows no more, but which is answered in the same forgotten tongue by the
thousand-year yew as it rustles in the breeze. And when there are Runic
stones in this garden of God, where He raises souls, I often fancy that
this old dialect is written in their rhythmic lines. The yew-trees were
planted by law, lang-syne, to yield bows to the realm, and now archery is
dead and Martini-Henry has taken its place, but the yews still live, and
the Runic fine art of the twisted lines on the tombs, after a thousand
years' sleep, is beginning to revive. Every thing at such a time speaks
of joy and resurrection--tree and tomb and bird and flower and bee.
These are all memories of a walk from the town of Aberystwith, in Wales,
which walk leads by an ancient church, in the soul garden of which are
two Runic cross tombstones. One day I went farther afield to a more
ancient shrine, on the top of a high mountain. This was to the summit of
Cader Idris, sixteen miles off. On this summit there is a Druidical
circle, of which the stones, themselves to ruin grown, are strange and
death-like old. Legend says that this is the burial-place of Taliesin,
the first of Welsh bards, the primeval poet of Celtic time. Whoever
sleeps on the grave will awake either a madman or a poet, or is at any
rate unsafe to become one or the other. I went, with two friends, afoot
on this little pilgrimage. Both were professors at one of the great
universities. The elder is a gentleman of great benevolence, learning,
and gentleness; the other, a younger man, has been well polished and
sharpened by travel in many lands. It is rumored that he has preached
Islam in a mosque unto the Moslem even unto taking up a collection, which
is the final test of the faith which reaches forth into a bright
eternity. That he can be, as I have elsewhere noted, a Persian unto
Persians, and a Romany among Roms, and a professional among the
hanky-pankorites, is likewise on the cards, as surely as that he knows
the roads and all the devices and little games of them that dwell
thereon. Though elegant enough in his court dress and rapier when he
kisses the hand of our sovereign lady the queen, he appears such an
abandoned rough when he goes a-fishing that the innocent and guileless
gypsies, little suspecting that a _rye_ lies _perdu_ in his wrap-rascal,
will then confide in him as if he and in-doors had never been acquainted.
We had taken with us a sparing lunch of thin sandwiches and a frugal
flask of modest, blushing brandy, which we diluted at a stingy little
fountain spring which dropped economically through a rift in the rock, as
if its nymph were conscious that such a delicious drink should not be
wasted. As it was, it refreshed us, and we were resting in a blessed
repose under the green leaves, when we heard footsteps, and an old woman
came walking by.
She was the ideal of decent and extreme poverty. I never saw anybody who
was at once so poor and so clean. In her face and in her thin garments
was marked the mute, resolute struggle between need and self-respect,
which, to him who understands it, is as brave as any battle between life
and death. She walked on as if she would have gone past without a word,
but when we greeted her she paused, and spoke respectfully. Without
forwardness she told her sad and simple story: how she belonged to the
Wesleyan confession, how her daughter was dying in the hospital at
Caernarvon; how she had walked sixty miles to see her, and hoped to get
there in time to close her eyes. In reply to a question as to her means,
she admitted that they were exhausted, but that she could get through
without money; she did not beg. And then came naturally enough the rest
of the little artless narrative, as it generally happens among the simple
annals of the poor: how she had been for forty years a washerwoman, and
had a letter from her clergyman.
There was a tear in the eye of the elder professor, and his hand was in
his pocket. The younger smoked in silence. I was greatly moved
myself,--perhaps bewildered would be the better word,--when, all at once,
as the old woman turned in the sunlight, I caught the expression _of the
corner of an eye_!
My friend Salaman, who boasts that he is of the last of the
Sadducees,--that strange, ancient, and secret sect, who disguise
themselves as the _Neu Reformirte_,--declares that the Sephardim may be
distinguished from the Ashkenazim as readily as from the confounded
Goyim, by the corners of their eyes. This he illustrated by pointing out
to me, as they walked by in the cool of the evening, the difference
between the eyes of Fraulein Eleonora Kohn and Senorita Linda Abarbanel
and divers and sundry other young ladies,--the result being that I
received in return thirty-six distinct _oeillades_, several of which
expressed indignation, and in all of which there was evidently an entire
misconception of my object in looking at them. Now the eyes of the
Sephardesses are unquestionably fascinating; and here it may be recalled
that, in the Middle Ages, witches were also recognized by having exactly
the same corners, or peaks, to the eye. This is an ancient mystery of
darksome lore, that the enchantress always has the bird-peaked eye, which
betokens danger to somebody, be she of the Sephardim, or an ordinary
witch or enchantress, or a gypsy.
Now, as the old Wesleyan washerwoman turned around in the sunshine, I saw
the witch-pointed eye and the glint of the Romany. And then I glanced at
her hands, and saw that they had not been long familiar with wash-tubs;
for, though clean, they were brown, and had never been blanched with an
age of soap-suds. And I spoke suddenly, and said,--
"_Can tute rakker Romanes_, _miri dye_?" (Can you speak Romany, my
mother?) And she answered, as if bewildered,--
"The Lord forbid, sir, that I should talk any of them wicked languages."
The younger professor's eyes expressed dawning delight. I followed my
shot with,--
"_Tute needn't be attrash to rakker_. _Mandy's been apre the drom
mi-kokero_." (You needn't be afraid to speak. I have been upon the road
myself.)