COUNT KŒNINGHEIM'S STORY--THE LILY OF CULBLEINE.
Few kirkyards in Scotland are more solemn or pleasing in aspect, or
more romantically situated, than that of Logie, which lies four miles
from the river Dee, in the parish of Logie-colstaine, in
Aberdeenshire. It once surrounded the kirk of St. Woloc, the bishop
and confessor; but every vestige of that ancient fane has now
disappeared from the little mound of rich holm land, that rises above
the small hills and broad muirs of the district, and from the bosom
of which flows a miraculous spring called the Poldow, which yet
enjoys a high reputation among the peasantry, for the cures it has
wrought since the days when the good bishop blessed it, and rested
from his pious labours in Strathdon, Balvenie, and Mar.
On the holm of Logie Kirk, the mouldering tombs, the old
headstones--green with moss, or half sunk among the long dog-grass
and broad-leaved dockens--the hedges that in summer are white with
blossoms of the fragrant hawthorn, and one old gnarled yew, are all
indicative of its being an ancient burial-ground. Here and there a
broad throchstone, resting on four stunted balusters, spotted by grey
lichens, and covered with letters half defaced by mischief or by
time, yet remain to indicate where some valiant Knight of Cromar or
Laird of the Garioch are lying; while the almost flattened mounds,
the small round headstones with unpretending and unlettered fronts,
taken perhaps from the bed of the adjacent burn, remain to shew where
many a shepherd, patient, poor and God-fearing, and many a brave
forester of Culbleine, who hacked and hewed, burned and shot as his
laird or leader commanded him; harrying the lands of the Gordons
to-day, and besieging the towers of the Leslies to-morrow--with many
a bien bonnet laird, stern in purpose, unflinching as Brutus, and
true to Scotland's kirk and king--yea, true as the steel of his good
broadsword--are mouldering, or have mouldered into dust.
Rest them, God!
On the green velvet bank which slopes up from a little tributary of
the Davinloch--a place where the winter grass grows rank, but where
the white daisies spot the summer turf--are two long gravestones
lying side by side, and somewhat apart from all the rest.
They cover the graves of two lovers.
Every person who passes through Cromar (as that part of Aberdeenshire
is named) is taken to see them, for there is a sad story connected
with them--a story which, to this hour, throws an occasional dash of
sentimentality over the village girls and bonneted ploughmen, and
which was long the theme of many a sad and many a dirge-like song.
One of those stones was inscribed with a legend which I cannot give
here, as Kœningheim's handwriting became so tremulous as to be
illegible. On the other is carved a Scottish sword, with the words:
Heir Lyis Kenneth Logie--ane honorabill man.
The history of these sequestered tombs, is the history of
Kœningheim's misfortunes and his crime.
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In the sixteenth century, nearly the whole property of the now
suppressed parish of Logie, in Mar, belonged to two families, the
Gordons of Colstaine, and the Donaldsons of Culbleine--a vast forest.
The dwelling of the former, named the Moat of Colstaine, was a strong
square fortalice, surrounded by a barbican wall, which stood in the
midst of a morass, not far from the little kirkyard holm which I have
just described. A river (now shrunk to a runnel) washed this
barbican on one side; a wet ditch defended it on the other.
The residence of the Donaldsons was an old Scottish manor-house or
Place, having grated windows with loopholed-sills, vaulted
apartments, and turrets at the angles. It stood among some fine old
sycamores and oaks, on the moorland; and now my reader's eye may rest
on the three leading features of the parish of Logie, as they
appeared in the year of grace 1594; the grey old kirk of St. Woloc,
with its graves dotting the green holm, its buttressed wall begirt
with hawthorn hedges, and shaded by dark yew-trees, where the gled
croaked by day and the owl screamed by night; lower down on the
waterside, the strong tower with its broad chimneys and stone roofs,
its grated casements and corbelled rampart; the great dule-tree
before its gate--an ash that was seldom without its "tassel," in the
shape of a thief from the south, or a Forbes hung in his boots, as
the good people phrased it then; the old baronial manor on the lea,
half hidden among dark green copsewood, with the smoke of its hall
and spence, kitchen, bake and brewhouses ascending into the air.
In those days, the minister of the Kirk, the gudeman of the Place,
and the laird of the Tower, were the three undoubted dignitaries of
the parish; and when we remember that it was an age when the minister
was (in his own estimation) a greater man than ever Cardinal Beaton
dared to be; when the gudeman brought four-and-eighty horsemen, "weel
boden in effeir of war," to the sheriff's quarterly Weaponshow; and
that the laird marched thrice that number, and had moreover the power
of sending half the country-side to pit or gallows, it must be
allowed that the power of these three potentates in 1594, was
infinitely greater than that enjoyed now by the Premier Duke of
Scotland.
Let us go back twenty years.
In the year 1574, when our story opens, the family at the Tower
consisted of the Lady Marjorie and her son, a boy of five or six
years of age. His father had been seized by one of those fits of
wandering, which so frequently possessed the Scottish noblesse of
that and after times; and, with two hundred stout pikemen, he had
joined the Border legion of Sir Walter Scott of Buccleugh, and died
in his armour fighting--not for religion, as the laird, honest man!
cared very little about that--but for honour and glory, on the walls
of Namur. Some domestic quarrel--a sudden fit of spleen at his
lady--was urged in the parish as the reason of his departing from his
quiet little tower among the moors of Cromar, to fight the ferocious
Spaniards under Ferdinand of Toledo; for though Dame Marjorie was a
stanch Catholic (being a daughter of Halbert Cunninghame of the
Boortree-haugh in Glencairn), the laird had heard Knox preach in his
youth, and thought he was a Calvinist. Thus it was a dreich and
doleful day, when a startled servitor of the Tower announced in the
morning that a branch had been found at the foot of the dule-tree
which overshadowed the gate.
Whenever a Gordon of Colstaine died, this old tree, like the oak of
Dalhousie, dropped one of its loftiest branches.
There was sore mourning in the solitary tower, for by that mysterious
warning the lady knew she was a widow, and that the father of her
little boy had fallen, fighting against her faith and the creed of
his ancestors; but for many a month no certain tidings came from that
land, which has been so often the grave of the Scottish soldier,
until Jock of the Cleugh, a pikeman who had followed the laird, came
limping up to the barbican gate, with a light purse and heavy heart,
and a tattered doublet, to tell Lady Marjorie how he had been one of
that brave Border band, who had laid her husband in his narrow bed
before the gate of Sainte Alban.
Old Jock of the Cleugh went no further than the Moat of Colstaine;
for he deposited his crutches by the hall fire, and from
thenceforward became one of the principal personages in the
household, though he spent his whole time in drinking usquebaugh,
flourishing his staff, and rehearsing tales of the laird's prowess
and his own, and the valiant deeds of the Scottish Borderers, the
bulwark of Flanders, and terror of the Spaniards. He taught the
stable-boys many a point of farriery they had never known before, and
the trenchermen many a trick with the dice, by which, however, they
always lost, and he always won; but he shewed them how to pick the
lock of the butler's pantry, to broach wine-casks without drawing the
spigot; to train hawks, and to tell fortunes on cards; but his
principal pupil was young Halbert Gordon, the son and heir of his
umquhile leader. Partaking less of his mother's gentle nature, than
his father's lofty spirit, the boy was froward, passionate, and bold;
and thus, by the time he was ten years of age, Jock of the Cleugh,
who found him an apt scholar, had quite unfitted the little fellow
for living a quiet life, or adopting a peaceable avocation.
He had taught him to ride the wildest horses in the barony without
bridle or saddle, and at full speed; he had taught him to handle a
sword twice the length of himself, and to discharge a deadly shot,
with arblast or arquebuse--to scour armour, sharpen blades, cast
bullets, and make up bandoliers of powder. But there were many other
features in the education acquired from this wooden-legged preceptor,
which were more exceptionable; for he learned to drink "to a bluidy
war," in a tass of raw usquebaugh, without once winking; to make
faces at Mr. Jowlar during sermon, to steal his apples, and shoot his
hens; to "cock his eye" at the dairymaid, and swear a few round oaths
in High Dutch or Low Country Spanish, which had the double advantage
of being more expressive than our plain Scottish, and less expensive,
being evasions of the act by which swearers and banners come under
the claws of the kirk-session; in short, under the tutelage of this
old, one-legged and one-eyed, red-visaged, hard-drinking, swearing
and storming veteran of the Flemish wars, young Halbert Gordon grew
up a little desperado; and, as he increased in years, his ferocious
disposition, and dangerous skill in using his hands, made him the
aversion of all the young lairds, his companions, and a source of
secret fear to all the little ladies in the neighbourhood.
The family of Donaldson at the Forest, consisted also of a widow,
whose husband had left her with one daughter, the heiress of the old
manor and all its pertinents. With her there also dwelt the son of a
deceased sister, little Kenneth Logie, a poor and penniless orphan,
who had no home save that which his kind aunt offered him; for his
father, a ruined laird of Cromar, had fallen in a raid between the
Earl of Mar and the Forbeses.
Isolated as those widows were in that sequestered district, there was
no intercourse between them, and no community of feeling. The lady
of the Moat was a strict Catholic, though her husband had fought
against the gory banner of the Castiyador of Flanders. In her
girlhood, she had heard Abbot Quentin Kennedy preach; and her father
had seen the body of the great cardinal, hung naked and bleeding from
the battlements of St. Andrews.
The lady of the Forest, the widow of umquhile John Donaldson, was a
rigid Calvinist, and looking upon all Catholics with due aversion,
gave the lady of the moated tower the utmost possible space when they
met at the weaponshows, the burrow-town market, or on the horse way,
lest their fardingales should touch; for each thought there was more
than mortal contamination in the person of the other. The Calvinist
was "a heretic;" the Catholic "an idolater;" and yet the poor for
thirty miles round were wont to aver, that two women more beneficent,
gentle-hearted, and amiable, within their own domestic circles, than
the ladies of the Tower and Forest, could not be found in the kingdom
of Scotland. The mischievous fulminations of the Reverend Maister
Jowlar, the parish pastor, on one hand, and those of Father Ogilvie
(a wandering priest of the Scottish mission), on the other, had left
nothing undone to foster this unhappy state of local politics, and
their adverse advices fanned the flames of discord, till the aversion
and jealousy of the two brocaded and high-heeled dames extended
downward through all their dependants. Thus we can compare the two
estates of Colstaine and Culbleine only to two countries--a Catholic
and a Protestant--in a state of watchfulness, and prepared for
instant war. Very little would have brought the "heretics and
idolaters" to blows; for if old Jock of the Cleugh with his
wooden-leg, was ready to advance at the head of the Catholics, from
the mosses and moorlands, on one side; the aged butler of Culbleine,
who had shouldered a pike in 1559, and lost an eye at the memorable
siege of Leith (fighting against M. d'Essé Epainvilliers,
colonel-general of the French infantry in the service of the Scottish
queen), was ready, on the other, to march at the head of the
Calvinists; thus it required all the terror of the sheriff and his
deputies to keep peace in the parish between the rival powers. But
there were three little personages in this community, who, for a time
at least, had no share in those religious heartburnings.
These were the little heiress of the Forest, her cousin, Kenneth
Logie, and Halbert Gordon of the Tower. When Lily Donaldson was ten,
and the boys two years older, they had frequently met in their
rambles, and by meeting became playmates. Little Lily had bright
blue eyes, and fair hair; she was light, happy, smiling, and seemed
like a beautiful fairy--though there never was a fairy, so round, so
noisy, and so full of fun and laughter; but Kenneth was a grave and
quiet boy, with a mild eye and gentle voice, a pale and thoughtful
brow.
Old people were wont to tap him on the head, and say he was like his
mother.
Then Kenneth would bend his calm inquiring eyes on theirs, and wonder
what like _this_ mother was; for he had never known any other parent
than the mother of Lily. Though their chance companion, Halbert
Gordon (a dark-eyed and black-haired boy), was a model of strength
and health, he was neither stronger nor healthier than Kenneth, but
was more rash, proud, passionate and resentful, than any boy in
Croinar; and, as he rose in years, those troublesome propensities
waxed strong within him, and grew with his growth. When his haughty
mother, or Jock of the Cleugh, desired him to finish his prayers by a
malediction on "all obstinate heretics," he always made a mental
reservation in favour of his secret friends at the Forest--fair Lily
Donaldson, and her quiet cousin, Kenneth Logie.
Now it happens that the little people of this world will have their
little love dreams, as well as those who consider themselves men and
women, but are only grown children after all; and thus a secret
sympathy expanded in the hearts of little Kenneth and his pretty
cousin--a sympathy which Lily's mother (who loved her dead sister's
son as if he were her own) left nothing undone to fasten: and it
strengthened fast this charming and childish love.
They were ever together, and were never known to quarrel. In that
lonely pastoral district, all their amusements and objects were
centred in each other; for save the dark, sullen boy of the moated
Tower, they knew no other companion, and even he was known to them
only by stealth.
Kenneth had no secrets from Lily, and Lily knew neither wish nor
hope, a sorrow or a joy, in which "cousin Kenneth" did not
participate. They seemed to have but one heart between them. The
garden of the Place, with its closely clipped and gigantic yew hedges
bordering grass walks (in the Scoto-French fashion), the fish-pond
and the terraces, were the boundaries of the Eden they inhabited.
They knew of no land that lay beyond the blue hills of Strathdon,
which seemed to them the verge of the habitable world. They indulged
in visions, and what little people do not? Lily saw herself a great
lady riding on a white palfrey, whose footcloth swept the ground;
Kenneth saw himself the provost of a city--the general of an
army--the laird of a noble barony--a belted earl, addressing the
three estates in defence of the church, the laws, and liberties of
Scotland. These airy castles faded away at nightfall, but were as
brilliantly rebuilt in a thousand happy forms at their meetings next
day. They were ever together, as we have said, and year after year,
as it passed over their fair young brows, found them still wreathed
with smiles.
The old lady of the Forest and the Lea, when she saw their curly
heads nestling in the same plaid, would often bless them, and say,--
"My puir bairns, ye were just made for ilk ither!"
And the old servitors of the Place loved to call them their "young
laird and leddy--man and wife," and were wont to foretell that one
day they would become so.
Then the little pair looked with wonder into each other's bright
eyes, marvelling what "man and wife" meant, but resolving that,
whatever it did mean, they would not and could not love each other
the less, or be less happy than they were; but would still hunt bees
and butterflies, gather hare and heather bells, and make little
chapels and houses in the green haughs, when the hawthorn bloomed in
summer.
The round of their pleasures was small, and the _little
chapel_--nathless the Reformation--was still a favourite amusement
with the children of Scotland, as it is now with those of continental
countries. Thus, a mimic altar was set up, with a cross and candles
thereon; a circle of stones formed its precinct; Halbert Gordon was
the officiating priest, and little Lily his whole congregation, and
very devout she was; but without the circle of this baby chapel
Kenneth Logie would stand doubtfully aloof, for his aunt and grim
Master Jowlar had taught him to abhor such things, and, less
compliant than the gentle Lily, he dreaded Catholicism as burned
children dread the fire.
The banks of the kirk-burn, whose ceaseless waters came out of the
distant woods, and whose far off source was one of wonder to their
infant minds, reflected every day their smiling faces as they wove
fairy caps among the rushes, or set fleets of bluebells floating down
its current; but the bold young baron of the moated Tower led them
elsewhere, for he shewed Kenneth where the golden eagle and the dark
osprey built their nests in the perpendicular rocks of Baud-kroskie;
and where the fierce fiumart nursed its red cubs among the
ivy-covered holes, daring him to climb with his dagger in his teeth,
to rob the former and slay the latter.
Then, when Kenneth modestly declined, the reckless Gordon, with a
triumphant glance at the little lady, and a laugh of scorn and
derision, would clench his poniard in his strong white teeth, and
grasping the weeds, the ivy, the rocks, or bushes, would ascend the
steep cliffs like a squirrel, with the clouds and mist above, and the
waters of the Dee flowing deep and dark below, while the two cousins
held their breath with terror, as they watched him. Then the eagle
would be seen to fly from its eyry with a shriek, and, torn from its
bed, the nest would fall at the feet of Lily; or at times she was
still more terrified by a fox or a fiumart rolling down the rocks,
drenched in its blood. Then came Halbert Gordon, descending with the
rapidity of an evil spirit, with his cheek flushed and his eyes on
fire, to laugh at Lily's terror and Kenneth's timidity; to exult in
his own superior daring--to exhibit his bloody poniard, and say
tauntingly--
"I will be a brave leal knight, even as my father was; but you,
Master Kenneth, may weel become a monk, and snuffle Latin in
Logie-Kirk."
Though less rash and vindictive, Kenneth was a brave boy, too; and
his heart swelled with secret passion at these open taunts. Thus, by
degrees, the fierce little chieftain of the Tower learned to despise
him, and, as their years increased, he took every opportunity of
endeavouring to lessen Kenneth in the estimation of his cousin. The
boys often quarrelled; but, boy like, they just as often became
apparent friends again. Kenneth Logie respected and even loved
Gordon for his bravery; but feared his proud and passionate temper.
Gordon admired Kenneth's skill as a deadly shot with the arquebuse
and pistolette, but despised his caution; while Lily instinctively
loved her cousin, and feared their companion, though he loved her
well, for her exceeding gentleness, her obliging disposition, and the
grace with which she said and did all those pretty nothings, which
are as pleasing in the artless little girl as in the winning and
well-bred woman.
Time passed on.
The boys became youths, both tall and strong; while the fair wild-bud
that blossomed in the Forest of Culbleine, was daily unfolding some
new charm as it expanded into beauty and bloom.