there stood still, suddenly.[114] I saw, moreover, that she drew back
her pointing hand. All this while I do confess that my knees shook
under me, and the drops of sweat ran down my flesh like rain. But now,
although face to face with the spirit, my heart grew calm, and my
mind was composed. I knew that the pentacle would govern her, and the
ring must bind, until I gave the word. Then I called to mind the rule
laid down of old, that no angel or fiend, no spirit, good or evil,
will ever speak until they have been first spoken to. _N.B._--This is
the great law of prayer. God Himself will not yield reply until man
hath made vocal entreaty, once and again. So I went on to demand, as
the books advise; and the phantom made answer, willingly. Questioned
wherefore not at rest? Unquiet, because of a certain sin. Asked what,
and by whom? Revealed it; but it is _sub sigillo_, and therefore _nefas
dictu_; more anon. Inquired, what sign she could give that she was
a true spirit and not a false fiend? Stated, before next Yule-tide
a fearful pestilence would lay waste the land and myriads of souls
would be loosened from their flesh, until, as she piteously said, ‘our
valleys will be full.’ Asked again, why she so terrified the lad?
Replied: ‘It is the law: we must seek a youth or a maiden of clean
life, and under age, to receive messages and admonitions.’ We conversed
with many more words, but it is not lawful for me to set them down. Pen
and ink would degrade and defile the thoughts she uttered, and which
my mind received that day. I broke the ring, and she passed, but to
return once more next day. At even-song, a long discourse with that
ancient transgressor, Mr. B. Great horror and remorse; entire atonement
and penance; whatsoever I enjoin; full acknowledgment before pardon.
_“January 13, 1665._--At sunrise I was again in the field. She came
in at once, and, as it seemed, with freedom. Inquired if she knew my
thoughts, and what I was going to relate? Answered, ‘Nay, we only know
what we perceive and hear; we cannot see the heart.’ Then I rehearsed
the penitent words of the man she had come up to denounce, and the
satisfaction he would perform. Then said she, ‘Peace in our midst.’
I went through the proper forms of dismissal, and fulfilled all as
it was set down and written in my memoranda; and then, with certain
fixed rites, I did dismiss that troubled ghost, until she peacefully
withdrew, gliding towards the west. Neither did she ever afterward
appear, but was allayed until she shall come in her second flesh to the
valley of Armageddon on the last day.”
These quaint and curious details from the “diurnal” of a simple-hearted
clergyman of the seventeenth century appear to betoken his
personal persuasion of the truth of what he saw and said, although
the statements are strongly tinged with what some may term the
superstition, and others the excessive belief, of those times. It is a
singular fact, however, that the canon which authorises exorcism under
episcopal licence, is still a part of the ecclesiastical law of the
Anglican Church, although it might have a singular effect on the nerves
of certain of our bishops[115] if their clergy were to resort to them
for the faculty which Parson Rudall obtained. The general facts stated
in his diary are to this day matters of belief in that neighbourhood;
and it has been always accounted a strong proof of the veracity of the
Parson and the Ghost, that the plague, fatal to so many thousands, did
break out in London at the close of that very year. We may well excuse
a triumphant entry, on a subsequent page of the “diurnal,” with the
date of July 10, 1665: “How sorely must the infidels and heretics of
this generation be dismayed when they know that this Black Death, which
is now swallowing its thousands in the streets of the great city, was
foretold six months agone, under the exorcisms of a country minister,
by a visible and suppliant ghost! And what pleasures and improvements
do such deny themselves who scorn and avoid all opportunity of
intercourse with souls separate, and the spirits, glad and sorrowful,
which inhabit the unseen world!”
FOOTNOTES:
[102] From _All the Year Round_, vol. xvii. pp. 501-504. 1867. The story
occurs in C. S. Gilbert’s “Historical Survey of Cornwall,” in Mrs.
Bray’s “Trelawny of Trelawn,” and in “Histories of Launceston,” by R.
and O. B. Peter.
[103] All this is singularly applicable to Hawker himself.
[104] See p. 45.
[105] John Ruddle, or Rudall, A.M., was instituted Vicar of St. Mary
Magdalene, Launceston, on Christmas Day, 1663, on which day he began
his ministry. He is entered in the Visitation Book of 1665 as vicar,
and in that of 1692 as curate. He became a prebendary of Exeter. On
July 15, 1671, he married Mary Bolitho, a widow. He was buried on
January 22, 1698. (See Appendix H.)
[106] It is a question whether these documents ever existed outside
Hawker’s brain. See note on p. 101.
[107] See Vivian’s “Visitations of Cornwall,” p. 148.
[108] For the pedigree of the family of Bligh, of Botathen, see
Vivian’s “Visitations of Cornwall,” p. 38. William Bligh, baptized May
18, 1657, was the son of William, who was baptized June 9, 1633, and
was, therefore, only thirty-two in 1665. According to ancestries given
by Carew and Gilbert, it is probable that the Earls of Darnley are
descended from the Blighs of Botathen. (See App. H.)
[109] This is no doubt a mis-spelling for “Dingley.” A James Dingley
was vicar of the parish of South Petherwin, where the ghost appeared,
in the same reign, and assisted Parson Rudall in his ministrations at
Launceston. The name Dingley exists in that town and district at the
present day.
[110] See p. 15.
[111] The pentacle of Solomon. See p. 14.
[112] Compare the lines on Merlin in “The Quest of the Sangraal”--
“He raised his prophet-staff: that runic rod,
The stem of Igdrasil--the crutch of Raun,”
to which Hawker appends the following note: “Igdrasil, the mystic tree,
the ash of the Keltic ritual. The Raun, or Rowan, is also the ash of
the mountain, another magic wood of the northern nations.”
[113] See Appendix A_b_.
[114] See note on p. 104.
[115] Hawker was quite capable of submitting a poser of this kind to
his own bishop, Dr. Phillpotts. It is on record that he once exorcised
a rebellious vestry, but whether he obtained the bishop’s licence in
this case is not stated.
A RIDE FROM BUDE TO BOSS[116]
BY TWO OXFORD MEN[117]
Dear old Oxford![118] amid the brawl and uproar of the latter days, and
with many a frailty in the curtains of the Ark which the weapons of
the Philistines have found and pierced, yet _alma mater_, mother mild,
like our native England, “with all thy faults I love thee still.” And
when I recall my own undergraduate life of thirty years and upwards
agone, I feel, notwithstanding modern vaunt, the _laudator temporis
acti_ earnest within me yet and strong. Nowadays, as it seems to me,
there is but little originality of character in the still famous
University; a dread of eccentric reputation appears to pervade College
and Hall; every “Oxford man,” to adopt the well-known name, is subdued
into sameness within and without, controlled as it were into copyism
and mediocrity by the smoothing-iron of the nineteenth century.[119]
Whereas in my time, and before it, there were distinguished names,
famous in every mouth for original achievements and “deeds of
daring-do.” There were giants in those days--men of varied renown--and
they arose and won for themselves, in strange fields of fame, record
and place. Each became in his day a hero of the “Iliad” or “Odyssey”
of Oxford life--a kind of Homeric man. Once and again in the course
of every term, the whole University would ring with some fearless and
practical jest, conceived and executed with a dash of original genius
which betokened future victories in the war of wit and the world of
men. How well do I remember a bold travesty of discipline[120] which
once set the common-rooms in a roar, and even among “mine ancients,”
made it
“merry in hall
Where beards wagged all”!
A decree had been issued by the “authorities” of a well-known College
(it was in the pre-ritual days) that no undergraduate should present
himself at morning chapel service with his scarlet hunting-coat
underneath his surplice--a costume neither utterly secular nor
completely ecclesiastical, and therefore a motley garb which it did
not seem unjust or unreasonable to forbid in a sacred place. However,
the order was implicitly obeyed at the ensuing matins, with solemn
and suspicious exactitude. Alas! it was “the torrent’s smoothness
ere it dash below;” for on the third morning, when the College
servants arrived to take down the shutters and to light the fires,
they discovered that “a change had come over the spirit of their
dream.” Every one of the panelled doors throughout the Quadrangle of
the Canons, the very seat of hoar and reverend authority, had been
artistically painted during the night with the hue of Nimrod, a glowing
hunter’s red! The gates were immediately closed and barred, and every
member of the College convened before a grand divan of the Dons, to
undergo immediate scrutiny on the origin of that which some of the
undergraduates irreverently termed this ultra-observance of the rubric
(their wit would be obscure to those who are unaware that _rubrica_,
the etymon of our Church rules, signifies ruddy or red). The authors of
this outrage escaped detection, although every painter in Oxford was
summoned for examination, and all the dealers in colours and oils.
It was subsequently whispered among the initiated that the artist,
with his brushes and materials, had been brought down from London in a
post-chaise-and-four, secretly introduced through an unnoted postern,
and when his work was done, hospitably feasted and paid, and then sent
back at full speed through the night to town.
Another “merrie jest,” but with a lowlier scene and an humbler
_dramatis personæ_, raised the laugh of many a common-room and
wine-party about the same period of my own undergraduate recollections.
There was an ancient woman, blear-eyed and dim-sighted, “worn nature’s
mournful monument,”[121] who had the far and wide repute of witchcraft
among the College servants and the “baser sort” in the suburbs of the
town; but in reality she was a mere “wreck of eld,” a harmless and
helpless old creature, who stood at more than one college-gate for
alms. Her well-known name was Nanny Heale. Her cottage, or rather
decayed old hut, leaned against a steep mound by the castle-wall, and
was so hugged in by the ground that, from a path along the ramparts
a passer-by might cast a bird’s-eye look down Nanny’s chimney, and
watch well her hearth and home. One winter evening certain frolicsome
wights, out of College in search of a channel for the exuberant spirits
of their age, were pacing, like Hardicanute, the wall east and west,
when a glance down the witch’s chimney revealed a quaint and simple
scene of humble life. There she crouched, close by the smoking embers,
peering into the fire; and before her very nose there hung, just over
the fire, a round iron vessel, called in the western counties a crock,
filled to the brim with potatoes, and without a cover or lid. This
utensil was suspended by its swing-handle to an iron bar, which went
from side to side of the chimney-wall. To see and to assail the weak
point in a field of battle is evermore the signal of a great captain.
The onslaught was instantly planned. A rope, with a hook of iron at the
end, was slowly and noiselessly lowered down the chimney, and, unnoted
by poor Nanny’s blinking sight, the handle of the iron pot was softly
grasped by the crook, and the vessel with its mealy contents began to
ascend in silent majesty towards the upper air. Thoroughly roused by
this unnatural and ungrateful demeanour of her lifelong companion of
the hearth, old Nanny arose from her stool, peered anxiously upward to
watch the ascent, and shouted at the top of her voice: “Massy ’pon my
sinful soul! art gwain off--taties and all?”[122]
The vessel was quietly grasped, carried down in hot haste, and planted
upright outside the cottage-door. A knock, given for the purpose,
summoned the inmate, who hurried out and stumbled over, as she
afterwards interpreted the event, her penitent crock.
“So then,” was her joyful greeting--“so then! theer’t come back to
holt, then! Ay, ’tis a cold out o’ doors.”
Good came out of evil; for her story, which she rehearsed again and
again, with all the energy and firm persuasion of truth, at last
reached the ears of the parish authorities, and they, on inquiry into
the evidence, forthwith decreed the addition of a shilling a-week to
poor old Nanny’s allowance, on the plea that her faculties had quite
failed her, and that she required greater charity because of her
wandering mind. Yet the fact which she testified met the criterion of
evidence demanded by Hume, for the event occurred within the experience
of the witness herself.
It was by outbreaks of animal spirits such as these that the monotony
of collegiate life in those days was relieved, for the University
supplied but little excitement of mental kind. The battle-cries of High
Church and Low Church--“that bleating of the sheep and that lowing of
the oxen” which nowadays we hear--had not yet begun to rouse the Oxford
mind;[123] and the only war about vestments that I recollect was our
hot fierce struggle after a festive assembly to get first out into
the lobby, and to grasp as a spoil the best caps and gowns one by one,
until the unhappy freshman who arrived last had to put up with such
ragged specimens of University costume as would hardly have satisfied
the veriest Puritan for the performance of divine service.
Well, for us two--the subjects of this paper--the life of Oxford,
with its freaks and its discipline, for a time was over; we had each
passed the final examination so graphically named “the Great Go;” and
that so as to be, what man so seldom is in this world, satisfied. In
high heart, and with spirits running over, my friend and I appointed
a tryst in a small watering-place on the north coast of Cornwall as
a starting-point for a ride “all down the thundering shores of Bude
and Boss.” In due time, and on a glorious summer day, we mounted our
“Galloway nags,” and, like the knights of ancient ballad, “we laughed
as we rode away.” The start was from Bude, and we made our first halt
at a place twelve miles towards the south-west; a scene of general
local renown, and which bears the parochial name of Warbstow Barrow.
It stands upon a lofty hill that soars and swells upward into a vast
circular mound, enthroned, as it were, amid a wild and boundless
stretch of heathy and gorsy moorland. It was soothing to the sight to
look down and around on the tapestry of purple and gold intermingled
in natural woof, and flowing away in free undulation on every side.
The view from this mountain-top was of wonderful extent, but wild,
desolate, and bare. Beneath, on three sides, spread the moor, dotted
here and there with a grey old church, that crouched toward the shadow
of its low Saxon battlemented tower, as if it still sought shelter,
after so many ages, from the perils of surrounding barbarism. On the
fourth side swelled the sea. But the brow of this hill, like that of
many others in the west, dropped into the shape of a mighty circular
bowl--a kind of hollow valley turfed with grass, and surrounded by
a rim; an amphitheatre, however, large enough to hold five thousand
people at once.[124] On the flat level floor of this round crater, and
in the exact midst, still swells up uninjured the outline of a viking’s
grave, unlike other burial-mounds[125] so common in Cornwall and
elsewhere,
“Where the brown barrow curves its sullen breast
Above the bones of some dead gentile’s soul,”[126]
and that on every hillside and plain. The shape of the great hillock
at Warbstow is neither oval nor round, but survives the exact image
of the dragon-ship of northern piracy and war.[127] Moreover, not
the shape only, but the size of the ancient vessel of the dead, is
perpetuated here. Measured and graduated by scale, this oblong, curved,
and narrow grave would yield the dimensions of a boat of fifty tons,
which would be about the weight of a Scandinavian serpent of the sea.
We saw that an effort had been made to open this barrow at one of the
ends; but an old woman, whom we found at a cottage not far off, assured
us “that they that tried it were soon forced to give up their digging
and flee, for the thunders came for ’em, and the lightnings also.”
We endeavoured to sound the local mind of our informant as to the
history of the place and origin of the grave; but all we could drag
out of her, after questions again and again, was “great warriors,
supposing, in old times.” Such was the dirge of the mighty dead, and
their requiem, at Warbstow Barrow. But the sun had begun to lean, and
we were bound for Boscastle, the breviate of Bottreau[128] Castle, and
the abode of the earls[129] of that name.
[Illustration: BOSCASTLE HARBOUR.]
Strange, striking, and utterly unique is the first aspect of this
village by the sea. The gorge or valley lies between two vast and
precipitous hills, that yawn asunder as though they had been cleft by
the spells of some giant warlock[130] of the West, like the Eildon
Hill by Michael Scott.[131] As you descend the hill from the north
you discover on the opposite side clusters of quaint old-fashioned
houses, grotesque and gabled, that appear as though they clung together
for mutual support on the slope of that perilous cliff. Between the
houses, and sheer down the mountain side, descended, or rather fell, a
steep and ugly road; which led, however, to the “safety of the vale,”
and landed the traveller at last in a deep cut or gash between the
hills, where the creek ebbed and flowed, which was called by strangers
in their courtesy, and by the inhabitants, with aboriginal pride,
“the Harbour”--_Cornice_ “Hawn.” There “went the ships,” so that
they did not exceed sixty tons in freight; and thither arrived, at
certain intervals, coals and timber in bulk and quantity, which can be
ascertained, no doubt, by the return of imports laid before Parliament
by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
We reached in safety our bourn for the night at the bottom of the
hill, and discovered the hostelry by the sign which swung above the
door. This appeared to us to represent a man’s shoe; but when we
had read the legend, we found that it signified the Ship Inn, and
was the “actual effigy” of a vessel which belonged to the port. Here
we received a smiling welcome from the hostess, a ruddy-visaged
widow,--Joan Treworgy was her Keltic name--fubby and interjectional in
figure, and manifestly better adapted for her abode at the foot of the
hill than at any mansion further up. She was born, as she afterwards
related, two doors off: and, except that she had travelled up the hill
to Forraburry church to be married there, it appeared that a diameter
of five yards would have defined the total circumference of her
wandering life.
As soon as we arrived, she called up from some vasty deep underneath
her house a grim and shaggy shape, who answered to the name of Tim,
but whom we identified as Caliban on the spot, and charged him to take
proper care of the Captains’ horses (for by that title all strangers
in sound garments and whole hats are saluted in the land of the
quarry and the mine), and to be sure that they had plenty of whuts.
She then invited us to enter her “parrolar,” a room rather cosy than
magnificent; for when our landlady had followed in her two guests,
and stood at the door, no one beside could have forced an entrance
any more than a cannon-ball could cleave through a feather-bed.
We then proceeded to confer about beds for the night, and, not
without misgiving, inquired if she could supply a couple of those
indispensable places of repose. A demur ensued. All the gentry in the
town, she declared, were accustomed to sleep “two in a bed,” and the
officers that travelled the country, and stopped at her house, would
mostly do the same; but, however, if we commanded two beds for only
two people, two we must have; only, although they were both in the
same room, we must certainly pay for two, and sixpence a piece was her
regular price. We assented, and then went on to entreat that we might
dine. She graciously agreed; but to all questions as to our fare her
sole response was, “Meat--meat and taties.” “Some call ’em,” she added,
in a scornful tone, “‘purtaties,’ but we always say ‘taties’ here.”
The specific differences between beef, mutton, veal, etc., seemed to
be utterly or artfully ignored, and to every frenzied inquiry her calm
inexorable reply was, “Meat--nice wholesome meat and taties.”
In due time we sat down in that happy ignorance as to the nature of our
viands which a French cook is said to desire; and although we both made
a not unsatisfactory meal, it is a wretched truth that by no effort
could we ascertain what it was that was roasted for us that day by
widow Treworgy, hostess of the Ship, and which we consumed. Was it a
piece of Boscastle baby? as I suggested to my companion in the midst of
his enjoyment; and the question caused him to arise and rush out to
inquire once again, and insist on knowing the whole truth; but he soon
came back baffled, and shouting, “Meat and taties!” There was not a
vestige of bone nor any outline that could identify the joint, and the
not unsavoury taste was something like tender veal. It was not until
years afterwards that light was thrown on our mysterious dinner that
day by a passage which I accidentally turned up in an ancient history
of Cornwall. Therein I read “that the sillie people of Bouscastle and
Boussiney do catch in the summer seas divers young soyles [seals],
which, doubtful if they be fish or flesh, conynge housewives will
nevertheless roast, and do make thereof very savoury meat.” “Ay, ay,”
said my friend and fellow-traveller, when I had transcribed and sent
him this extract--“Ay! clear as day--meat and taties; how I wish I had
old mother Treworgy now by the throat! I would make her walk up that
hill every day for a month, and stop her meat and taties till she was
the size of other people.” When the hour arrived that should have been
the time of rest, we mounted a cabin-ladder, which our hostess assured
us was “the stairs.” We found the two beds which had been allotted
to us, but, as it was foretold, in one small, hot, stuffy room. As
we entered the narrow door, a solitary casement twinkled on one side
of the opposite wall, flanked by a glazed cupboard door, paned to
match, on the other. This latter, the false light, my friend opened
by mistake--he was near-sighted, and our single dip was dim--to sniff,
as he said, the evening air; but he shut it up again in quick disgust,
declaring that the whole atmosphere of the village was impregnated with
onions and cheese. To bed, but not to rest. Every cubic inch of ozone
was exhausted long before midnight, and, as the small hours struck on
the kitchen clock below, we found that “Boscastle had murdered sleep,
and therefore Oxford could sleep no more.” With the first faint glimmer
of day we arose and stole gently out into the dawn. Before us stood the
one-arched bridge spanning the river bed. Lower down the creek the mast
and rigging of a sloop at anchor was visible, like network traced upon
the morning sky. But the lowly level had no attraction for our path:
there lay the sluggish mist of night, and it seemed to our distempered
fancy like the dull heavy breath of the snorers in that village glen;
but above and upwards stretched the tall ascending road, like Jacob’s
ladder resting on the earth and reaching to the sky. Surely on the
brow of that mountain top there must be breath and room. We turned,
therefore, to climb, and for once “vaulting ambition did not o’erleap
itself.” Slow and difficult was the way, but cooler and more bracing
the air every yard that we achieved.