THE PROPHECY OF THE OAK.
Ralph Kildhurm--that bold-spoken youngster who bearded his father at
the castle gate--had a grand career. His life covers the period of the
Puritan Revolution. He was a devoted adherent of King Charles; probably
not more from personal sympathy with that unhappy monarch, than because
he knew that the Stuarts' cause would have been his mother's, had she
been alive. He met his death valiantly at Naseby. But he had married
two years previously, and two sons came of the union, one of whom was
born six months after his decease. This younger son was destined to be
his successor.
Our affair being the story of the Oak, and of the family mainly in so
far as it was involved therewith, I can give few further details about
Sir Ralph. He was the first baronet of his line. Ralph, it is said,
had always taken great interest in the growth of the infant oak tree;
as was no wonder, considering that it had been planted by his mother
under circumstances so darkly impressive. At the time of Sir Brian's
death, the tree had grown to about the height of a man: it flourished
with strange vigour. The story of its origin was not unknown in the
neighbourhood, and many quaint and fantastic sayings and prophecies
concerning it were rife among the people of the neighbourhood. Its
rapid growth was plausibly ascribed to the blood which had drenched
the soil at its planting; and it was affirmed that this blood had been
absorbed into the life and substance of the tree, imparting to it a
kind of semi-human vitality; so that, although in outward semblance an
oak, much like other oaks, it was in reality a species of oak man--an
offspring, in fact, of the valiant race of Kildhurm, born of the
alleged unhallowed union between Lady Kildhurm and the Red-Bearded
one. Therefore its destiny was bound up with that of the Kildhurms; but
whether for weal or for woe was a question as to which different people
held different opinions. Some said that, since from evil no good could
come, and since Lady Kildhurm had died in sin, the tree that sprang
from her blood was an accursed growth instinct with a demon of violence
and mischief, and sure, sooner or later, to work harm upon its human
kindred. Others, on the contrary, maintained that the charge against
Ursula was--in its blacker construction, at all events--a calumny; that
he of the Red Beard had been a priest or a monk in disguise, and that
the intrigue in which the two were concerned had for its object nothing
worse than the furtherance of some religious scheme. Consequently,
urged these charitably-disposed persons, the blood which fertilised the
planted acorns was the blood of innocence wrongfully accused; and might
be expected to carry with it a blessing rather than a curse.
But hereupon the first party would reply that, whether Ursula were
guilty or innocent of the crime charged against her, there could at all
events be little doubt that she had taken her own life, and no doubt at
all that the latest words she spoke to her husband were a deliberate
curse. Now, it was a fact established upon Scriptural authority that
the evil effect of a curse descends from father to son even unto
the third and fourth generation--and this, whether the person who
pronounced the anathema desired such an amplification of it or not:
curses being like demons, which, once evoked, are not easily laid
again. Upon the whole, therefore, it seemed probable that the Kildhurms
would fare badly with their oak; yet it appears never to have occurred
to anybody to try the effect of rooting the oak up, or cutting it down.
But very likely nobody would have been found venturesome enough to act
upon the idea, even had it been suggested. Such a proceeding, under the
circumstances, would have been regarded as little better than murder,
if not a good deal worse: for although Dante could scarcely have been
familiar to the Kildhurm family, and still less to the peasantry of
that epoch, a belief was widely prevalent that if an axe should be laid
to the tree, or so much as a twig torn off it, blood would flow from
the wound. And to such a pitch was this grotesque notion carried, that
during many years the dead leaves and fallen boughs of the oak are said
to have been religiously buried, as if they had been veritable human
remains. I do not care to vouch for the truth of this legend, but that
it should have existed even as a legend is significant of the serious
light in which the whole matter was viewed.
It was during Sir Ralph's lifetime that some local Mother Shipton
produced the famous prophetic verses which were ever thenceforward
quoted when the Oak and its attributes came up for discussion; and
as to the true meaning of which a great deal of speculation and
dispute were rife. What may have been the merits of the question can
be inferred only from the sequel; but meanwhile it is certain that
the prophecy itself so far appealed to the pride or interests of the
Kildhurm family, that they caused it to be engraved upon a silver disc,
and hung round the bole of the tree by a silver chain. There is no
evidence of this chain and the disc ever having been removed; and the
story goes that they were gradually overgrown by the substance of the
tree; until, by the time the prophecies were ripe for fulfilment, the
silver record of them had disappeared. The verses, according to the
most trustworthy accounts, ran somewhat as follows:--
Here stand I, Kildhurm's Oak,
Ne'er to fall by age or stroke;
E'er Two Hundred Years be run,
Death of three and wealth of one.
At the period to which these verses are assigned, the Kildhurms had no
lack of worldly goods, so that the concluding words might have seemed
uncalled for. But they did not long continue to lack significance. For,
after King Charles had suffered on the block, and the Protector ruled
over England, those Englishmen who had favoured the dead King's cause
were bound to suffer both in life and lands. Sir Ralph, as we know,
had already paid the former penalty; but his surviving relatives were
constrained to pay the other. In addition to a fine in money of many
thousands of pounds they were deprived of by far the larger part of
their landed possessions; nothing, indeed, was left to them but half a
dozen acres of barren land, and the Tower of Kildhurm itself. Of course
it was a cause for thankfulness that the Tower was not taken too; it
was not every Royalist, in those days, who could boast of owning a roof
to cover him. Probably, on the other hand, the Kildhurms could have got
on better, from a practical point of view, with a little less stone and
mortar and a little more gold. All but two or three of the servants
had to be dismissed; the domestic expenses had to be cut down to the
very lowest figure; and there was the once rich and powerful family,
now reduced to half a dozen persons all told, living in one corner of
a castle capable of accommodating fifty guests with their retinues. It
was a fine place, no doubt, for children to play at hide-and-seek in;
but a sad place for the elders who remembered the glories of the past.
The Oak had now completed its first half-century, and was already a
noble and stalwart tree. It was an object of almost religious care
on the part of the family: they cherished for it the same gloomy and
perverse sort of pride that other old families do for the exploits of
some godless ancestor, or for some hereditary vice or physical defect
in themselves. A low railing had been built round the tree to protect
it from careless and irreverent approach, and the little space of
turf therein enclosed was kept scrupulously free from rubbish. The
tree, however, possessed so much vigour of its own, that it would have
flourished under the most adverse circumstances. It bade fair, if
opportunity were given it, to become one of the great oaks of England.
The trunk was modelled on lines of exceeding strength; the lower main
branches, three in number, diverged from one another at equal angles,
and extended their level lengths so far that the seaward limb overhung
the verge of the cliff. The foliage was thick and dark, and the leaves,
in autumn, if seen against the light, showed a deep tinge of crimson.
Rain could not penetrate through their manifold living roof: and the
shadow they cast upon the ground beneath is said to have been so sombre
and so cold, that even in the greatest heat of summer it would strike
a subtle chill through the blood. Those persons who had the temerity
to take a nap in this shadow, or even to stand in it too long, were
visited by appalling dreams, and generally got an ague which lasted
them the rest of their lives. It should be noted, however, that these
untoward effects did not occur in the case of the members of the
Kildhurm family who, on the contrary, were fond of lingering about
the tree: seeming to be sensible of a brotherhood with it, and to be
agreeably affected by that which others found hurtful: insomuch that
the children were brought to lie in their cradles beneath the boughs;
and as they grew towards youth, their favourite playground was there.
In winter, when the tree stood forth stripped of its leaves, the
peculiarities of its conformation were disclosed. Above the three
main boughs already described, the trunk rose nearly erect for a
considerable height, and put forth two thick limbs, which, after
growing outwards nearly horizontally for half their length, thence
ascended perpendicularly with a sudden crook like an elbow; and finally
divided and spread abroad in smaller claw-like branches. The effect,
therefore, as viewed from a suitable distance, was as if a gigantic
but distorted human figure were standing upon the lower trunk as a
pedestal, and were uplifting above its head two long and rigid arms.
Were those arms raised in defiance of heaven, or in supplication to
it? Did they threaten mankind below, or scatter benisons upon them?
These may have been disputed questions among the people of that age.
Doubtless the popular imagination, stimulated as it must have been
by the many wild stories current about the Oak, had much to do with
giving the semblance of reality to these human-like attributes; and
the Kildhurms themselves, having little except the tree left to put
them in mind of their former dignities, would naturally do what
they conscientiously could towards heightening the mystery and the
interest which surrounded it. Nevertheless, after all proper and due
allowances and deductions have been made, much still remains which,
to say the least of it, is singular and suggestive, and which in an
era unenlightened by electricity and evolution may well have seemed
portentous.