were lookin’ out for a Missus MacSweeny, I reckon he’d go after widders.
Ain’t he a widderer hisself?”
“That don’t follow,” said Mary.
“Don’t it? Then it ort!” retorted Tom.
“There—don’t be snuffy wi’ me!” said Mary.
The getting up of a suitable tree and its transport to the cottage of
the Mauduits was not a matter of two minutes, nor of half-an-hour.
Tom was aware that Isabella would have been kept waiting, but he relieved
his mind with the consideration that she would take it for granted that
he was detained by some business, and would walk on alone to the Hall;
the distance was trifling. He could explain matters when he arrived, and
she would at once understand the circumstances.
“I don’t see how you’re going to stick them candle ends on to the
branches,” said Tom.
“I shall heat hairpins and run ’em through.”
“That’s fine!” exclaimed Mountstephen derisively; “and when the candles
be burnin’ the flame’ll heat the hairpins red-hot, and they’ll melt the
composite, and there’ll be a pretty mess, and the candle ends falling
about on all sides and firing everything! I hope you’re insured!”
“I can manage it.”
“No, you can’t, excuse me, Polly. I reckon mother at home has got some
bits of tapers from the Parsonage tree last year. Her was up there
helping, and they throwed the tree away when done with; and her’s a
saving woman and can’t abide no waste, and I know her pulled off and kept
the remains of candles. They have wires for fastening of them on. If
you don’t mind my leaving that collar here—you won’t let nothin’ damage
it, nor let the cat get at it, will you, Polly?—I’ll run home and see
what mother have got. I couldn’t run in that collar; ’twould be sheer
impossible!”
So, instead of going on to the Hall, here was another detention. But Tom
was a good-natured lad; he was not _needed_ at the Hall, and here at the
cottage he was of real assistance.
After the young man had been away nearly a quarter of an hour, he
returned with a small box full of portions of tapers, and some entire,
and sundry little sparkling ornaments that had furnished the tree the
preceding Christmas, and had been cast aside, but saved by the prudent
and frugal Mrs. Mountstephen.
“And here, Polly,” said Tom, “here’s a spotted dog in china, as stood on
my mantelshelf, that little Bessie be welcome to. You can set it under
the tree. Now I’ll clap the tree mores into a tub, and then I’m off to
the Hall.”
When Tom, reinvested in collar and coat, arrived at the Lodge and
inquired for Isabella, he learnt, which did not much surprise him, that
she had gone forward. So he went to the Hall by himself, not greatly
concerned at being late. He knew that all who were invited would not be
able to arrive punctually. There would be two “sitting-downs” to supper,
and he would be in time for the second.
When he arrived, he looked about him for Isabella, and saw her seated
beside the Scotch gardener, who was helping her to trifle.
With a little difficulty he made his way behind the chairs, in and out
among the servants who were waiting on the guests, to where Isabella was
dipping into the trifle.
“So sorry, Bella; I couldn’t help it,” said he.
“De-li-ci-ous!” said Bella.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I was speaking to Mr. MacSweeny.”
“I only want to say that I was unavoidably detained.”
“The jam is strawberry,” said Bella.
“Whole strawberries, from our own garden,” said MacSweeny.
“I’m very fond of strawberries,” observed Bella.
“So am I,” said the Scotch gardener. “Have some more. I’ll remember you
in the strawberry time and send you up the first dish I ripen. Of course,
I ripen ’em early—in the greenhouse. You shall have some—as soon as they
are fit to be picked.”
“How good of you, Mr. MacSweeny!”
“Not at all; I live but to oblige, and _you_”—he looked round at her—“for
you I would do anything.”
“Bella,” said Tom over her chair, “I really could not help it.”
“Will you please to move, Mr. Mountstephen; you are jogging my chair.”
“Do you like grapes?” asked MacSweeny. “I rather flatter myself on my
grapes. I am able to keep them, too, so well. My large white Muscats—but
there, you shall have some. I’ll send you up a really choice bunch. I
think the second sitters down are coming in now. Miss Isabella, if you
have done, we will rise and let the others take our places. Here, you,
Mountstephen, can have my seat. If you have brought Mary Mauduit I have
no doubt she can have Miss Frowd’s chair.”
Poor Tom did not enjoy his supper, and that over, when he sought Isabella
to tender his excuses, she deliberately turned her back on him. It was
clear MacSweeny had made mischief. He had told her that for the sake of
that pale Polly Mauduit he had neglected to fulfil his engagement and
keep his appointment.
Dancing began, and Bella sat out with the Scotch gardener, who was too
serious a man to approve of the light fantastic toe; as he explained to
Bella it was against his principles—“but don’t let that interfere with
your enjoyment, if you wish to go to Mr. Mountstephen.”
“Oh! not at all!” said Miss Frowd.
Huffed, hurt, poor Tom withdrew. He slunk away from the Hall. Among so
many, he would not be missed, and of enjoyment there was none after
his rebuff. It would madden him to see how Bella “carried on” with the
Scotchman.
He walked through the park, groaning, grumbling, resentful. He was not
angry with himself for not keeping his appointment, nor with Polly for
having detained him; but with Bella, whom he designated as a minx, and
with MacSweeny, whom he termed a widdered Scottish rogue.
He left the park; he walked hastily on. Then, finding that in the
agitation of his feelings he could not keep his head in one position, and
that he was consequently liable to cut his throat, he halted, and took
off his collar, and fastened it by the stud round his left arm above the
elbow.
Presently he reached the cottage of the Mauduits, and he could see
through the little window that the tree was alight; it twinkled through
the panes. The temptation to turn aside, rap at the door, and enter was
not to be resisted.
To his knock he received an answer, as he opened the door. The answer
came from an inner room.
“It be I, Polly,” called Tom. “Just passin’, and want to see how Bessie
be enjoyin’ of herself.”
“Come in—come in, Tom.”
The young man strode through the kitchen into the adjoining chamber.
There lay, in her bed, the sick girl, a lovely child, with large burning
dark eyes, and a hectic flame in her cheeks. She was supported in the
arms of her sister, and was looking with delight at the little candles,
at the oranges, and the glittering tin ornaments.
“Tom,” said Mary, “Bessie do thank you so for the spotted dog.”
“Yes, I do,” said the sick child, striving to lift herself and extend a
hand to the young gardener.
“But, gracious me, Tom!” exclaimed Mary, “whatever is the meaning o’
that?” pointing to the white band round his arm. “It is like what folks
put on now when in mourning—only it’s white.”
“He’s going to be married,” said the sick child.
“It is only that stiff collar; I couldn’t abear it no longer!” explained
Tom.
Then the child laughed, and laughed till she coughed.
Suddenly Mary uttered a cry—Tom saw a crimson stream.
“Run, run, Tom! For Heaven’s sake run for the doctor!”
And Tom ran.
In half-an-hour he returned.
Polly was kneeling by the bed. On it lay the child, the face almost
white, but yet with a little colour in the delicate cheek. Her hand held
tightly that of her sister.
The doctor had not come; he was out; would not be back till morning.
Tom could not explain this; and he knew, moreover, that the surgeon could
effect nothing. Without a word he knelt also by the child’s bedside.
The candles were quivering to extinction on the Christmas tree. One was
guttering, and sending a stream of wax over the head of the spotted dog.
Then another fell twinkling through the boughs and went out. And at the
same time the light went out in Bessie’s eyes.
A few days later, when the earth had closed over the child, Tom was
speaking with Mary, and she said to him: “Tom, I think now I should like
that Christmas tree to be planted on the little maid’s grave. Will you
oblige me by doing it?” Then, after wiping her eyes: “Tom, that is a
Tree of Death.”
* * * * *
The head-gardener triumphantly carried away Bella; the marriage took
place within six weeks of the Christmas supper and dance. Isabella Frowd
had become Mrs. Sandy MacSweeny, and was planted in the gardener’s
beautiful cottage. But in all things human there comes a change. Within
a very short time certain matters started to light. What these were you
shall hear from the squire’s own lips, as he addressed Tom Mountstephen.
“Tom,” said the squire, his broad, rosy face very hot and agitated, “Tom,
I’ve bundled MacSweeny off. I don’t see why I should have to buy the
fruit I grow from the greengrocer in our market town. I don’t see why, if
I purchase bulbs and greenhouse plants, they should invariably disappear,
and be reported to have died. I don’t see why, if I buy flower seeds,
they should come up in other folks’ gardens. I have not been able to get
fruit for my table without sending to town to buy it. I have been ruined
in procuring vast supplies of choice plants from nurserymen, and have not
enjoyed them. MacSweeny is off. Hang it! you may not be a professional,
and A1, and all that, but you are honest as daylight. I feel I can trust
you, and—dash my buttons!—there is the situation vacant for you, if you
choose to have it. And there is the cottage—the only disadvantage is
that it is too large for you, and you are unmarried.”
“Oh, as to that, sir, that is easily remedied. I be just now on my way to
the pass’n to get him to have Mary and me asked next Sunday.”
“Mary—Mary who?”
“Mary Mauduit, sir.”
“Oh, oh! I wish you joy. An excellent girl! There it is for you—the
house, Tom; you and Mary shall go into it as soon as I have seen the
back of MacSweeny and his Bella, and have had it whitewashed. And—hang
it! Tom, here—come round to my study, and I’ll give you a cheque for ten
pounds towards the furnishing.”
“I thank you, sir; I thank you with all my heart.”
“No need of thanks, Tom! Bless my soul, when a master has a trustworthy,
honest servant, it is he is to be counted lucky; and unless he is an ass
he will keep him. There—come round to the study.”
* * * * *
And now nearly two years have passed. And this time we see a little party
coming out of the church porch. As I live! it is Tom with Mary—no longer
Mauduit, but Mountstephen. But they are not alone; there is a baby in a
long white robe being brought forth—a babe that had been carried into
church to be christened.
As Mary stood in the autumn sunlight outside the porch, she touched Tom’s
arm, and said—
“Let us go to little Bessie’s grave.”
And they went, and the baby was taken there also, over the drooping
grass, wet with autumn rains.
“The poor little Christmas tree,” said Mary, “although a Tree of Death,
lives. See—how hearty it appears!”
“It is no Tree of Death,” answered Tom. “See—here is the first fir-cone;
it is alive, and bears seed. It is no Tree of Death, but a Tree of Life.”
Then Tom laughed.
“Mary,” said he, “I think for once in my life I’ve said a good thing.”
But Mary did not applaud.
“Tom, do you think the little fir-cone really has life in it?”
“Of course it has.”
Mary picked it, and then put it into the tiny hand of the baby.
“Look, Tom,” she said. “But for that Christmas tree you and I would never
have become what we are to each other—and now, in it is the seed of life,
and so on and on and on for evermore. Our baby has it, and it shall be
sown, and so—really, Tom, there seems to be no end to life; it goes on
for ever and for ever!”
“Amen,” responded Tom.
FOLK-PRAYERS
FOLK-PRAYERS
It is a singular fact, but fact it is, that very little of what may be
termed peculiarly Romish superstition lingers among the peasantry of
England; this goes far to show how very little hold such superstition
had on their minds or hearts. It may be almost said that there is more
of pre-Christian paganism, of usages condemned by the Catholic Church
surviving, than of any practices recommended by her.
I do know, indeed, of one instance of a Cornish Methodist, who, when
unable to attend his distant chapel, resorted to a rude granite cross of
Brito-Roman date, and there said his prayers; but even in this case one
cannot be certain that there did not linger on a reverence for the stone
itself, which had been a prehistoric menhir before it was sanctified by
being chipped into the sign of our salvation.
In Yorkshire, Milly (my Lady) boxes are carried about by children at
Christmas: these are cradles containing dolls, one to represent the
Virgin Mother, another the Divine Child; and the grocers send candles to
their customers on Christmas Eve, for the lights to be burned at the
Midnight Mass. But such usages are few, and have almost wholly lost their
meaning, were never more than folk customs, and were never inculcated by
the Church before the Reformation. The midsummer bonfires, the Yule log,
the mumming at Christmas, the Maypole, the November “soul-cakes,” the
“sin-eating” at funerals, and a thousand other customs are purely heathen
survivals. The writer knew of a case in Yorkshire of a man who was buried
in his coffin with a candle “to light him on his way to Jerusalem” and
a penny “to pay the toll,” altogether a pagan reminiscence; but has
never in all his experience come across any practice connected with the
doctrine of purgatory, one insisted upon with immense emphasis before
the Reformation, as the saying of masses for the dead brought in a large
revenue for the clergy.
Superstition connected with holy wells is heathen, and was given a
reluctant sanction by the Roman Church, because so deep-rooted that the
people could not be weaned from it.
The custom, so common in the time of our youth, of drinking healths was a
pagan one; the dead were thus saluted silently, and the Bishop of Cork in
1713 charged against it in an address to his diocese. He was answered by
“A Country Curate of Ireland,” and the bishop returned to the charge in a
pamphlet of two hundred and twenty pages.
In Germany, to gloss the heathenism of the custom, it was usual to
drink the first cup to the memory of some saint, usually St. Gertrude,
the patroness of the dead, who had stepped into the place of the Goddess
Holda or Perchta.
But it is chiefly in the prayers used by the illiterate and poor among
the peasantry that we would expect to find some trace of Catholicism,
for the prayer employed in private and secret is precisely where no
interference could affect the convictions and habits formed by ages, and
communicated traditionally at the most impressible age.
Now what do we find actually? That the only prayers used by tens of
thousands, only now very slowly being driven out by the Lord’s Prayer,
or being abandoned because all prayer is given up, are not a Catholic
reminiscence at all, but an heretical one condemned by the Papal Church.
The reader will at once know what the form is to which reference is made.
“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on.
Four posties to my bed.
Six angels are outspread,
Two to bottom, two to head,
One to watch me whilst I pray,
One to bear my soul away.”
This is the usual form; but there are verbal variations. Sometimes it
stands “four corners” instead of “four posties,” and “two at the feet,
and two at the head.” After the first two lines that are invariable, we
have—
“Four corners to my bed,
Four angels round my head,
One to read and one to write,
Two to guard my bed at night;”
or—
“One to watch and two to pray,
One to keep all fears away.”
A much fuller form of the prayer comes from an old woman of near ninety
years at Tavistock:—
“Monday morning—a new week begin,
Christ deliver our souls from sin.
Tuesday morning—nor curse nor swear,
Christ’s body for it will tear.
Wednesday morning—midst of the week,
Woe to the soul Christ does not seek.
Thursday morning—Saint Peter wrote,
‘Joy to the soul that heaven hath bote.’
Friday—Christ died on the Holy Tree,
To save other men as well as me.
Saturday—six—the evening dead.
Sunday—the books are all outspread.
God is the Branch. I am the flower.
Pray God send me that blessed hour.
Whether I be by sea or by land,
The Lord, sweet Jesus, on my right hand.
I go to bed, my sleep to take,
The Lord doth know if I shall wake.
Sleep I ever, sleep I never,
God receive my soul for ever.
Four corners to my bed,
Four angels lie outspread,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on.”
This is very curious. One may well ask where St. Peter wrote the
quotation given in the eighth line. “That heaven hath bote” signifies
“that hath bid or prayed for heaven.”
The prayer, or formula, is very old. In the “Towneley Mysteries,”
belonging to the beginning of the sixteenth century at the very latest
date that can be given, for they are sacred Mysteries which ceased to be
performed after the Reformation, in the scene where the shepherds keep
their watch by night on the eve of the Nativity, the third shepherd says—
“For ferd we be fryght a crosse let us kest
Cryst crosse, benedyght, east and west,
For dreede
Jesus of Nazorous
Crucyefix us,
Marcus, Andreas,
God be our spede.”
In the second scene of the _Shepherds_ the second pastor says—
“I wylle lyg downe by
For I must slepe truly.”
The third says:—
“As good a man’s son was I
As any of you,
Bot Mark, come heder, between shalle gin lyg downe.”
Mark says—
“Then myght I lett you bedene; if that you wold rowne.
No drede
Fro my top to my too,
Manus tuas commendo
Poncio Pilato
Cryst cross me spede.”
Certainly a very odd form of commendation of the soul, and a variant on
that of the third shepherd.
Launcelot Sharpe, in his remarks on the “Towneley Mysteries” (_Archæol._,
1838), gives “the rural charm which, when a boy, I have often heard in
Kent:—
‘Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Guard the bed that I lie on.
Four corners to my bed,
Four angels round my head.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Guard the bed that I lie on.’”
Ady, in his “Candle in the Dark, or Treatise concerning the Nature of
Witches and Witchcraft,” Lond., 1656, says, “An old woman in Essex who
was living in my time, she had lived also in Queen Mary’s time, and had
learned thence many popish charms, one whereof was this: every night when
she lay down to sleep she charmed her bed, saying—
‘Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
The bed be blest that I lye on.’
And this she would repeat three times, reposing great confidence therein,
because (as she said) she had been taught it when she was a young maid by
the churchmen of those times.”
In a MS. collection of notes on superstitions made by John Aubrey, which
is in the British Museum, Aubrey enters—
“A PRAYER USED WHEN THEY WENT TO BED.
“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on,
And blessed guardian angels keep
Me safe from dangers whilst I sleep.”
Aubrey adds, “I remember before the civil wars people when they heard the
clock strike were wont to say, ‘God grant that my last howre may be my
best howre.’”
Robert Chambers, in his “Popular Rhymes of Scotland,” does not speak of
this prayer as used north of the Tweed at bed-time, but says: “A curious
instance of far-descended nonsense is to be found in another puerile
rhyme:—
‘Matthew, Mark, Luke, John,
Haud the horse till I loup on;
Haud it fast, and haud it sure,
Till I get over the misty muir.’
Boys in Scotland say this in the course of their rollicking sports.”
This singular charm, rather than prayer, is given in a mediæval magical
treatise, “The Enchiridion of Pope Leo,” which was printed at Rome in
1660. It is there called “The White Paternoster,” and runs thus in French—
“Petit Patenôtre blanche que Dieu fit, que
Dieu dit, que Dieu mit en Paradis.
Au soir m’allant coucher, je trouves trois
Anges à mon lit couchés, un aux pieds,
Deux au chevet, la bonne Vierge Marie au
Milieu, qui me dit que je me couchis,
Que rien ne doutes.…
Qui la dira trois fois au soir, trois fois au
Matin, gagnera le Paradise à la fin.”
Under the name of “The White Paternoster” it is referred to by Chaucer in
the “Miller’s Tale”—
“Lord Jhesu Crist, and Seynte Benedyht,
Blesse this hous from every wikked wight,
Fro nyghtes verray, the White Paternoster,
Where wonestow now, Seynt Petre’s soster.”
“Nyghtes verray” is probably a night-were, the hobgoblin. “Were” is an
old Saxon word for man, and the night-man is the ghost. In White’s “Way
to the True Church,” Lond., 1624, White complains of “the prodigious
ignorance” which existed among his parishioners when he entered upon his
ministrations. He gives what he considers to be the “White Paternoster,”
or a form of prayer used before going to bed.
“White Paternoster, Saint Peter’s brother,
What hast i the t’one hand? White booke leaves.
What hast i th’ t’other hand? Heaven gate keys.
Open heaven gates, and streike hell gates,
And let every crysan child creepe to its own mother.
White Paternoster. Amen.”
In the first edition of Wynkyn de Worde’s “Horæ Beatæ Mariæ Virginis,”
1502, a copy now in the Gough Library at Oxford has on the margin,
written in a contemporary hand, “The Little Credo,” “The White
Paternoster,” and “The White Benedictus,” another very curious magical
formula. For an account of this see Dibdin’s “Decameron,” second day.
The “White Paternoster” is as generally in use among the peasants in
France as in England. It takes various forms. In Quercy, part of our
English possessions in Guyenne, it is recited nightly under another name,
the “Pater d’habitude.” The patois may be thus translated:—
“Pater d’habitude,
Our Saviour salute us;
He is at our head, he is at our feet,
He is now and he is after,
He is in the bed where I lie.
Five angels there I find,
Three at bottom, two at head,
And the mother of God in the midst.
She bids me sleep so sound,
Never fear, nor flames, nor fire,
Nor sudden death at all.
I take our Saviour as my father,
The Virgin Mary as my mother,
Saint John for my cousin,
Saint Michael for my sponsor.
There are god parents four.
Whatever haps, whatever befalls,
I shall go to Paradise.”
There are, in fact, in Guyenne four Paternosters—the great one, the small
one, the Pater of Nazareth, and the Pater of Habit; and these make up one
complete formula. M. Daymard, who has collected the folk-songs of Quercy,
the present Department of Lot, says, “Who has not heard some old woman
mutter her prayers in a monotonous voice, without accent, with, however,
a sort of rhythmic cadence, like the reading of poetry by children
in school?” If in the course of her prayers she be interrupted and
questioned relative to what she has said, and asked to repeat it, it is
rarely that one can be found to continue her prayers without recommencing
the recitation.
“Very often the old women do not understand what they say. They repeat
words which anciently were in Latin, Romance, or French, and which,
passing from mouth to mouth, have become corrupted till they cease to be
comprehensible. Then they have not, as an assistance to their memory, the
help of an air and of couplets; consequently they slide away into the
greatest confusion. Thus it falls out that the majority of these prayers
are long, disconnected, made up of patches ill-stitched together, and
without affinity, without transition. There are also set phrases and
elements of prayer which recur, and which each pious soul throws into her
common prayers without rhyme or reason.”
One of the Quercy prayers deserves quotation, because it also is akin
to something that was customary in England, the Lykewake Dirge, which
is found in Aubrey’s MS., already quoted, and was first published by
Sir Walter Scott. The Quercy prayer is called “La Barbe-Dieu,” _i.e._
Verbum-Dei; _barbe_ is a corruption. It runs thus:—
“The Barbe of God—who knows it, and says it not, he will lose
his soul. There behind thee lies a plank, a little plank
that’s long, not broad. The elect pass over it. The lost fall
from it and cry and groan, falling into the abyss of hell.
Learn the Barbe of God at seven years old. There is no time for
repentance when parted are body and soul.”