_Pand._ Hark, they ate coming from the field: shall we stand
up here, and see them as they pass towards Ilium? Good niece
do, sweet niece Cressida.
_Cress._ At your pleasure.
_Pand._ Here, here, here's an excellent place: here we may see
most bravely. I'll tell you them all by their names as they pass
by: but mark Troilus above the rest.
_Troilus and Cressida_: Act. 1.
When Bertram awoke, the sun was already high and pouring a golden light
through the frosted window of his bedroom. The church-bells of
Machynleth were ringing gaily: from one or two neighbouring villages
arose a fainter sound of bells; and the stir and motion within doors
and without proclaimed that this was some festal day. On descending to
breakfast, he found the house arranged in the neatest order and
garnished with branches of fir. The door was crowded and the street was
swarming with groups of country people--men, women, and children; the
women adorned with gay ribbons, and the men with bouquets of leeks. The
landlord and many of his inmates paid the same honor to the day: and
every thing announced that it was the great national festival of Wales,
sacred to good St. David; a day on which no man of Welch blood, though
he should be at Seringapatam, would think it lawful to forget this
ancient recognizance of Cambrian fraternity.--True it is however, that,
like all other old usages, this also (except in the principality
itself) is rapidly falling into disuse. Else surely it could never have
happened that precisely on this day a certain noble lord of Welch
descent should have thought fit to rise in his place in the House, and
make an eloquent exposition and apology for the jacobinical creed of
his friends. We cannot doubt that, had a bunch of leeks been suddenly
presented to his lordship at this moment, his face would have crimsoned
with a blush as deep as that of the red night-cap which apparently is
the object of his homage; for surely no hostility can be deeper than
that between the badge of jacobinism and this antique symbol of honor,
good faith, and loyal brotherhood, and reverence for the dust of our
forefathers.
"How now, landlord"--said the reformer--"Is this absurd, superstitious,
commemoration of St. David's day never to cease?"
"Have a care, Mr. Dulberry: don't talk too loud. There's some of our
country friends outside, that, if they should overhear you, might take
a fancy for trying the strength of your head with ice-clods--or put you
under the pump."
"Or perhaps," said the manager, "give you a leek to eat; and not in so
courtly a manner as I once saw Fluellen administer his leek to Pistol
on the London boards; the part of Fluellen on that particular night by
Garrick; to whom, by the way, in _that_ part I was myself considered
equal."
"All rank superstition, trash, and mummery from the days of darkness
and barbarism," continued Dulberry. "And hence it comes that sound
principles make so little progress in Wales. As if we hadn't red-letter
days in the calendar more than enough already from national and general
superstition, but these local superstitions must step in to add
another. Gentlemen! it seems to me that Parliament should put a stop to
all bell-ringing, wearing of leeks, flaunting about with ribbons, and
flocking together in the street. Suppose, gentlemen, we should have an
Address prepared against leeks."
"No addresses," Mr. Dulberry, said the landlord, "for this day at any
rate! Sir Morgan Walladmor would send the beadle to you with a rod of
nettles, if he was to hear of such a thing: for he doats upon the leek
and St. David's day. This is one of his great jollification days: and
he sends bread, meat, drink, coals, and money, to every poor cottage
for a dozen miles round: nay, I may go farther and tell no lie: for
though the baronet's an old man now, and has had some sorrow to bear of
his own, by his good will there shouldn't be a sad heart in Machynleth
on St. David's day; and that's five and twenty long miles from Castle
Walladmor."
"Abominable despotism! and the poor oppressed creatures do actually
swallow his drink?"
"Swallow it? Aye, Mr. Dulberry, it's no physic."
"And they dance too, I suppose?"
"Every mother's child of them, Mr. Dulberry: not a soul but'll dance
to-day except babies and cripples. Lord! Mr. Dulberry, if you don't
like to see poor labouring folks happy for one day in the year, I'll
tell you this--you must keep out of Machynleth on St. David's day."
"Well! this tyranny goes beyond any thing I've seen: we all know that
Lord Londonderry has compelled Manchester and all England to wear
mourning: but this rustic tyrant is determined to make people merry
when, as every body must know, they want to cry."
"Come, come, Sir, the Baronet's a good man and no tyrant; though he may
have his fancies and his faults, like the rest of us: but we most of us
like him pretty well, tenants and all: and, as to his niece--Miss
Genevieve, I believe there's not many between this and the Castle but
would go through fire and water for her."
"Sir Morgan Walladmor," said Alderman Gravesand, "is a wise man; and,
in these times of change and light-mindedness, he sticks up for ancient
customs. It's a pity but there were more such."
"Aye and he's a clever man," added the landlord, "and knows how to tack
with the wind: for, let who would be in or out of the ministry, he has
still been the king's lieutenant for these two counties of Carnarvon
and Merioneth ever since I can think on."
"There you're wrong, landlord,"--replied the Alderman: "Sir Morgan
never shifts or tacks for any body: he's a staunch Whig like all his
ancestors from 1688; and, though he doesn't go up to Parliament now so
often as he did in his younger days, yet there has never been a Tory
administration but Sir Morgan Walladmor has opposed it so far as he
thought honorable; that is to say, he has opposed it on the fine old
Whig principles of the Russels--the Cavendishes--and the Spencers."
"And why doesn't he go up to Parliament, I'd be glad to know?" said
Dulberry: "What the d---l does he stay here for, like a ruminating
beast chewing the cud of his youthful patriotism? Because he has got
some pleasant sinecure for himself, I suppose--and some comfortable
places for his sons, his grandsons, his nephews, and his cousins."
"I'll tell you, Mr. Dulberry, why he doesn't go up to Parliament," said
Alderman Gravesand; "not, as _you_ say, out of consideration for his
sons, grandsons, nephews, and cousins; for he happens to have neither
son, grandson, nephew, nor cousin:--not, as _you_ say, to preserve his
own sinecures; for he has never had a shilling for his services; nor
any reward at all from the state, except indeed what a man like Sir
Morgan thinks the greatest of all rewards--the thanks of Parliament,
and the approbation of his Sovereign: not, as _you_ say, to take
his ease and pleasure, for he has troubles enough of his own to
keep him waking at Walladmor House as much as if he were in St.
James's-square:--these are _not_ his reasons, Mr. Dulberry. But now
I'll tell you what _is_:--There are just now in London and elsewhere a
set of presumptuous--illiterate--mechanical rogues who take upon
themselves to be the defenders of Old England and her liberties; and
they have made the very name of liberty ridiculous: and all the old
authentic champions of constitutional rights in Parliament or elsewhere
shrink back in shame from the opprobrium of seeming to make common
cause with a crew so base and mechanical. And, if there were any person
of that stamp here, and he were to take liberties with better men than
himself,--I would take him by the shoulder just as I do you, Mr.
Dulberry; and I would pin him down into his chair; and I would say to
him--'Thou ridiculous reformer, if I hear a word of insolence from thy
lips against our worthy lord lieutenant, I will most unceremoniously
toss thee neck and heels out of the window.' For a day of peace and
festivity _that_ would be an unsuitable spectacle: and therefore glad I
am that I see no such ridiculous person before me, but on the contrary
my worthy old friend and acquaintance Samuel Dulberry."
The reformer made no manual reply to this significant threat; but
contented himself with turning his back contemptuously on the
Alderman--at the same time uttering these words:
"Well, Mr. Gravesand, serve your master after your own fashion: what is
it to me? Carry his lap-dogs; fondle his cats; fawn upon his spaniels:
what care I? But----" What dreadful form of commination hung pendant
upon this '_But_,' was never known: for precisely at this moment, and
most auspiciously for the general harmony of the company, the
reformer's eloquence was cut short by a joyous uproar of voices
"They're coming! they're coming!" And immediately a sea-like sound of
glad tumultuous crowds, in advance of the procession, swelled upon the
ear from the open door: every window was flung up in a moment: mothers
were hurrying with their infants; fathers were raising their lads and
lasses on their shoulders: the thunders of the lord lieutenant's band
began to peal from a distance: in half a minute the head of the
procession appeared in view wheeling round the corner: heads after
heads, horses after horses, in never-ending succession, kept pouring
round into the street: the whole market-place filled as with the influx
of a spring tide: and all eyes were turned upon the ceremonial part of
the procession, which now began to unfold its pomp.
First came the Snowdon archers, two and two, in their ancient
uniform[1] of green and white, in number one hundred and twenty.
Immediately behind them rode a young man in black and crimson, usually
called Golden-Spear from the circumstance of his carrying the gilt
spear of Harlech Castle, with which, by the custom, he is to ride into
Machynleth church at a certain part of the service on St. David's day,
and into Dolgelly church on the day of Pentecost, and there to strike
three times against 'Traitors' grave'[2] with a certain form of
adjuration in three languages. After him came the rangers of Penmorfa,
all mounted, and riding four abreast. They were in number about
eighty-four; and wore, as usual, a uniform of watchet (_i.e._ azure)
and white--with horse-cloths and housings of the same colors:--and the
ancient custom had been that all the horses should be white: this rule
had been relaxed in later times from the poverty of the Penmorfa people
in consequence of repeated irruptions of the sea, but was now restored,
with brilliant effect on the coloring of the procession, by the
liberality of Sir Morgan Walladmor. Next after these rode the sheriff
of Merionethshire and his billmen, all in ancient costume: and then
came the most interesting part of the cavalcade. On St. David's day it
had always been the custom that the Bishop of Bangor should send some
representative to do suit and service for a manor which he held of the
house of Walladmor: and the usage was--that, if there were an heir male
to that ancient house, the Bishop sent four young men who carried
falcons perched on their wrists; but, if the presumptive claimant of
the Walladmor honors and estates were a female, in that case he sent
four young girls who carried doves. Both the doves and the falcons had
an allusion to the arms of the Walladmors: and for some reason, in the
present year, Sir Morgan had chosen himself to add the four falcons and
their bearers to the Bishop's doves. These were arranged in the
following manner. Four beautiful girls drest altogether in white,
without bonnets, and having no head-dress but white caps, were ranged
in line with the four falcon-bearers, who were young boys dressed in
complete suits of bishop's purple and purple mantles: all the eight
rode on white horses: and immediately behind them came a kind of
triumphal car, low but very spacious, and carrying Sir Morgan's five
domestic harpers and the silver harps which they had won in the
contests first introduced under Queen Elizabeth's reform in 1567:
behind the car again rode five horsemen on gigantic horses carrying the
five banners of the five several castles belonging to Sir Morgan in
Wales. The banners were so managed as to droop over the heads of the
young women and boys: and thus the doves, the falcons, their beautiful
bearers, the white horses, the venerable harpers and their silver
harps, were all gathered as it were into one central group by means of
the banners of purple and gold which spread their fine floating
draperies above them all.
This was the centre of the procession: but immediately in advance of
this part (_i.e._ between it and the sheriff's party) rode the two
presiding persons of the ceremony; and who in that character, as well
as for the interest connected with their own appearance, commanded
universal attention.--Immediately before the falcon-bearers, and
mounted upon a grey charger, rode a tall meagre man in a dress well
fitted to raise laughter in the spectator and with a countenance well
fitted to repress it. This was Sir Morgan Walladmor. His dress was an
embroidered suit something in the fashion of the French court during
the regency of the Duke of Orleans in the minority of Louis the
Fifteenth; and having been worn by the baronet in his youth upon some
memorable occasion, where it had either aided his then handsome person
in making a conquest or in some other way had connected itself with
remembrances that were affecting to him, he never would wear this dress
on any day but St. David's----nor on that day would ever wear any
other. The dress was sacred to the festival; which, like all joyous
ceremonials and commemorations, to those who are advanced in years
bring with them some sorrow blended with their joy. In such sorrow
however, where it is a simple tribute of natural regrets to the images
of vanished things, and the fleeting records of poor transitory man,
there is often an overbalance of pleasure. But the merest stranger, who
read the features of Sir Morgan Walladmor with a discerning eye, might
see a history written there of a sorrow that went deeper than _that_--a
sorrow not tempered by any pleasure. On ordinary occasions this was the
predominant expression of his countenance--mixed however at all times
with something of a humorous aspect, a half fantastic sense of the
ludicrous, and perhaps a few reliques of that sternness which at one
time was said to have had some place in the composition of his
character. But this had long given way to the influences of time and
the softening hand of affliction: all harshness, that might once have
thrown a shade over the milder graces of his character, was now
removed: and on this day, above all days in the year, his heart had no
leisure for any feelings but those of kindness--dilated as it was by
the old ancestral glories that were revived and shadowed forth in the
pomps before him. Every part of the ceremonial to _his_ eye was rich
with meaning and symbolic language: and in the eye of the rudest of his
countrymen he saw this language repeated and reflected--the language of
exulting national pride, with a personal application to himself as its
chief local representative. Apart from these patriotic feelings, Sir
Morgan was capable of enjoying that purest of all happiness which is
reflected from the spectacle of happiness in others: he was besides now
riding for the sixtieth time in this annual procession, having begun to
ride when he was no more than five years old: and finally Sir Morgan
was a _gentleman_ in the most emphatic sense of that emphatic word.
Hence it arose that his manners on this occasion were more than merely
courteous or condescending; all thought of condescension was lost and
forgotten in the expression of paternal benignity with which he looked
on those around him: the meanest and the highest, the youngest and
oldest, came in alike for the salutation of his eye: to the poorest
cottagers, as he past, he bowed and smiled with an air of cordial
sincerity that allowed no thought of artifice: and young and old, man
and woman, all smiled with delighted faces and happy confidence as they
bowed and curtsied in return.
As he passed under the inn, Sir Morgan threw up his eyes to the upper
windows; and, observing them thickly crowded with strangers, he moved
with a courtly politeness--at the same time smiling archly but
goodnaturedly as his eye caught that of Mr. Dulberry, whose character
as a reformer had reached him; and who at this moment was the only one
amongst the gentlemen present that stood bolt upright, and proclaimed
his radical patriotism by refusing to acknowledge the lord lieutenant's
salutation. Impressive as Sir Morgan's aspect and costume were, the
attention of every body however was at this moment drawn off to his
youthful companion, who just now turned her eyes with a hurried glance
on the inn--but immediately withdrew them, as she observed the crowd of
gentlemen at the windows. All the strangers were aware that this was
the baronet's niece; who was now an object of sufficient interest from
the disclosures of the preceding night, even though she had been less
attractive in her person.
Sorrow in Miss Walladmor wore its most touching shape: as yet it had
made no ravages in her beauty; and, if it had laid a hand of gentle
violence upon her health, it had as yet cropped only the luxuriance of
her youthful charms. It was clear to every eye that Miss Walladmor was
not one of those persons who surrender themselves unresisting victims
to dejection, and sink without a struggle into premature
valetudinarians. Somewhat indeed her early acquaintance with grief had
dimmed the lustre of her fine blue eyes; and had given a pensive
timidity to her manner. But, if her eye were less bright, it was still
full of spirit and intelligence: and, if the roses were stolen from her
cheek, her paleness was rather the paleness of thought than of
constitutional languor; or to express it in the exquisite lines of a
modern poet, if she wore 'a pale face' it was however a pale face
'--------that seem'd undoubtedly
As if a blooming face it ought to be:'
and her whole person and deportment expressed that naturally she was of
redundant health and gaiety, but suffering under the shocks of a trial
to which she had been summoned too early for her youthful fortitude.
Having mounted on horseback only at the entrance of Machynleth, Miss
Walladmor did not wear a riding-habit; but had gratified her uncle by
assuming the plain white morning dress, white ribbons, and cap, which
ancient custom had consecrated to the occasion; adding only, in
consideration of the frosty day, an ermine tippet. The horse she rode
was a white palfrey of the beautiful breed so much valued by Charles
I.; and in fact traced its pedigre from the famous _White Rose_ which
had been presented by the sister of that prince [the Electress
Palatine] to an ancestor of Sir Morgan's, who had attended her to
Heidelberg. At the moment of passing the inn,--one of the doves, which
Miss Walladmor had been in the habit of feeding, quitted the hand of
the young bearer behind, and perched upon the shoulder of her mistress;
making up a picture of innocent beauty somewhat fanciful and allegoric,
but not on that account the less fitted to harmonize with the antique
pageantries of this heraldic solemnity.
Such were the two central and presiding figures: every eye strained
after them, and all that followed was unnoticed: the bailiff of
Talyllyn with the surcoat, and the silver spurs of Llewellyn; the high
constable of Aber-glas-llyn, with his gorgeous display of antique
liveries; the tawny coats of the Bishop of St. Asaph, who came
to ride the boundaries of the old episcopal demesne of Aberkilvie,
in company with the retainers of Sir Morgan; the Mayor and Corporation
of Machynleth, in their crimson robes;--all alike passed unheeded:
and the spectators were first roused from the fascination of the
departing spectacle by the clangor of the band, which with the Barmouth
sea-fencibles--two troops of dragoons and the _cortege_ of the Sheriff
of Carnarvonshire brought up the rear of the cavalcade.
As fast as the procession cleared the ground, with the fluent motion of
water, the crowd closed up in its wake--all eager to press after it
into the church. Bertram, who had shared deeply in the general
admiration and pity expressed for Miss Walladmor, sympathized no less
with the national feeling belonging to the day. Who can blame him? The
spectacle of a whole multitude swayed by one feeling, however little
the object of that feeling may be approved by the judgment of the
spectator, appeals irresistibly to his sympathies, if he be not more
than usually cold-hearted: and I remember well that, though myself a
faithful son of the Scotish church, I was once seduced by such an
occasion into an involuntary act of idolatrous compliance with popery.
It was at Orleans: the day was splendid: the bells proclaimed a
festival: a vast procession of a mixed composition, religious and
military, was streaming towards the cathedral; and by a moral
compulsion, rather than by any physical pressure of the crowd, I was
swept along into the general vortex. Suddenly an angle of the road
brought me into such a position with respect to all who were in advance
of my station, that I could see the whole vast line bent into the form
of a crescent, and with its head entering at the great-doors of the
cathedral: I gazed on the tossing of the plumes and the never ending
dance of heads succeeding to heads as they plunged into what seemed the
dark abysses of the church: one after one I beheld the legions and
their eagles, the banners and the lilies of France swallowed up by the
cathedral: then, as I came nearer and nearer, I could hear the great
blair of the organ--throwing off its clouds of ascending music, like
incense fuming from an altar: nearer still I could look through the
high portals into the nave of the church, and could distinguish the
opposite windows storied with gorgeous emblazonries of saints and
martyrs, angels and archangels, whilst above them were seen the
Madonna, and "the Lamb of God" with the cross; and through the upper
panes streamed in the golden rays of the sun, and the blue light of the
unfathomable heavens: then, as I myself was entering, suddenly the
shattering trumpet-stop was opened: and I heard the full choir singing
the great anthem of Pergolesi--"And the Dead shall arise:" at which
instant I also wept with the multitude, and acknowledged a common faith
and a common hope: and for a moment I will confess that I apostatized
to the church of Rome for the sake of her pomps and vanities: a sin
which I trust is forgiven me, as I can assure the church of Scotland
that it is the single occasion throughout my life on which I have had
any wanderings of thought from her pure and orthodox creed.
Under a similar impulse, caught from the contagion of public
enthusiasm, Bertram pressed after the procession into the church. He
was carried by the crowd into a situation from which he could overlook
the entire nave which was in the simplest style of Gothic architecture
and naked of all the ornaments which belong to the florid Gothic of a
later age. The massy pillars were left unviolated by the petty hand of
household neatness: they stood severe in monumental granite,
unwhitewashed, unstuccoed, without tricks or frippery. All the
gingerbread work of plinths to the base, or fretted cornices to the
capitals, had been banished by the austerity of the presiding taste.
And it struck Bertram also, as a picturesque circumstance in the whole
effect and at the same time a circumstance of rude grandeur which well
accorded with the spirit of the architecture, that there was no
ceiling: the whole was open to the slates; and the vast beams and
joists of oak, which had been laid for upwards of four hundred years,
were clearly distinguishable. Below these were suspended antique
banners which floated at times in the currents of air: and all the
pillars were hung with shields, helmets, shirts of mail, and other
ancient records of warlike achievements--arranged in the manner of
trophies. All these were covered with venerable dust, the deposition of
centuries, which no loyal-hearted Welchman would on any account have
disturbed.
The service, as is usual at Machynleth--at Bangor Cathedral and other
great churches in North Wales, was partly performed in Welch and partly
in English. The singing, which was fine and supported by an organ of
prodigious power, was chiefly of a triumphant and (as it appeared to
Bertram) almost martial character. Just before the sermon however an
ancient ceremony showed that, if the religion of the day clothed itself
in the attire of earthly pride and exultation, the martial patriotism
of Wales could sometimes soar into a religious expression. The people
divided to the right and the left, leaving a lane from the great door:
a trumpet sounded; and in rode Golden-spear, lance in rest, the whole
length of the nave--passed into the choir--and halted before a monument
of black marble. He paused for a few moments: then cried with a loud
voice in Welch, English, and Latin, "Bastard of Walladmor!" to which
summons the choir sang a penitential antiphony. Then he raised his
spear and struck the outside of the tomb: to which again the organ
muttered and the choir sang a response. Then a second time he raised
the golden spear, and plunged it through an iron grating which occupied
the place of heart in the stony figure of a knight recumbent on the
tomb: the spear sank within a foot of the head: and again the organ
muttered some sad tones; after which he pronounced these words:
"God, who in six days and seven nights created heaven--and earth--the
sea and all that in them is, send up thy guilty soul into this grave,
so long as the sea and the earth endure, on St. David's day;--annually
to hear the message which I bring from Walladmor and Harlech:--The
death, which thou gavest to the Pagan dogs, was given in vain: the
treason, which should have trampled on the cross, was confounded by
God's weak instruments a falcon and a dove: the crescent was dimmed at
Walladmor, and the golden spear prevailed at Harlech: and the banner of
Walladmor is flying to this day: So let it fly until Arthur shall come
again in power and great beauty: on which day thy treason be forgiven
thee!"
Thus having delivered his message to the grave,--the herald drew forth
his spear, ported it, bowed to the altar, and turning his horse rode
back: and, as Golden-spear issued from the choir, the organ and the
choristers commenced one of the chorusses in Judas Maccabaeus.
Then followed the sermon which was in Welch--but, as Bertram could
distinguish, full of allusions to the great names of Wales; and in fact
as martial as any part of the service, and to all appearance as
gratifying to the patriotic fervour of the audience. That finished, the
rival thunders of the organ within and the martial band without gave
notice that the procession was on its return.
FOOTNOTES TO "CHAPTER VII.":
[Footnote 1: See Ap Howel De Lege Principal, per Forestam et Chasam
Snowd. hactenus recepta; Hist. of the Gwedir Fam. &c.]
[Footnote 2: For the legend of the Two Traitors, vid. Ap Howel, ubi
supra.]