"Merry it is in wild green wood,
When mavis and merle are singing."
A verse, by the by, dismally suggestive of contrast to this rainy day.
As we came along out of the gate, walking back towards the village of
Dryburgh, we began, to hope that the skies had fairly wept themselves
out; at any rate the rain stopped, and the clouds wore a sulky,
leaden-gray aspect, as if they were thinking what to do next.
We saw a knot of respectable-looking laboring men at a little distance,
conversing in a group, and now and then stealing glances at us; one of
them at last approached and inquired if this was Mrs. Stowe, and being
answered in the affirmative, they all said heartily, "Madam, ye're right
welcome to Scotland." The chief speaker, then, after a little
conversation, asked our party if we would do him the favor to step into
his cottage near by, to take a little refreshment after our ramble; to
which we assented with alacrity. He led the way to a neat, stone
cottage, with a flower garden before the door, and said to a thrifty,
rosy-cheeked woman, who met us, "Well, and what do you think, wife, if I
have brought Mrs. Stowe and her party to take a cup of tea with us?"
We were soon seated in a neat, clean kitchen, and our hostess hastened
to put the teakettle over the grate, lamenting that she had not known of
our coming, that she might have had a fire "ben the house," meaning by
the phrase what we Yankees mean by "in the best room." We caught a
glimpse of the carpet and paper of this room, when the door was opened
to bring out a few more chairs.
"Belyve the bairns cam dropping in,"
rosy-cheeked, fresh from school, with satchel and school books, to whom
I was introduced as the mother of Topsy and Eva.
"Ah," said the father, "such a time as we had, when we were reading the
book; whiles they were greetin' and whiles in a rage."
My host was quite a young-looking man, with the clear blue eye and
glowing complexion which one so often meets here; and his wife, with her
blooming cheeks, neat dress, and well-kept house, was evidently one of
those fully competent
"To gar old claes look amaist as weel as new."
I inquired the ages of the several children, to which the father
answered with about as much chronological accuracy as men generally
display in such points of family history. The gude wife, after
correcting his figures once or twice, turned away with a somewhat
indignant exclamation about men that didn't know their own bairns' ages,
in which many of us, I presume, could sympathize.
I must not omit to say, that a neighbor of our host had been pressed to
come in with us; an intelligent-looking man, about fifty. In the course
of conversation, I found that they were both masons by trade, and as the
rain had prevented their working, they had met to spend their time in
reading. They said they were reading a work on America; and thereat
followed a good deal of general conversation on our country. I found
that, like many others in this old country, they had a tie to connect
them with the new--a son in America.
One of our company, in the course of the conversation, says, "They say
in America that the working classes of England and Scotland are not so
well off as the slaves." The man's eye flashed. "There are many things,"
he said, "about the working classes, which are not what they should be;
there's room for a great deal of improvement in our condition, but," he
added with an emphasis, "we are _no slaves!_" There was a, touch, of the
"Scots wha ha' wi' Wallace bled"
about the man, as he spoke, which made the affirmation quite
unnecessary.
"But," said I, "you think the affairs of the working classes much
improved of late years?"
"O, certainly," said the other; "since the repeal of the corn laws and
the passage of the factory bill, and this emigration to America and
Australia, affairs have been very much altered."
We asked them what they could make a day by their trade. It was much
less, certainly, than is paid for the same labor in our country; but yet
the air of comfort and respectability about the cottage, the
well-clothed and well-schooled, intelligent children, spoke well for the
result of their labors.
While our conversation was carried on, the teakettle commenced singing
most melodiously, and by a mutual system of accommodation, a neat tea
table was spread in the midst of us, and we soon found ourselves seated,
enjoying some delicious bread and butter, with the garniture of cheese,
preserves, and tea. Our host before the meal craved a blessing of Him
who had made of one blood all the families of the earth; a beautiful and
touching allusion, I thought, between Americans and Scotchmen. Our long
ramble in the rain had given us something of an appetite, and we did
ample justice to the excellence of the cheer.
After tea we walked on down again towards the Tweed, our host and his
friends waiting on us to the boat. As we passed through the village of
Dryburgh, all the inhabitants of the cottages seemed to be standing in
their doors, bowing and smiling, and expressing their welcome in a
gentle, kindly way, that was quite touching.
As we were walking towards the Tweed, the Eildon Hill, with its three
points, rose before us in the horizon. I thought of the words in the Lay
of the Last Minstrel:--
"Warrior, I could say to thee,
The words that cleft Eildon Hill in three,
And bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone."
I appealed to my friends if they knew any thing about the tradition; I
thought they seemed rather reluctant to speak of it. O, there was some
foolish story, they believed; they did not well know what it was.
The picturesque age of human childhood is gone by; men and women cannot
always be so accommodating as to believe unreasonable stories for the
convenience of poets.
At the Tweed the man with the skiff was waiting for us. In parting with
my friend, I said, "Farewell. I hope we may meet again some time."
"I am sure we shall, madam," said he; "if not here, certainly
hereafter."
After being rowed across I stopped a few moments to admire the rippling
of the clear water over the pebbles. "I want some of these pebbles of
the Tweed," I said, "to carry home to America." Two hearty, rosy-cheeked
Scotch lasses on the shore soon supplied me with as many as I could
carry.
We got into our carriage, and drove up to Melrose. After a little
negotiation with the keeper, the doors were unlocked. Just at that
moment the sun was so gracious as to give a full look through the
windows, and touch with streaks of gold the green, grassy floor; for the
beautiful ruin is floored with green grass and roofed with sky: even
poetry has not exaggerated its beauty, and could not. There is never any
end to the charms of Gothic architecture. It is like the beauty of
Cleopatra,--
"Age cannot wither, custom, cannot stale
Her infinite variety."
Here is this Melrose, now, which has been berhymed, bedraggled through
infinite guide books, and been gaped at and smoked at by dandies, and
been called a "dear love" by pretty young ladies, and been hawked about
as a trade article in all neighboring shops, and you know perfectly well
that all your raptures are spoken for and expected at the door, and your
going off in an ecstasy is a regular part of the programme; and yet,
after all, the sad, wild, sweet beauty of the thing comes down on one
like a cloud; even for the sake of being original you could not, in
conscience, declare you did not admire it.
We went into a minute examination with our guide, a young man, who
seemed to have a full sense of its peculiar beauties. I must say here,
that Walter Scott's description in the Lay of the Last Minstrel is as
perfect in most details as if it had been written by an architect as
well as a poet--it is a kind of glorified daguerreotype.
This building was the first of the elaborate and fanciful Gothic which I
had seen, and is said to excel in the delicacy of its carving any except
Roslin Castle. As a specimen of the exactness of Scott's description,
take this verse, where he speaks of the cloisters:--
"Spreading herbs and flowerets bright,
Glistened with the dew of night,
Nor herb nor floweret glistened there,
But were carved in the cloister arches as fair."
These cloisters were covered porticoes surrounding the garden, where the
monks walked for exercise. They are now mostly destroyed, but our guide
showed us the remains of exquisite carvings there, in which each group
was an imitation of some leaf or flower, such as the curly kail of
Scotland; a leaf, by the by, as worthy of imitation as the Greek
acanthus, the trefoil oak, and some other leaves, the names of which I
do not remember. These Gothic artificers were lovers of nature; they
studied at the fountain head; hence the never-dying freshness, variety,
and originality of their conceptions.
Another passage, whose architectural accuracy you feel at once, is
this:--
"They entered now the chancel tall;
The darkened, roof rose high, aloof
On pillars lofty, light, and small:
The keystone that locked, each ribbed aisle
Was a fleur-de-lis, or a quatre-feuille;
The corbels were carved grotesque and grim;
And the pillars, with, clustered shafts so trim,
With, base and with capital flourished around,
Seemed bundles of lances which garlands had bound."
The quatre-feuille here spoken of is an ornament formed by the junction
of four leaves. The frequent recurrence of the fleur-de-lis in the
carvings here shows traces of French hands employed in the architecture.
In one place in the abbey there is a rude inscription, in which a French
architect commemorates the part he has borne in constructing the
building.
These corbels are the projections from which, the arches spring, usually
carved in some fantastic mask or face; and on these the Shakspearian
imagination of the Gothic artists seems to have let itself loose to run
riot: there is every variety of expression, from, the most beautiful to
the most goblin and grotesque. One has the leer of fiendish triumph,
with budding horns, showing too plainly his paternity; again you have
the drooping eyelids and saintly features of some fair virgin; and then
the gasping face of some old monk, apparently in the agonies of death,
with his toothless gums, hollow cheeks, and sunken eyes. Other faces
have an earthly and sensual leer; some are wrought into expressions of
scorn and mockery, some of supplicating agony, and some of grim,
despair.
One wonders what gloomy, sarcastic, poetic, passionate mind has thus
amused itself, recording in stone all the range of passions--saintly,
earthly, and diabolic--on the varying human face. One fancies each
corbel to have had its history, its archetype in nature; a thousand
possible stories spring into one's mind. They are wrought with such a
startling and individual definiteness, that one feels as about
Shakspeare's characters, as if they must have had a counterpart in real
existence. The pure, saintly nun may have been some sister, or some
daughter, or some early love, of the artist, who in an evil hour saw the
convent barriers rise between her and all that was loving. The fat,
sensual face may have been a sly sarcasm on some worthy abbot, more
eminent in flesh than spirit. The fiendish faces may have been wrought
out of the author's own perturbed dreams.
An architectural work says that one of these corbels, with an anxious
and sinister Oriental countenance, has been made, by the guides, to
perform duty as an authentic likeness of the wizard Michael Scott. Now,
I must earnestly protest against stating things in that way. Why does a
writer want to break up so laudable a poetic design in the guides? He
would have been much better occupied in interpreting some of the
half-defaced old inscriptions into a corroborative account. No doubt it
_was_ Michael Scott, and looked just like him.
It were a fine field for a story writer to analyze the conception and
growth of an abbey or cathedral as it formed itself, day after day, and
year after year, in the soul of some dreamy, impassioned workman, who
made it the note book where he wrought out imperishably in stone all his
observations on nature and man. I think it is this strong individualism
of the architect in the buildings that give the never-dying charm, and
variety to the Gothic: each Gothic building is a record of the growth,
character, and individualities of its builder's soul; and hence no two
can be alike.
I was really disappointed to miss in the abbey the stained glass which
gives such a lustre and glow to the poetic description. I might have
known better; but somehow I came there fully expecting to see the
window, where--
"Full in the midst his cross of red
Triumphant Michael brandished;
The moonbeam kissed the holy pane,
And threw on the pavement the bloody stain."
Alas! the painted glass was all of the poet's own setting; years ago it
was shattered by the hands of violence, and the grace of the fashion of
it hath perished.
The guide pointed to a broken fragment which commanded a view of the
whole interior. "Sir Walter used to sit here," he said. I fancied I
could see him sitting on the fragment, gazing around the ruin, and
mentally restoring it to its original splendor; he brings back the
colored light into the windows, and throws its many-hued reflections
over the graves; he ranges the banners along around the walls, and
rebuilds every shattered arch and aisle, till we have the picture as it
rises on us in his book.
I confess to a strong feeling of reality, when my guide took me to a
grave where a flat, green, mossy stone, broken across the middle, is
reputed to be the grave of Michael Scott. I felt, for the moment, verily
persuaded that if the guide would pry up one of the stones we should see
him there, as described:--
"His hoary beard in silver rolled,
He seemed some seventy winters old;
A palmer's amice wrapped, him round,
With a wrought Spanish baldric bound,
Like a pilgrim from beyond the sea:
His left hand held his book of might;
A silver cross was in his right;
The lamp was placed beside his knee:
High and majestic was his look,
At which, the fellest fiends had shook,
And all unruffled, was his face:
They trusted his soul had gotten grace."
I never knew before how fervent a believer I had been in the realities
of these things.
There are two graves that I saw, which correspond to those mentioned in
these lines:--
"And there the dying lamps did burn
Before thy lone and lowly urn,
O gallafit chief of Otterburne,
And thine, dark knight of Liddesdale."
The Knight of Otterburne was one of the Earls Douglas, killed in a
battle with Henry Percy, called Hotspur, in 1388. The Knight of
Liddesdale was another Douglas, who lived in the reign of David II., and
was called the "Flower of Chivalry." One performance of this "Flower" is
rather characteristic of the times. It seems the king made one Ramsey
high sheriff of Teviotdale. The Earl of Douglas chose to consider this
as a personal affront, as he wanted the office himself. So, by way of
exhibiting his own qualifications for administering justice, he one day
came down on Ramsey, _vi et armis_, took him off his judgment seat,
carried him to one of his castles, and without more words tumbled him
and his horse into a deep dungeon, where they both starved to death.
There's a "Flower" for you, peculiar to the good old times. Nobody could
have doubted after this his qualifications to be high sheriff.
Having looked all over the abbey from, below, I noticed a ruinous
winding staircase; so up I went, rustling along through the ivy, which
matted and wove itself around the stones. Soon I found myself looking
down on the abbey from a new point of view--from a little narrow stone
gallery, which threads the whole inside of the building. There I paced
up and down, looking occasionally through the ivy-wreathed arches on the
green, turfy floor below.
It seems as if silence and stillness had become a real presence in these
old places. The voice of the guide and the company beneath had a hushed
and muffled sound; and when I rustled the ivy leaves, or, in trying to
break off a branch, loosened some fragment of stone, the sound affected
me with a startling distinctness. I could not but inly muse and wonder
on the life these old monks and abbots led, shrined up here as they were
in this lovely retirement.
In ruder ages these places were the only retreat for men of a spirit too
gentle to take force and bloodshed for their life's work; men who
believed that pen and parchment were better than sword and steel. Here I
suppose multitudes of them lived harmless, dreamy lives--reading old
manuscripts, copying and illuminating new ones.
It is said that this Melrose is of very ancient origin, extending back
to the time of the Culdees, the earliest missionaries who established
religion in Scotland, and who had a settlement in this vicinity.
However, a royal saint, after a while, took it in hand to patronize, and
of course the credit went to him, and from, him Scott calls it "St.
David's lonely pile." In time a body of Cistercian monks were settled
there.
According to all accounts the abbey has raised some famous saints. We
read of trances, illuminations, and miraculous beatifications; and of
one abbot in particular, who exhibited the odor of sanctity so strongly
that it is said the mere opening of his grave, at intervals, was
sufficient to perfume the whole establishment with odors of paradise.
Such stories apart, however, we must consider that for all the
literature, art, and love of the beautiful, all the humanizing
influences which hold society together, the world was for many ages
indebted to these monastic institutions.
In the reformation, this abbey was destroyed amid the general storm,
which attacked the ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland. "Pull down
the nest, and the rooks will fly away," was the common saying of the
mob; and in those days a man was famous according as he had lifted up
axes upon the carved work.
Melrose was considered for many years merely a stone quarry, from which
materials were taken for all sorts of buildings, such as constructing
tolbooths, repairing mills and sluices; and it has been only till a
comparatively recent period that its priceless value as an architectural
remain has led to proper efforts for its preservation. It is now most
carefully kept.
After wandering through the inside we walked out into the old graveyard,
to look at the outside. The yard is full of old, curious, mouldering
gravestones; and on one of them there is an inscription sad and peculiar
enough to have come from the heart of the architect who planned the
abbey; it runs as follows:--
"The earth walks on the earth, glittering with gold;
The earth goes to the earth sooner than it wold;
The earth, builds on the earth, castles and towers;
The earth, says to the earth, All shall be ours."
Here, also, we were interested in a plain marble slab, which marks the
last resting-place of Scott's faithful Tom Purdie, his zealous factotum.
In his diary, when he hears of the wreck of his fortunes, Scott says of
this serving man, "Poor Tom Purdie, such news will wring your heart, and
many a poor fellow's beside, to whom my prosperity was daily bread."
One fancies again the picture described by Lockhart, the strong, lank
frame, hard features, sunken eyes, and grizzled eyebrows, the green
jacket, white hat, and gray trousers--the outer appointments of the
faithful serving man. One sees Scott walking familiarly by his side,
staying himself on Tom's shoulder, while Tom talks with glee of "_our_
trees," and "_our_ bukes." One sees the little skirmishing, when master
wants trees planted one way and man sees best to plant them another; and
the magnanimity with which kindly, cross-grained Tom at last agrees, on
reflection, to "take his honor's advice" about the management of his
honor's own property. Here, between master and man, both freemen, is all
that beauty of relation sometimes erroneously considered as the peculiar
charm of slavery. Would it have made the relation any more picturesque
and endearing had Tom been stripped of legal rights, and made liable to
sale with the books and furniture of Abbotsford? Poor Tom is sleeping
here very quietly, with a smooth coverlet of green grass. Over him is
the following inscription: "Here lies the body of Thomas Purdie, wood
forester at Abbotsford, who died 29th October, 1829, aged sixty-two
years. Thou hast been faithful over a few things; I will make thee ruler
over many things." Matt. xxv. 21.
We walked up, and down, and about, getting the best views of the
building. It is scarcely possible for description to give you the
picture. The artist, in whose mind the conception of this building
arose, was a Mozart in architecture; a plaintive and ethereal lightness,
a fanciful quaintness, pervaded his composition. The building is not a
large one, and it has not that air of solemn massive grandeur, that
plain majesty, which impresses you in the cathedrals of Aberdeen and
Glasgow. As you stand looking at the wilderness of minarets and flying
buttresses, the multiplied shrines, and mouldings, and cornices, all
incrusted with carving as endless in its variety as the frostwork on a
window pane; each shrine, each pinnace, each moulding, a study by
itself, yet each contributing, like the different strains of a harmony,
to the general effect of the whole; it seems to you that for a thing so
airy and spiritual to have sprung up by enchantment, and to have been
the product of spells and fairy fingers, is no improbable account of the
matter.
Speaking of gargoyles--you are no architect, neither am I, but you may
as well get used to this descriptive term; it means the water-spouts
which conduct the water from the gutters at the eaves of these
buildings, and which are carved in every grotesque and fanciful device
that can be imagined. They are mostly goblin and fiendish faces, and
look as if they were darting out of the church in a towering passion, or
a fit of diabolic disgust and malice. Besides these gargoyles, there are
in many other points of the external building representations of
fiendish faces and figures, as if in the act of flying from the
building, under the influence of a terrible spell: by this, as my guide
said, was expressed the idea that the holy hymns and worship of the
church put Satan and all his forces to rout, and made all that was evil
flee.
One remark on this building, in Billings's architectural account of it,
interested me; and that is, that it is finished with the most
circumstantial elegance and minuteness in those concealed portions which
are excluded, from public view, and which can only be inspected by
laborious climbing or groping; and he accounts for this by the idea that
the whole carving and execution was considered as an act of solemn
worship and adoration, in which the artist offered up his best faculties
to the praise of the Creator.
[Illustration of gargoyles]
After lingering a while here, we went home to our inn or hotel. Now,
these hotels in the small towns of England, if this is any specimen,
are delightful affairs for travellers, they are so comfortable and
home-like. Our snug little parlor was radiant with the light of the coal
grate; our table stood before it, with its bright silver, white cloth,
and delicate china cups; and then such a dish of mutton chops! My dear,
we are all mortal, and emotions of the beautiful and sublime tend
especially to make one hungry. We, therefore, comforted ourselves over
the instability of earthly affairs, and the transitory nature of all
human grandeur, by consolatory remarks on the _present_ whiteness of the
bread, the sweetness of the butter; and as to the chops, all declared,
with one voice, that such mutton was a thing unknown in America. I moved
an emendation, except on the sea coast of Maine. We resolved to cherish
the memory of our little hostess in our heart of hearts, and as we
gathered round the cheery grate, drying our cold feet, we voted that
poetry was a humbug, and damp, old, musty cathedrals a bore. Such are
the inconsistencies of human nature!
"Nevertheless," said I to S----, after dinner, "I am going back again
to-night, to see that abbey by moonlight. I intend to walk the whole
figure while I am about it."
Just on the verge of twilight I stepped out, to see what the town
afforded in the way of relics. To say the truth, my eye had been caught
by some cunning little tubs and pails in a window, which I thought might
be valued in the home department. I went into a shop, where an auld wife
soon appeared, who, in reply to my inquiries, told me, that the said
little tubs and pails were made of plum tree wood from Dryburgh Abbey,
and, of course, partook of the sanctity of relics. She and her husband
seemed to be driving a thriving trade in the article, and either plum
trees must be very abundant at Dryburgh, or what there are must be
gifted with that power of self-multiplication which inheres in the wood
of the true Cross. I bought them in blind faith, however, suppressing
all rationalistic doubts, as a good relic hunter should.
I went up into a little room where an elderly woman professed to have
quite a collection of the Melrose relics. Some years ago extensive
restorations and repairs were made in the old abbey, in which Walter
Scott took a deep interest. At that time, when the scaffolding was up
for repairing the building, as I understood, Scott had the plaster casts
made of different parts, which he afterwards incorporated into his own
dwelling at Abbotsford. I said to the good woman that I had understood
by Washington Irving's account, that Scott appropriated _bona fide_
fragments of the building, and alluded to the account which he gives of
the little red sandstone lion from Melrose. She repelled the idea with
great energy, and said she had often heard Sir Walter say, that he would
not carry off a bit of the building as big as his thumb. She showed me
several plaster casts that she had in her possession, which were taken
at this time. There were several corbels there; one was the head of an
old monk, and looked as if it might have been a mask taken of his face
the moment after death; the eyes were hollow and sunken, the cheeks
fallen in, the mouth lying helplessly open, showing one or two
melancholy old stumps of teeth. I wondered over this, whether it really
was the fac-simile of some poor old Father Ambrose, or Father Francis,
whose disconsolate look, after his death agony, had so struck the gloomy
fancy of the artist as to lead him to immortalize him in a corbel, for a
lasting admonition to his fat worldly brethren; for if we may trust the
old song, these monks of Melrose had rather a suspicious reputation in
the matter of worldly conformity. The impudent ballad says,--
"O, the monks of Melrose, they made good, kail
On Fridays, when they fasted;
They never wanted beef or ale
As long as their neighbors' lasted."
Naughty, roistering fellows! I thought I could perceive how this poor
Father Francis had worn his life out exhorting them to repentance, and
given up the ghost at last in despair, and so been made at once into a
saint and a corbel.
There were fragments of tracery, of mouldings and cornices, and
grotesque bits of architecture there, which I would have given a good
deal to be the possessor of. Stepping into a little cottage hard by to
speak to the guide about unlocking the gates, when we went out on our
moonlight excursion at midnight, I caught a glimpse, in an inner
apartment, of a splendid, large, black dog. I gave one exclamation and
jump, and was into the room after him.
"Ah," said the old man, "that was just like Sir Walter; he always had an
eye for a dog."
It gave me a kind of pain to think of him and his dogs, all lying in the
dust together; and yet it was pleasant to hear this little remark of
him, as if it were made by those who had often seen, and were fond of
thinking of him. The dog's name was Coal, and he was black enough, and
remarkable enough, to make a figure in a story--a genuine Melrose Abbey
dog. I should not wonder if he were a descendant, in a remote degree, of
the "mauthe doog," that supernatural beast, which Scott commemorates in
his notes. The least touch in the world of such blood in his veins would
be, of course, an appropriate circumstance in a dog belonging to an old
ruined abbey.
Well, I got home, and narrated my adventures to my friends, and showed
them my reliquary purchases, and declared my strengthening intention to
make my ghostly visit by moonlight, if there was any moon to be had that
night, which was a doubtful possibility.
In the course of the evening came in Mr. ----, who had volunteered his
services as guide and attendant during the interesting operation.
"When does the moon rise?" said one.
"O, a little after eleven o'clock, I believe," said Mr. ----.
Some of the party gaped portentously.
"You know," said I, "Scott says we must see it by moonlight; it is one
of the proprieties of the place, as I understand."
"How exquisite that description is, of the effect of moonlight!" says
another.
"I think it probable," says Mr. ----, dryly, "that Scott never saw it by
moonlight himself. He was a man of very regular habits, and seldom went
out evenings."
The blank amazement with which this communication was received set S----
into an inextinguishable fit of laughter.
"But do you really believe he never saw it?" said I, rather crestfallen.
"Well," said the gentleman, "I have heard him charged with never having
seen it, and he never denied it."
Knowing that Scott really was as practical a man as Dr. Franklin, and as
little disposed to poetic extravagances, and an exceedingly sensible,
family kind of person, I thought very probably this might be true,
unless he had seen it some time in his early youth. Most likely good
Mrs. Scott never would have let him commit the impropriety that we were
about to, and run the risk of catching the rheumatism by going out to
see how an old abbey looked at twelve o'clock at night.
We waited for the moon to rise, and of course it did not rise; nothing
ever does when it is waited for. We went to one window, and went to
another; half past eleven came, and no moon. "Let us give it up," said
I, feeling rather foolish. However, we agreed to wait another quarter of
an hour, and finally Mr. ---- announced that the moon _was_ risen; the
only reason we did not see it was, because it was behind the Eildon
Hills. So we voted to consider her risen at any rate, and started out in
the dark, threading the narrow streets of the village with the
comforting reflection that we were doing what Sir Walter would think
rather a silly thing. When we got out before the abbey there was enough
light behind the Eildon Hills to throw their three shadowy cones out
distinctly to view, and to touch with a gloaming, uncertain ray the
ivy-clad walls. As we stood before the abbey, the guide fumbling with
his keys, and finally heard the old lock clash as the door slowly opened
to admit us, I felt a little shiver of the ghostly come over me, just
enough to make it agreeable.
In the daytime we had criticized Walter Scott's moonlight description in
the lines which say,--
"The distant Tweed is heard, to rave,
And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave."
"We hear nothing of the Tweed, at any rate," said we; "that must be a
poetic license." But now at midnight, as we walked silently through the
mouldering aisles, the brawl of the Tweed was so distinctly heard that
it seemed as if it was close by the old, lonely pile; nor can any term
describe the sound more exactly than the word "rave," which the poet
has chosen. It was the precise accuracy of this little item of
description which made me feel as if Scott must have been here in the
night. I walked up into the old chancel, and sat down where William of
Deloraine and the monk sat, on the Scottish monarch's tomb, and thought
over the words
"Strange sounds along the chancel passed,
And banners wave without a blast;
Still spake the monk when the bell tolled one."
And while we were there the bell tolled twelve.
And then we went to Michael Scott's grave, and we looked through the
east oriel, with its
"Slender shafts of shapely stone,
By foliage tracery combined."
The fanciful outlines showed all the more distinctly for the entire
darkness within, and the gloaming moonlight without. The tall arches
seemed higher in their dimness, and vaster than they did in the daytime.
"Hark!" said I; "what's that?" as we heard a rustling and flutter of
wings in the ivy branches over our heads. Only a couple of rooks, whose
antiquarian slumbers were disturbed by the unwonted noise there at
midnight, and who rose and flew away, rattling down some fragments of
the ruin as they went. It was somewhat odd, but I could not help
fancying, what if these strange, goblin rooks were the spirits of old
monks coming back to nestle and brood among their ancient cloisters!
Rooks are a ghostly sort of bird. I think they were made on purpose to
live in old yew trees and ivy, as much as yew trees and ivy were to grow
round old churches and abbeys. If we once could get inside of a rook's
skull, to find out what he is thinking of, I'll warrant that we should
know a great deal more about these old buildings than we do now. I
should not wonder if there were long traditionary histories handed down
from one generation of rooks to another, and that these are what they
are talking about when we think they are only chattering. I imagine I
see the whole black fraternity the next day, sitting, one on a gargoyle,
one on a buttress, another on a shrine, gossiping over the event of our
nightly visit.
We walked up and down the long aisles, and groped out into the
cloisters; and then I thought, to get the full ghostliness of the
thing, we would go up the old, ruined staircase into the long galleries,
that
"Midway thread the abbey wall."
We got about half way up, when there came into our faces one of those
sudden, passionate puffs of mist and rain which Scotch clouds seem to
have the faculty of getting up at a minute's notice. Whish! came the
wind in our faces, like the rustling of a whole army of spirits down the
staircase; whereat we all tumbled back promiscuously on to each other,
and concluded we would not go up. In fact we had done the thing, and so
we went home; and I dreamed of arches, and corbels, and gargoyles all
night. And so, farewell to Melrose Abbey.