Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/102

98 "This unexpected minstrelsy was soon interrupted by Dame Foljambe, whose total devotion to the family of Rutland rendered her averse to hear the story of Dora Vernon's elopement profaned in the familiar ballad strain of a forgotten minstrel. 'I wonder at the presumption of that rude minion,' said the offended portress, 'in chanting such ungentle strains in my ear. Home to thy milk-pails, idle hussy—home to thy distaff, foolish maiden; or, if thou wilt sing, come over to my lodge when the sun is down, and I will teach thee a strain of a higher sort, made by a great court lord on the marriage of her late Grace. It is none of your rustic chants, but full of fine words, both long and lordly; it begins—

None of your vulgar chants, minion, I tell thee; but stuffed with spiced words, and shining with gods, and garters, and stars, and precious stones, and odours thickly dropping; a noble strain indeed.' The maiden smiled, nodded acquiescence, and, tripping homewards, renewed her homely and interrupted song, till the river-bank and the ancient towers acknowledged with their sweetest echoes the native charms of her voice.

I marvel much,' said the hoary portress,' at the idle love for strange and incredible stories which possesses as with a demon the peasants of this district. Not only have they given a saint, with a shirt of haircloth and a scourge, to every cavern, and a Druid, with his golden sickle and his mistletoe, to every circle of shapeless stones; but they have made the Vernons, the Cavendishes, the Cockaynes, and the Foljambes, erect on every wild place crosses or altars of atonement for crimes which they never committed; unless fighting ankle-deep in heathen blood for the recovery of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre required such outlandish penance. They cast, too, a supernatural light round the commonest story; if you credit them, the ancient chapel bell of Haddon, safely lodged on the floor for a century, is carried to the top of the turret, and, touched by some invisible hand, is made to toll forth midnight notes of dolour and woe when any misfortune is about to befall the noble family of Rutland. They tell you, too, that wailings of no