Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/106

102 all about the floor; while their owners sat in expectation of an immediate and ample feast, which they hoped to wash down with floods of that salutary beverage, the brown blood of barley.

At the upper end of the hall, where the floor was elevated exactly as much in respect as it was lowered in submission at the other, there the table for feasting the nobles stood; and well was it worthy of its station. It was one solid plank of white sycamore, shaped from the entire shaft of an enormous tree, and supported on squat columns of oak, ornamented with the arms of the Vernons, and grooved into the stone floor beyond all chance of being upset by human powers. Benches of wood, curiously carved, and covered, in times of more than ordinary ceremony, with cushions of embroidered velvet, surrounded this ample table; while in the recess behind appeared a curious work in arras, consisting of festivals, and processions, and bridals, executed from the ancient poets; and for the more staid and grave a more devout hand had wrought some scenes from the controversial fathers and the monkish legends of the ancient Church. The former employed the white hands of Dora Vernon herself; while the latter were the labours of her sister Margaret, who was of a serious turn, and never happened to be so far in love as to leap from a window.'

And now,' said Dame Foljambe, 'I will describe the Knight of Haddon, with his fair daughters and principal guests, myself.' 'A task that will last thee to Doomsday, Dame,' muttered the husbandman. The portress heeded not this ejaculation, but with a particular stateliness of delivery proceeded: 'The silver dinner-bell rang on the summit of Haddon Hall, the warder thrice wound his horn, and straightway the sound of silver spurs was heard in the passage, the folding-door opened, and in marched my own ancestor, Ferrars Foljambe by name. I have heard his dress too often described not to remember it. A buff jerkin with slashed and ornamented sleeves, a mantle of fine Lincoln green fastened round his neck with wolf-claws of pure gold, a pair of gilt spurs on the heels of his brown hunting-boots, garnished above with taslets of silver, and at the square and turned-up toes with links of the same metal, connected with the taslets. On his head was a boarskin cap, on which the white teeth of the boar were set, tipped with gold. At his side was a hunting-horn, called the White Hunting-horn