Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/47

Rh Rode exhibited the first and second portions of the primitive wish, and it required no very deep discernment to see that around the ample hearth we had materials for completing the proverb. In each face was reflected that singular mixture of gravity and humour peculiar, I apprehend, to the people of the North. Before a large fire, which it is reckoned ominous ever to extinguish, lay half a dozen sheep dogs, spreading out their white bosoms to the heat, and each placed opposite to the seat of its owner. The lord—or rather portioner—of Fremmet-ha' himself lay apart on a large couch of oak antiquely carved, and ornamented, like some of the massive furniture of the days of the olden church, with beads, and crosses, and pastoral crooks. This settee was bedded deep with sheepskins, each retaining a fleece of long white wool. At each end lay a shepherd's dog, past its prime, like its master, and, like him, enjoying a kind of half-ruminating and drowsy leisure peculiar to old age. Three or four busy wheels, guided by as many maidens, manufactured wool into yarn for rugs, and mauds, and mantles. Three other maidens, with bared arms, prepared curds for cheese, and their hands rivalled in whiteness the curdled milk itself. Under the light of a large candlestick several youths pursued the amusement of the popular game of draughts. This piece of rude furniture ought not to escape particular description. It resembled an Etruscan candelabrum, and was composed of a shaft, capable of being depressed or elevated by means of a notched groove, and sunk secure in a block of wood at the floor, terminated above in a shallow cruse or plate, like a three-cocked hat, in each corner of which stood a large candle, rendering the spacious hall where we sat as light as day. On this scene of patriarchal happiness looked my old companion, Eleanor Selby, contrasting, as she glanced her eye in succession over the tokens of shepherds' wealth in which the house abounded, the present day with the past; the times of the fleece, the shears, and the distaff, with those of broils, and blood, and mutual inroad and invasion, when the name of Selby stood high in the chivalry of the North. One might observe in her changing looks the themes of rustic degradation and chivalrous glory on which she brooded; and the present peaceful time suffered by the comparison, as the present always does in the contemplation of old age. The constant attention of young Maude Rode, who ministered