Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/98

94 country the door stands open, the table is spread, and the bidden guest is the way-wearied man or the fugitive and the wanderer. He enters, he refreshes himself, he reposes, and on the morrow he renews his journey.

It happened once in a northern county that I found myself at a farmer's fireside, and in company which the four winds of heaven seemed to have blown together. The farmer was a joyous old man; and the evening, a wintry one, and wild with wind and snow, flew away with jest, and mirth, and tale, and song. Our entertainer had no wish that our joy should subside, for he heaped the fire till the house shone to its remotest rafter, loaded his table with rustic delicacies, and once, when a pause ensued after the chanting of one of Robin Hood's ballads, he called out: "Why stays the story, and what stops the rhyme? Have I heated my hearth, have I spread my tables, and poured forth my strong drink for the poor in fancy and the lame in speech? Up, up! and give me a grave tale or a gay, to gladden or sadden the present moment, and lend wings to the leaden feet of evening time. Rise, I say; else may the fire that flames so high, the table which groans with food, for which water, and air, and earth, have been sought, and the board that perfumes you with the odour of ale and mead—may the first cease to warm, and the rest to nourish ye."

"Master," said a hail and joyous personage, whose shining and gladsome looks showed sympathy and alliance with the good cheer and fervent blood of merry old England; "since thy table smokes and thy brown ale flows more frankly for the telling of a true old tale, then a true old tale thou shalt have. Shame fall me if I baulk thee, as the pleasant folk say in the dales of bonny Derby.

"Those who have never seen Haddon Hall, the ancient residence of the Vernons of Derbyshire, can have but an imperfect notion of the golden days of old England. Though now deserted and dilapidated—its halls silent, the sacred bell of its chapel mute; though its tables no longer send up the cheering smell of roasted boars and spitted oxen, though the music and the voice of the minstrel are silenced and the light foot of the dancer no longer sounds on the floor, though no gentle knights and gentler dames go trooping hand in hand and whispering among the twilight groves, and the portal no longer sends out its