Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

wrenched key in the hand of the porter -there is motion visible in the waggon, and the perceptive faculty finally admits that there is a Flitting.

All the miseries above has it been frequently our lot to witness and partake; but of late years it has been too much for us, and we have left the Flitting in the hands of Providence. Besides, how pleasant, on a stated day and hour, to walk into Buchanan Lodge, an expected Head of a House! All the domestics delighted to behold their beloved master hobbling towards the porch. Every window so clear, that you know not there is glass the oil-skin on the lobby-floor glancing undimmed-nestlings in a twitter over all the clustering virandas; but all this is subject for a future leading article, whereas the title of the present is-Streams.

Well, then, Streams! The unpardonable thing about, Edinburgh is, that she wants a river. Two great straddling bridges without one drop of water! The stranger looks over the battlements of the one, and in the abyss sees our metropolitan markets -through the iron railing of the. other, and lo! carts laden with old furniture, and a blind fiddler and his wife roaring ballads to a group of tatterdemallions. What a glory would it be, were a great red river to come suddenly down in flood, and sweep away Mound and Bridge to the sea! Alas! for old Holyrood! What new life would be poured into the Gude auld Town, thus freshened at its foundations! And how beautiful to see the dwindled ship gliding under cloud of sail by the base of our castled cliff! Oh! for the sweet sea-murmur, when torrent retreats before tide, and the birds of ocean come floating into the inland woods! Oh! that," like Horeb's rock beneath the Prophet's hand," yonder steep would let escape into light the living waters! But this wish is a mere whim of the moment; and therefore it is our delight to escape for a week to the brooks of Peebles, or Innerleithen, or Clovenford, or Kelso.

Wherever we go to escape the . Flitting, a stream or river there must be our ears are useless without its murmurs-eyes we might as well have none, without its wimpling glitter. Early in life we fell in love with a Naiad, whom we beheld in a dream, sitting, with her long di

shevelled hair veiling her pearly person, by a water-fall; and her every spring have we in vain been seeking, and still hope to find, although she hide from our embrace in a pool far away among the hills that overshadow the lonely source of the Ettrick, or embowered in the beautiful Beauly, delight in the solitude of the Dreme.

Once, and once only, have we been a few miles above Ettrick Manse, and memory plays us false whenever we strive to retrace the solitude. It was a misty day, and we heard without seeing the bleating lambs. Each new reach of the Ettrick, there little more than a burn, murmured in the vapours, almost like a new stream to our eyes, whenever we chanced to lose sight of it, by having gone round knoll or brae. Just as we came down upon the kirk and manse, the rain was over and gone, and while mist-wreaths rolled up, seemingly without any wind, to the hill-top, a strong sun brightened the vale, and bathed a grove of tall trees in a rich steady lustre. Happy residence! thought our heart, as the modest Manse partook of the sudden sunshine, and smiled upon another pleasant dwelling across the vale, yet a little gloomy in the shadow. And a happy residence it had been for upwards of half a century to the pastor, who, about a year before, had dropped the body, and gone to his reward. No record-no annals of his peaceful, inoffensive, and useful life! Death had never once visited the manse during all those quiet years,neither sin nor sorrow had sat by the fireside—and there had been no whisperings of conscience to disturb the midnight sleep. The widow had to leave the long-hallowed hearth at her husband's death; but there is to right-thinking minds little hardship in such necessity, long calmly contemplated in foresight as a thing that might one day be, and now submitted to with an alacrity to leave the vale for ever, that showed how dear it had been, and still was, to the old woman's heart! A new minister came to the parish, and he and his young wife were in a few months respected and beloved. Here they had let go the anchor of their earthly hopes, never to be weighed again in that calm haven. Their friends prophesied that they would live for ever-but long within the year the young minister

died and was lying a corpse at the very hour of that glorious sunshine! Many eyes wept for him, who, over his grey-headed predecessor, would have thought it foolish to shed any tears; for the grave is the fitting bed for old age, and why mourn when the curtains are drawn for ever? But when youth on the sudden dies-the voice seems stifled in the mould-and hope and affection are with difficulty reconciled to the decree. The old widow had left the manse, with quiet steps and composed eyes, and all her friends felt and knew that she would be cheerful and happy in the small town where she was going to live, near some of her own blood relations. But she who had but one year ago become a wife, and had now a fatherless baby at her bosom, left the manse during the dark hours, and was heard more than sobbing as she took an everlasting farewell of her husband's grave.

But we are in chase of the Naiad, the Musidora, whom we beheld bathing in the lucid pool, and who, more beautiful far than she of the Seasons, had no need to disrobe, veiled in the lights and shadows of her own pearlenwoven tresses, that gave glimpses of loveliness from forehead to feet. Lo! she rises up from the green velvet couch beneath the atmosphere of St Mary's Loch, and leaning on the water as if it were a car, is wafted along the edge of the water-lilies of the Naiads' own gorgeous garden, that Crescent Bay! What a thing it is to have a soul-deluded eye in one's head! Why, it is merely a wild swan, perhaps the identical one that Mr Wordsworth saw, when he said, in his own delightful way, let

The swan on still St Mary's Lake Float double, swan and shadow! Heaven preserve us from ridicule, it is a wild-goose! Lame of a leg too, evidently, as, with a discordant gabble, it stretches out its neck, and with much exertion contrives to lift up its heavy hinder-end into flight. There's a Naiad for you-off, "slick away," to Norway at the nearest. Should the Loch Skene eagle get sight, or scent, or sound of the quack, her

feathers are not worth an hour's purchase. There he comes in full sail before the wind! for although it is breathless down below here, there is a strong current flowing three thousand feet high, and the eagle has set every inch of canvass. He nears upon the chase; but suddenly, as if scorning the gabbler, puts down the helm of his tail, and bearing up in the wind's eye, beats back, in a style that would astonish a Bermuda schooner, to his eyrie.

Let us leave the loch, then, (for Lochs will be well treated in another leading article,) and go Naiad-angling down the Yarrow. Do you think she would be tempted to rise to this bright and beautiful butterfly, the azure fields of whose winglets are all bedropt with golden stars? What cruelty, to immerge into another element the child of air! Perhaps it is Psyche herself, so let the captive free. Ha! did she not waver away into the sunshine, like a very spirit?

Here is a pool worthy of any Naiad, had she even come to visit Scotland all the way from some Grecian fountain. Look into it, and the water disappearing, you see but the skies! A faint lochborn breeze comes rustling through the one birch tree that hangs leaning over from the sloping bank, and for a moment the vision hath evanished! Oh! what a slight breath of earth can dispel a dream of heaven! The breeze has gone by, and there is the same still, steadfast glory as before, the boundless ether pictured in a pool ten fathom round! The Naiad, the Naiad! Bless thy sweet face, smiling up from the pool, as if in one of those mirrors of deception sometimes exhibited by scientific and slight-of-hand men travelling with a dwarf. What is this? Let us look a little more narrowly into this business. There our nose is within six inches of the surface of the water; and, reader, will you believe it, the Naiad, by some potent necromancy held over her even in her own watery world, slowly changeth into-Christopher North, editor of Blackwood's Magazine, and other celebrated works! Fain would we now, fancy-led, float down with the foam-bells, till

We passed where Newark's stately towers
Look out from Yarrow's birchen bowers.

But lo! Altrive, the abode of our own
Shepherd, whom we have not seen
since the last Noctes Ambrosianæ.

Yarrow! the Beloved of Bards of Old, well mayest thou be proud of the author of the Queen's Wake! and many

a little pathetic lilt beside-hymn, elegy, and song, hast thou heard breathed by him, along with thy own murmurs, during the pensive gloaming. Nor will thy pastoral sister, the Ettrick, be jealous of your loves. For in spirit all the streams are one that flow through the Forest. And you too, Ettrick and Yarrow, gathering them all together, come rushing into each other's arms, aboon the haughs o' Selkirk, and then flow, Tweed-blent, to the sea. Our Shepherd is dear to all the rills that issue, in thousands, from their own recesses among the braes; for when a poet walks through regions his genius has sung, all nature does him homage, from cloud to clod-from blue sky to green earthall living creatures therein included, from the eagle to the mole. James knows this, and is happy among the hills. But the hospitality of Altrive shall not be dismissed thus in a passing paragraph, but shall have a leading article to itself, as surely as we know how to honour worth and genius.

We called thee, Yarrow, The Beloved of Bards of Old! Ay! flowing in the brightness of thy own peace along the vale, yet wert thou often invoked by minstrels with a voice of weeping. Blood tinged thy banks, nor could the stain be washed away even by the tears of the Sons of Song. Thine became a traditionary character, if not of sorrow, yet of sadness, and all that is pensive or pastoral has ever seemed to breathe over thy braes. The wanderer carries thither with him a spirit of imaginative grief-an ear open to the mournful echoes of the ancient elegies of war and death. Thus, let the holms of Yarrow glitter to the sunshine as they will, yet, in the words of the old strain, they are "dowie" holms still; just as we always see something sad even in the smiles of a friend, whom we know to have been a man of sorrows, although to happiness he has been long restored. Cheerful chaunts there are about thy braw lads and bonny lasses; but sit down beside any shepherd on the hillside, anywhere in the whole Forest, and wherever

Yarrow, as he flows along,

Bears burden to the minstrel's song, depend you upon it, the tale shall be one of tenderness and tears! Such was the determination of the poets of the days that are gone, and such too is

the spirit, Wordsworth, of that divine strain thou didst breathe, in thy inspiration, when first thy thoughtful eyes beheld the stream that had so long murmured in the light of song. Delicious is the lay that sings The haunts of happy lovers, The path that leads them to the grove, The feafy grove that covers: And Pity sanctifies the verse That paints, by strength of sorrow, The unconquerable strength of love; Bear witness, rueful Yarrow !

But thou, that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination,

Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation:

Meek loveliness is round thee spread,
A softness still and holy;
The grace of foreign charms decay'd,
And pastoral melancholy.

And why hast thou, wild singing spirit
of the Highland Glenorchy, that cheer-
est the long-withdrawing vale from
Inverouren to Dalmally, and from Dal-
mally church-tower to the old castle
of Kilchurn, round whose mouldering
towers thou sweepest with more pen-
sive murmur, till thy name and ex-
istence is lost in that noble loch-
Why hast thou never had thy bard?
"A hundred bards have I had in
bygone ages," is thy reply;
"but
the Sassenach understands not the tra-
ditionary strains, and the music of
the Gaelic poetry is wasted on his

ear.

Songs of war and of love are yet awakened by the shepherds among these lonely braes; and often when the moon rises over Ben-Cruachan, and counts her attendant stars in soft reflection beneath the still waters of that long inland sea, she hears the echoes of harps chiming through the silence of departed years. Tradition tells, that on no other banks did the fairies so love to thread the mazes of their mystic dance, as on the heathy, and bracken, and oaken banks of the Orchy, during the long summer nights when the thick-falling dews almost perceptibly swelled the stream, and lent a livelier tinkle to every waterfall.

There it was, on a little riverisland, that once, whether sleeping or waking we know not, we saw celebrated a Fairy's Funeral. First we heard small pipes playing, as if no bigger than hollow rushes that whisper to the night-winds; and more piteous than aught that trills from

earthly instrument was the scarce audible dirge! It seemed to float over the stream, every foam-bell emitting a plaintive note, till the airy anthem came floating over my couch, and then alighted without ceasing among the heather. The pattering of little feet was heard, as if living creatures were arranging themselves in order, and then there was nothing but a more ordered hymn. The harmony was like the melting of musical dew-drops, and sung, without words, of sorrow and death. I opened my eyes, or rather sight came to them, when closed, and dream was vision! Hundreds of creatures, no taller than the crest of the lapwing, and all hanging down their veiled heads, stood in a circle on a green plat among the rocks; and in the midst was a bier, framed, as it seemed, of flowers unknown to the Highland hills; and on the bier a Fairy, lying with uncovered face, pale as the lily, and motionless as the snow. The dirge grew fainter and fainter, and then died quite away; when two of the creatures came from the circle, and took their station, one at the head and the other at the foot of the bier. They sang alternate measures, not louder than the twittering of the awakened wood-lark before it goes up the dewy air, but dolorous and full of the desolation of death. The flower-bier stirred; for the spot on which it lay sank slowly down, and in a few moments the greensward was smooth as ever the very dews glittering above the buried Fairy. A cloud passed over the moon, and, with a choral lament, the funeral troop sailed duskily away, heard afar off, so still was the midnight solitude of the glen. Then the disenthralled Orchy began to rejoice as before, through all her streams and falls; and at the sudden leaping of the waters and outbursting of the moon, I awoke.

Away, then, from the Isle of the Fairy's grave-away on winged thought, at the rate of a hundred miles in the minute, and lo! the Falls of the Beauly! A pleasure party of ladies and gentlemen from Inverness, as I am an Editor-and the band of a militia regiment! Well, the Duke of York's March is intelligible music, and it is pleasant to count the bars, after that unscientific and bewildering dirge of the green-robed people. God save the King, and Rule Britannia, are two

tunes of which I should never tire, were they to be dinned till doomsday. These alone can we hum truly, and without putting our foot through the air. Nothing so grand as a cataractaccompaniment to martial music! Say what you will about solitude, what looks so beautiful by moonlight among trees, as scattered groups of beaux and belles, appearing by fits and starts, like native sylvans in holiday array? Hark! they are answering each other with shrill shouts, and peals of laughter, and many a harmless kiss is ravished in the dim glades. What pretty terror and astonishment strike a whole group motionless on the cliff, as our venerable Figure emerges, like the hoary genius of the Beauly, from a chasm, and ascends a natural flight of steps towards the virgins, each one leaning, in her alarm, on the breast of a protecting swain! Had we suffered our beard, descending to sweep our aged breast, what an incomparable Hermit! It is plain, from the looks of all, that we are taken for the Man of the Moon. But even here a contributor solves the riddle, and "Christopher North,"

Christopher North," repeated by a chorus of nymphs, echoes among the rocks. And now, all gathering together on a platform above the Falls, we foot it deftly to the love-awakening waltz, in revolutions like the heavenly bodies, till the stars themselves seem to have caught the contagion, and with rays round each other's glowing zones, wheel and whirl on the floor of hea

ven.

A glorious cold collation !— Table surrounded by the Band, who ever and anon reduce the flirtation into hand pressure, by sudden bursts of martial or venereal music!-That Black, with the clashing symbols twinkling aloft over his six-feet-high curly head in the moonglint, must be of the blood-royal of the "Sculs made of Fire, and Children of the Sun !" How disdainfully would he annihilate the petty abolitionist by one white scowl of those fiery eyes! What cables of muscle lift up his huge flourishing hands! and how his yard-broad chest distends with power, as his wide diverging arms make the pectoral start like that of a Titan!-Christopher North is called upon unanimously for a song, and what more appropriate to the scene than the following Irish melody !—

[ocr errors]
[graphic][subsumed]

built a church in Dub-lin town, And on it put a stee-ple. His

father was a Gal-la-gher, His mother was a Brady; His

aunt was an O'Shaughnes-sy, First cousin to O'-Gra-dy. Oh! suc

cess attend Saint Patrick's fist, For he's the handsome saint, O. Oh! he

gave the snakes and toads a twist, He's a beauty without paint, O.

2.

The Wicklow Hills are very high,

And so's the Hill of Howth, sir;
But there's a hill much higher still,
Much higher nor them both, sir.
'Twas on the top of this big hill
Saint Patrick preach'd his sarmint,
That drove the frogs into the bogs,
And bother'd all the varmint.
Oh! success, &c.

3.

There's not a mile in Ireland's isle
Where dirty vermin musters,
But there he put his dear fore-foot,

And murder'd them in clusters:

The toads went pop, the frogs went plop,
Slap-dash into the water,

And the snakes committed suicide,
To save themselves from slaughter.
Oh! success, &c.

4.

No wonder that those Irish lads

Should be so free and frisky,

For sure Saint Pat, he taught them that,
As well as drinking whisky.

No wonder that the Saint himself

To drink it should be willing,

Since his mother kept a sheebeen shop

In the town of Enniskillen.

Oh! success, &c.

« AnteriorContinuar »