The Pirate
lowering it, as from apprehension of being overheard--"I say a gold
chain!"
"A gold chain!" said Triptolemus.
"In troth is it, hinny; and how like you that? The folk say here, as
Tronda tells me, that the King of the Drows gave it to his father, the
Silent Man of Sumburgh."
"I wish you would speak sense, or be the silent woman," said
Triptolemus. "The upshot of it all is, then, that this lad is the rich
stranger's son, and that you are giving him the goose you were to keep
till Michaelmas!"
"Troth, brother, we maun do something for God's sake, and to make
friends; and the lad," added Baby, (for even she was not altogether
above the prejudices of her sex in favour of outward form,) "the lad has
a fair face of his ain."
"Ye would have let mony a fair face," said Triptolemus, "pass the door
pining, if it had not been for the gold chain."
"Nae doubt, nae doubt," replied Barbara; "ye wadna have me waste our
substance on every thigger or sorner that has the luck to come by the
door in a wet day? But this lad has a fair and a wide name in the
country, and Tronda says he is to be married to a daughter of the rich
Udaller, Magnus Troil, and the marriage-day is to be fixed whenever he
makes choice (set him up) between the twa lasses; and so it wad be as
much as our good name is worth, and our quiet forby, to let him sit
unserved, although he does come unsent for."
"The best reason in life," said Triptolemus, "for letting a man into a
house is, that you dare not bid him go by. However, since there is a man
of quality amongst them, I will let him know whom he has to do with, in
my person." Then advancing to the door, he exclaimed, "_Heus tibi,
Dave!_"
"_Adsum_," answered the youth, entering the apartment.
"Hem!" said the erudite Triptolemus, "not altogether deficient in his
humanities, I see. I will try him further.--Canst thou aught of
husbandry, young gentleman?"
"Troth, sir, not I," answered Mordaunt; "I have been trained to plough
upon the sea, and to reap upon the crag."
"Plough the sea!" said Triptolemus; "that's a furrow requires small
harrowing; and for your harvest on the crag, I suppose you mean these
_scowries_, or whatever you call them. It is a sort of ingathering which
the Ranzelman should stop by the law; nothing more likely to break an
honest man's bones. I profess I cannot see the pleasure men propose by
dangling in a rope's-end betwixt earth and heaven. In my case, I had as
lief the other end of the rope were fastened to the gibbet; I should be
sure of not falling, at least."
"Now, I would only advise you to try it," replied Mordaunt. "Trust me,
the world has few grander sensations than when one is perched in midair
between a high-browed cliff and a roaring ocean, the rope by which you
are sustained seeming scarce stronger than a silken thread, and the
stone on which you have one foot steadied, affording such a breadth as
the kittywake might rest upon--to feel and know all this, with the full
confidence that your own agility of limb, and strength of head, can
bring you as safe off as if you had the wing of the gosshawk--this is
indeed being almost independent of the earth you tread on!"
Triptolemus stared at this enthusiastic description of an amusement
which had so few charms for him; and his sister, looking at the glancing
eye and elevated bearing of the young adventurer, answered, by
ejaculating, "My certie, lad, but ye are a brave chield!"
"A brave chield?" returned Yellowley,--"I say a brave goose, to be
flichtering and fleeing in the wind when he might abide upon _terra
firma_! But come, here's a goose that is more to the purpose, when once
it is well boiled. Get us trenchers and salt, Baby--but in truth it will
prove salt enough--a tasty morsel it is; but I think the Zetlanders be
the only folk in the world that think of running such risks to catch
geese, and then boiling them when they have done."
"To be sure," replied his sister, (it was the only word they had agreed
in that day,) "it would be an unco thing to bid ony gudewife in Angus or
a' the Mearns boil a goose, while there was sic things as spits in the
warld.--But wha's this neist!" she added, looking towards the entrance
with great indignation. "My certie, open doors, and dogs come in--and
wha opened the door to him?"
"I did, to be sure," replied Mordaunt; "you would not have a poor devil
stand beating your deaf door-cheeks in weather like this?--Here goes
something, though, to help the fire," he added, drawing out the sliding
bar of oak with which the door had been secured, and throwing it on the
hearth, whence it was snatched by Dame Baby in great wrath, she
exclaiming at the same time,--
"It's sea-borne timber, as there's little else here, and he dings it
about as if it were a fir-clog!--And who be you, an it please you?" she
added, turning to the stranger,--"a very hallanshaker loon, as ever
crossed my twa een!"
"I am a jagger, if it like your ladyship," replied the uninvited guest,
a stout vulgar, little man, who had indeed the humble appearance of a
pedlar, called _jagger_ in these islands--"never travelled in a waur
day, or was more willing to get to harbourage.--Heaven be praised for
fire and house-room!"
So saying, he drew a stool to the fire, and sat down without further
ceremony. Dame Baby stared "wild as grey gosshawk," and was meditating
how to express her indignation in something warmer than words, for which
the boiling pot seemed to offer a convenient hint, when an old
half-starved serving-woman--the Tronda already mentioned--the sharer of
Barbara's domestic cares, who had been as yet in some remote corner of
the mansion, now hobbled into the room, and broke out into exclamations
which indicated some new cause of alarm.
"O master!" and "O mistress!" were the only sounds she could for some
time articulate, and then followed them up with, "The best in the
house--the best in the house--set a' on the board, and a' will be little
aneugh--There is auld Norna of Fitful-head, the most fearful woman in
all the isles!"
"Where can she have been wandering?" said Mordaunt, not without some
apparent sympathy with the surprise, if not with the alarm, of the old
domestic; "but it is needless to ask--the worse the weather, the more
likely is she to be a traveller."
"What new tramper is this?" echoed the distracted Baby, whom the quick
succession of guests had driven wellnigh crazy with vexation. "I'll soon
settle her wandering, I sall warrant, if my brother has but the saul of
a man in him, or if there be a pair of jougs at Scalloway!"
"The iron was never forged on stithy that would hauld her," said the old
maid-servant. "She comes--she comes--God's sake speak her fair and
canny, or we will have a ravelled hasp on the yarn-windles!"
As she spoke, a woman, tall enough almost to touch the top of the door
with her cap, stepped into the room, signing the cross as she entered,
and pronouncing, with a solemn voice, "The blessing of God and Saint
Ronald on the open door, and their broad malison and mine upon
close-handed churls!"
"And wha are ye, that are sae bauld wi' your blessing and banning in
other folk's houses? What kind of country is this, that folk cannot sit
quiet for an hour, and serve Heaven, and keep their bit gear thegither,
without gangrel men and women coming thigging and sorning ane after
another, like a string of wild-geese?"
This speech, the understanding reader will easily saddle on Mistress
Baby, and what effects it might have produced on the last stranger, can
only be matter of conjecture; for the old servant and Mordaunt applied
themselves at once to the party addressed, in order to deprecate her
resentment; the former speaking to her some words of Norse, in a tone of
intercession, and Mordaunt saying in English, "They are strangers,
Norna, and know not your name or qualities; they are unacquainted, too,
with the ways of this country, and therefore we must hold them excused
for their lack of hospitality."
"I lack no hospitality, young man," said Triptolemus, "_miseris
succurrere disco_--the goose that was destined to roost in the chimney
till Michaelmas, is boiling in the pot for you; but if we had twenty
geese, I see we are like to find mouths to eat them every feather--this
must be amended."
"What must be amended, sordid slave?" said the stranger Norna, turning
at once upon him with an emphasis that made him start--"_What_ must be
amended? Bring hither, if thou wilt, thy new-fangled coulters, spades,
and harrows, alter the implements of our fathers from the ploughshare to
the mouse-trap; but know thou art in the land that was won of old by the
flaxen-haired Kempions of the North, and leave us their hospitality at
least, to show we come of what was once noble and generous. I say to you
beware--while Norna looks forth at the measureless waters, from the
crest of Fitful-head, something is yet left that resembles power of
defence. If the men of Thule have ceased to be champions, and to spread
the banquet for the raven, the women have not forgotten the arts that
lifted them of yore into queens and prophetesses."
The woman who pronounced this singular tirade, was as striking in
appearance as extravagantly lofty in her pretensions and in her
language. She might well have represented on the stage, so far as
features, voice, and stature, were concerned, the Bonduca or Boadicea of
the Britons, or the sage Velleda, Aurinia, or any other fated Pythoness,
who ever led to battle a tribe of the ancient Goths. Her features were
high and well formed, and would have been handsome, but for the ravages
of time and the effects of exposure to the severe weather of her
country. Age, and perhaps sorrow, had quenched, in some degree, the fire
of a dark-blue eye, whose hue almost approached to black, and had
sprinkled snow on such parts of her tresses as had escaped from under
her cap, and were dishevelled by the rigour of the storm. Her upper
garment, which dropped with water, was of a coarse dark-coloured stuff,
called wadmaal, then much used in the Zetland islands, as also in
Iceland and Norway. But as she threw this cloak back from her
shoulders, a short jacket, of dark-blue velvet, stamped with figures,
became visible, and the vest, which corresponded to it, was of crimson
colour, and embroidered with tarnished silver. Her girdle was plated
with silver ornaments, cut into the shape of planetary signs--her blue
apron was embroidered with similar devices, and covered a petticoat of
crimson cloth. Strong thick enduring shoes, of the half-dressed leather
of the country, were tied with straps like those of the Roman buskins,
over her scarlet stockings. She wore in her belt an ambiguous-looking
weapon, which might pass for a sacrificing knife, or dagger, as the
imagination of the spectator chose to assign to the wearer the character
of a priestess or of a sorceress. In her hand she held a staff, squared
on all sides, and engraved with Runic characters and figures, forming
one of those portable and perpetual calendars which were used among the
ancient natives of Scandinavia, and which, to a superstitious eye, might
have passed for a divining rod.
Such were the appearance, features, and attire, of Norna of the
Fitful-head, upon whom many of the inhabitants of the island looked with
observance, many with fear, and almost all with a sort of veneration.
Less pregnant circumstances of suspicion would, in any other part of
Scotland, have exposed her to the investigation of those cruel
inquisitors, who were then often invested with the delegated authority
of the Privy Council, for the purpose of persecuting, torturing, and
finally consigning to the flames, those who were accused of witchcraft
or sorcery. But superstitions of this nature pass through two stages ere