The Pirate
they become entirely obsolete. Those supposed to be possessed of
supernatural powers, are venerated in the earlier stages of society. As
religion and knowledge increase, they are first held in hatred and
horror, and are finally regarded as impostors. Scotland was in the
second state--the fear of witchcraft was great, and the hatred against
those suspected of it intense. Zetland was as yet a little world by
itself, where, among the lower and ruder classes, so much of the ancient
northern superstition remained, as cherished the original veneration for
those affecting supernatural knowledge, and power over the elements,
which made a constituent part of the ancient Scandinavian creed. At
least if the natives of Thule admitted that one class of magicians
performed their feats by their alliance with Satan, they devoutly
believed that others dealt with spirits of a different and less odious
class--the ancient Dwarfs, called, in Zetland, Trows, or Drows, the
modern fairies, and so forth.
Among those who were supposed to be in league with disembodied spirits,
this Norna, descended from, and representative of, a family, which had
long pretended to such gifts, was so eminent, that the name assigned to
her, which signifies one of those fatal sisters who weave the web of
human fate, had been conferred in honour of her supernatural powers. The
name by which she had been actually christened was carefully concealed
by herself and her parents; for to its discovery they superstitiously
annexed some fatal consequences. In those times, the doubt only
occurred, whether her supposed powers were acquired by lawful means. In
our days, it would have been questioned whether she was an impostor, or
whether her imagination was so deeply impressed with the mysteries of
her supposed art, that she might be in some degree a believer in her
own pretensions to supernatural knowledge. Certain it is, that she
performed her part with such undoubting confidence, and such striking
dignity of look and action, and evinced, at the same time, such strength
of language, and energy of purpose, that it would have been difficult
for the greatest sceptic to have doubted the reality of her enthusiasm,
though he might smile at the pretensions to which it gave rise.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] When a person changes his condition suddenly, as when a miser
becomes liberal, or a churl good-humoured, he is said, in Scotch, to be
_fey_; that is, predestined to speedy death, of which such mutations of
humour are received as a sure indication.
[25] A pedlar.
CHAPTER VI.
----If, by your art, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
_Tempest._
The storm had somewhat relaxed its rigour just before the entrance of
Norna, otherwise she must have found it impossible to travel during the
extremity of its fury. But she had hardly added herself so unexpectedly
to the party whom chance had assembled at the dwelling of Triptolemus
Yellowley, when the tempest suddenly resumed its former vehemence, and
raged around the building with a fury which made the inmates insensible
to any thing except the risk that the old mansion was about to fall
above their heads.
Mistress Baby gave vent to her fears in loud exclamations of "The Lord
guide us--this is surely the last day--what kind of a country of
guisards and gyre-carlines is this!--and you, ye fool carle," she added,
turning on her brother, (for all her passions had a touch of acidity in
them,) "to quit the bonny Mearns land to come here, where there is
naething but sturdy beggars and gaberlunzies within ane's house, and
Heaven's anger on the outside on't!"
"I tell you, sister Baby," answered the insulted agriculturist, "that
all shall be reformed and amended,--excepting," he added, betwixt his
teeth, "the scaulding humours of an ill-natured jaud, that can add
bitterness to the very storm!"
The old domestic and the pedlar meanwhile exhausted themselves in
entreaties to Norna, of which, as they were couched in the Norse
language, the master of the house understood nothing.
She listened to them with a haughty and unmoved air, and replied at
length aloud, and in English--"I will not. What if this house be strewed
in ruins before morning--where would be the world's want in the crazed
projector, and the niggardly pinch-commons, by which it is inhabited?
They will needs come to reform Zetland customs, let them try how they
like a Zetland storm.--You that would not perish, quit this house!"
The pedlar seized on his little knapsack, and began hastily to brace it
on his back; the old maid-servant cast her cloak about her shoulders,
and both seemed to be in the act of leaving the house as fast as they
could.
Triptolemus Yellowley, somewhat commoved by these appearances, asked
Mordaunt, with a voice which faltered with apprehension, whether he
thought there was any, that is, so very much danger?
"I cannot tell," answered the youth, "I have scarce ever seen such a
storm. Norna can tell us better than any one when it will abate; for no
one in these islands can judge of the weather like her."
"And is that all thou thinkest Norna can do?" said the sibyl; "thou
shalt know her powers are not bounded within such a narrow space. Hear
me, Mordaunt, youth of a foreign land, but of a friendly heart--Dost
thou quit this doomed mansion with those who now prepare to leave it?"
"I do not--I will not, Norna," replied Mordaunt; "I know not your motive
for desiring me to remove, and I will not leave, upon these dark
threats, the house in which I have been kindly received in such a
tempest as this. If the owners are unaccustomed to our practice of
unlimited hospitality, I am the more obliged to them that they have
relaxed their usages, and opened their doors in my behalf."
"He is a brave lad," said Mistress Baby, whose superstitious feelings
had been daunted by the threats of the supposed sorceress, and who,
amidst her eager, narrow, and repining disposition, had, like all who
possess marked character, some sparks of higher feeling, which made her
sympathize with generous sentiments, though she thought it too expensive
to entertain them at her own cost--"He is a brave lad," she again
repeated, "and worthy of ten geese, if I had them to boil for him, or
roast either. I'll warrant him a gentleman's son, and no churl's blood."
"Hear me, young Mordaunt," said Norna, "and depart from this house. Fate
has high views on you--you shall not remain in this hovel to be crushed
amid its worthless ruins, with the relics of its more worthless
inhabitants, whose life is as little to the world as the vegetation of
the house-leek, which now grows on their thatch, and which shall soon be
crushed amongst their mangled limbs."
"I--I--I will go forth," said Yellowley, who, despite of his bearing
himself scholarly and wisely, was beginning to be terrified for the
issue of the adventure; for the house was old, and the walls rocked
formidably to the blast.
"To what purpose?" said his sister. "I trust the Prince of the power of
the air has not yet such-like power over those that are made in God's
image, that a good house should fall about our heads, because a randy
quean" (here she darted a fierce glance at the Pythoness) "should boast
us with her glamour, as if we were sae mony dogs to crouch at her
bidding!"
"I was only wanting," said Triptolemus, ashamed of his motion, "to look
at the bear-braird, which must be sair laid wi' this tempest; but if
this honest woman like to bide wi' us, I think it were best to let us a'
sit doun canny thegither, till it's working weather again."
"Honest woman!" echoed Baby--"Foul warlock thief!--Aroint ye, ye
limmer!" she added, addressing Norna directly; "out of an honest house,
or, shame fa' me, but I'll take the bittle[26] to you!"
Norna cast on her a look of supreme contempt; then, stepping to the
window, seemed engaged in deep contemplation of the heavens, while the
old maid-servant, Tronda, drawing close to her mistress, implored, for
the sake of all that was dear to man or woman, "Do not provoke Norna of
Fitful-head! You have no sic woman on the mainland of Scotland--she can
ride on one of these clouds as easily as man ever rode on a sheltie."
"I shall live to see her ride on the reek of a fat tar-barrel," said
Mistress Baby; "and that will be a fit pacing palfrey for her."
Again Norna regarded the enraged Mrs. Baby Yellowley with a look of that
unutterable scorn which her haughty features could so well express, and
moving to the window which looked to the north-west, from which quarter
the gale seemed at present to blow, she stood for some time with her
arms crossed, looking out upon the leaden-coloured sky, obscured as it
was by the thick drift, which, coming on in successive gusts of tempest,
left ever and anon sad and dreary intervals of expectation betwixt the
dying and the reviving blast.
Norna regarded this war of the elements as one to whom their strife was
familiar; yet the stern serenity of her features had in it a cast of
awe, and at the same time of authority, as the cabalist may be supposed
to look upon the spirit he has evoked, and which, though he knows how to
subject him to his spell, bears still an aspect appalling to flesh and
blood. The attendants stood by in different attitudes, expressive of
their various feelings. Mordaunt, though not indifferent to the risk in
which they stood, was more curious than alarmed. He had heard of Norna's
alleged power over the elements, and now expected an opportunity of
judging for himself of its reality. Triptolemus Yellowley was confounded
at what seemed to be far beyond the bounds of his philosophy; and, if
the truth must be spoken, the worthy agriculturist was greatly more
frightened than inquisitive. His sister was not in the least curious on
the subject; but it was difficult to say whether anger or fear
predominated in her sharp eyes and thin compressed lips. The pedlar and
old Tronda, confident that the house would never fall while the
redoubted Norna was beneath its roof, held themselves ready for a start
the instant she should take her departure.
Having looked on the sky for some time in a fixed attitude, and with the
most profound silence, Norna at once, yet with a slow and elevated
gesture, extended her staff of black oak towards that part of the
heavens from which the blast came hardest, and in the midst of its fury
chanted a Norwegian invocation, still preserved in the Island of Uist,
under the name of the Song of the Reimkennar, though some call it the
Song of the Tempest. The following is a free translation, it being
impossible to render literally many of the elliptical and metaphorical
terms of expression, peculiar to the ancient Northern poetry:--
1.
"Stern eagle of the far north-west,
Thou that bearest in thy grasp the thunderbolt,
Thou whose rushing pinions stir ocean to madness,
Thou the destroyer of herds, thou the scatterer of navies,
Thou the breaker down of towers,
Amidst the scream of thy rage,
Amidst the rushing of thy onward wings,
Though thy scream be loud as the cry of a perishing nation,
Though the rushing of thy wings be like the roar of ten thousand waves,
Yet hear, in thine ire and thy haste,
Hear thou the voice of the Reim-kennar.
2.
"Thou hast met the pine-trees of Drontheim,
Their dark-green heads lie prostrate beside their uprooted stems;
Thou hast met the rider of the ocean,
The tall, the strong bark of the fearless rover,
And she has struck to thee the topsail
That she had not veiled to a royal armada;
Thou hast met the tower that hears its crest among the clouds,
The battled massive tower of the Jarl of former days,
And the cope-stone of the turret