The Pirate
amused or terrified their infancy under the title of the "Magicians,"
and which the fishers of North Ronaldshaw, and other remote isles, used
still to sing when asked for a Norse ditty.[41]
Half listening, half lost in his own reflections, Mordaunt Mertoun stood
near the door of the apartment, and in the outer ring of the little
circle formed around old Halcro, while the bard chanted to a low, wild,
monotonous air, varied only by the efforts of the singer to give
interest and emphasis to particular passages, the following imitation of
a Northern war-song:
THE SONG OF HAROLD HARFAGER.
The sun is rising dimly red,
The wind is wailing low and dread;
From his cliff the eagle sallies,
Leaves the wolf his darksome valleys;
In the midst the ravens hover,
Peep the wild-dogs from the cover,
Screaming, croaking, baying, yelling,
Each in his wild accents telling,
"Soon we feast on dead and dying,
Fair-hair'd Harold's flag is flying."
Many a crest in air is streaming,
Many a helmet darkly gleaming,
Many an arm the axe uprears,
Doom'd to hew the wood of spears.
All along the crowded ranks,
Horses neigh and armour clanks;
Chiefs are shouting, clarions ringing,
Louder still the bard is singing,
"Gather, footmen,--gather, horsemen,
To the field, ye valiant Norsemen!
"Halt ye not for food or slumber,
View not vantage, count not number;
Jolly reapers, forward still;
Grow the crop on vale or hill,
Thick or scatter'd, stiff or lithe,
It shall down before the scythe.
Forward with your sickles bright,
Reap the harvest of the fight--
Onward, footmen,--onward, horsemen,
To the charge, ye gallant Norsemen!
"Fatal Choosers of the Slaughter,
O'er you hovers Odin's daughter;
Hear the voice she spreads before ye,--
Victory, and wealth, and glory;
Or old Valhalla's roaring hail,
Her ever-circling mead and ale,
Where for eternity unite
The joys of wassail and of fight.
Headlong forward, foot and horsemen,
Charge and fight, and die like Norsemen!"
"The poor unhappy blinded heathens!" said Triptolemus, with a sigh deep
enough for a groan; "they speak of their eternal cups of ale, and I
question if they kend how to manage a croft land of grain!"
"The cleverer fellows they, neighbour Yellowley," answered the poet, "if
they made ale without barley."
"Barley!--alack-a-day!" replied the more accurate agriculturist, "who
ever heard of barley in these parts? Bear, my dearest friend, bear is
all they have, and wonderment it is to me that they ever see an awn of
it. Ye scart the land with a bit thing ye ca' a pleugh--ye might as weel
give it a ritt with the teeth of a redding-kame. O, to see the sock, and
the heel, and the sole-clout of a real steady Scottish pleugh, with a
chield like a Samson between the stilts, laying a weight on them would
keep down a mountain; twa stately owsen, and as many broad-breasted
horse in the traces, going through soil and till, and leaving a fur in
the ground would carry off water like a causeyed syver! They that have
seen a sight like that, have seen something to crack about in another
sort, than those unhappy auld-warld stories of war and slaughter, of
which the land has seen even but too mickle, for a' your singing and
soughing awa in praise of such bloodthirsty doings, Master Claud
Halcro."
"It is a heresy," said the animated little poet, bridling and drawing
himself up, as if the whole defence of the Orcadian Archipelago rested
on his single arm--"It is a heresy so much as to name one's native
country, if a man is not prepared when and how to defend himself--ay,
and to annoy another. The time has been, that if we made not good ale
and aquavitæ, we knew well enough where to find that which was ready
made to our hand; but now the descendants of Sea-kings, and Champions,
and Berserkars, are become as incapable of using their swords, as if
they were so many women. Ye may praise them for a strong pull on an oar,
or a sure foot on a skerry; but what else could glorious John himself
say of ye, my good Hialtlanders, that any man would listen to?"
"Spoken like an angel, most noble poet," said Cleveland, who, during an
interval of the dance, stood near the party in which this conversation
was held. "The old champions you talked to us about yesternight, were
the men to make a harp ring--gallant fellows, that were friends to the
sea, and enemies to all that sailed on it. Their ships, I suppose, were
clumsy enough; but if it is true that they went upon the account as far
as the Levant, I scarce believe that ever better fellows unloosed a
topsail."
"Ay," replied Halcro, "there you spoke them right. In those days none
could call their life and means of living their own, unless they dwelt
twenty miles out of sight of the blue sea. Why, they had public prayers
put up in every church in Europe, for deliverance from the ire of the
Northmen. In France and England, ay, and in Scotland too, for as high as
they hold their head now-a-days, there was not a bay or a haven, but it
was freer to our forefathers than to the poor devils of natives; and now
we cannot, forsooth, so much as grow our own barley without Scottish
help"--(here he darted a sarcastic glance at the factor)--"I would I saw
the time we were to measure arms with them again!"
"Spoken like a hero once more," said Cleveland.
"Ah!" continued the little bard, "I would it were possible to see our
barks, once the water-dragons of the world, swimming with the black
raven standard waving at the topmast, and their decks glimmering with
arms, instead of being heaped up with stockfish--winning with our
fearless hands what the niggard soil denies--paying back all old scorn
and modern injury--reaping where we never sowed, and felling what we
never planted--living and laughing through the world, and smiling when
we were summoned to quit it!"
So spoke Claud Halcro, in no serious, or at least most certainly in no
sober mood, his brain (never the most stable) whizzing under the
influence of fifty well-remembered sagas, besides five bumpers of
usquebaugh and brandy; and Cleveland, between jest and earnest, clapped
him on the shoulder, and again repeated, "Spoken like a hero!"
"Spoken like a fool, I think," said Magnus Troil, whose attention had
been also attracted by the vehemence of the little bard--"where would
you cruize upon, or against whom?--we are all subjects of one realm, I
trow, and I would have you to remember, that your voyage may bring up at
Execution-dock.--I like not the Scots--no offence, Mr. Yellowley--that
is, I would like them well enough if they would stay quiet in their own
land, and leave us at peace with our own people, and manners, and
fashions; and if they would but abide there till I went to harry them
like a mad old Berserkar, I would leave them in peace till the day of
judgment. With what the sea sends us, and the land lends us, as the
proverb says, and a set of honest neighbourly folks to help us to
consume it, so help me, Saint Magnus, as I think we are even but too
happy!"
"I know what war is," said an old man, "and I would as soon sail through
Sumburgh-roost in a cockle-shell, or in a worse loom, as I would venture
there again."
"And, pray, what wars knew your valour?" said Halcro, who, though
forbearing to contradict his landlord from a sense of respect, was not a
whit inclined to abandon his argument to any meaner authority.
"I was pressed," answered the old Triton, "to serve under Montrose, when
he came here about the sixteen hundred and fifty-one, and carried a sort
of us off, will ye nill ye, to get our throats cut in the wilds of
Strathnavern[42](_k_)--I shall never forget it--we had been hard put to
it for victuals--what would I have given for a luncheon of Burgh-Westra
beef--ay, or a mess of sour sillocks?--When our Highlandmen brought in a
dainty drove of kyloes, much ceremony there was not, for we shot and
felled, and flayed, and roasted, and broiled, as it came to every man's
hand; till, just as our beards were at the greasiest, we heard--God
preserve us--a tramp of horse, then twa or three drapping shots,--then
came a full salvo,--and then, when the officers were crying on us to
stand, and maist of us looking which way we might run away, down they
broke, horse and foot, with old John Urry, or Hurry,[43] or whatever
they called him--he hurried us that day, and worried us to boot--and we
began to fall as thick as the stots that we were felling five minutes
before."
"And Montrose," said the soft voice of the graceful Minna; "what became
of Montrose, or how looked he?"
"Like a lion with the hunters before him," answered the old gentleman;
"but I looked not twice his way, for my own lay right over the hill."
"And so you left him?" said Minna, in a tone of the deepest contempt.
"It was no fault of mine, Mistress Minna," answered the old man,
somewhat out of countenance; "but I was there with no choice of my own;
and, besides, what good could I have done?--all the rest were running
like sheep, and why should I have staid?"
"You might have died with him," said Minna.
"And lived with him to all eternity, in immortal verse!" added Claud
Halcro.
"I thank you, Mistress Minna," replied the plain-dealing Zetlander; "and
I thank you, my old friend Claud;--but I would rather drink both your
healths in this good bicker of ale, like a living man as I am, than that
you should be making songs in my honour, for having died forty or fifty
years agone. But what signified it,--run or fight, 'twas all one;--they
took Montrose, poor fellow, for all his doughty deeds, and they took me
that did no doughty deeds at all; and they hanged him, poor man, and as
for me"----
"I trust in Heaven they flogged and pickled you," said Cleveland, worn
out of patience with the dull narrative of the peaceful Zetlander's
poltroonery, of which he seemed so wondrous little ashamed.
"Flog horses, and pickle beef," said Magnus; "Why, you have not the
vanity to think, that, with all your quarterdeck airs, you will make
poor old neighbour Haagen ashamed that he was not killed some scores of
years since? You have looked on death yourself, my doughty young friend,
but it was with the eyes of a young man who wishes to be thought of; but
we are a peaceful people,--peaceful, that is, as long as any one should
be peaceful, and that is till some one has the impudence to wrong us, or
our neighbours; and then, perhaps, they may not find our northern blood
much cooler in our veins than was that of the old Scandinavians that
gave us our names and lineage.--Get ye along, get ye along to the
sword-dance,[44] that the strangers that are amongst us may see that our
hands and our weapons are not altogether unacquainted even yet."
A dozen cutlasses, selected hastily from an old arm-chest, and whose
rusted hue bespoke how seldom they left the sheath, armed the same
number of young Zetlanders, with whom mingled six maidens, led by Minna
Troil; and the minstrelsy instantly commenced a tune appropriate to the
ancient Norwegian war-dance, the evolutions of which are perhaps still
practised in those remote islands.
The first movement was graceful and majestic, the youths holding their
swords erect, and without much gesture; but the tune, and the
corresponding motions of the dancers, became gradually more and more
rapid,--they clashed their swords together, in measured time, with a
spirit which gave the exercise a dangerous appearance in the eye of the
spectator, though the firmness, justice, and accuracy, with which the
dancers kept time with the stroke of their weapons, did, in truth,
ensure its safety. The most singular part of the exhibition was the
courage exhibited by the female performers, who now, surrounded by the