The Pirate
Through gulf and stream my course has been;
The billows know my Runic lay,
And smooth their crests to silent green.
"The billows know my Runic lay,--
The gulf grows smooth, the stream is still;
But human hearts, more wild than they,
Know but the rule of wayward will.
"One hour is mine, in all the year,
To tell my woes,--and one alone;
When gleams this magic lamp, 'tis here,--
When dies the mystic light, 'tis gone.
"Daughters of northern Magnus, hail!
The lamp is lit, the flame is clear,--
To you I come to tell my tale,
Awake, arise, my tale to hear!"
Norna was well known to the daughters of Troil, but it was not without
emotion, although varied by their respective dispositions, that they
beheld her so unexpectedly, and at such an hour. Their opinions with
respect to the supernatural attributes to which she pretended, were
extremely different.
Minna, with an unusual intensity of imagination, although superior in
talent to her sister, was more apt to listen to, and delight in, every
tale of wonder, and was at all times more willing to admit impressions
which gave her fancy scope and exercise, without minutely examining
their reality. Brenda, on the other hand, had, in her gaiety, a slight
propensity to satire, and was often tempted to laugh at the very
circumstances upon which Minna founded her imaginative dreams; and, like
all who love the ludicrous, she did not readily suffer herself to be
imposed upon, or overawed, by pompous pretensions of any kind whatever.
But, as her nerves were weaker and more irritable than those of her
sister, she often paid involuntary homage, by her fears, to ideas which
her reason disowned; and hence, Claud Halcro used to say, in reference
to many of the traditionary superstitions around Burgh-Westra, that
Minna believed them without trembling, and that Brenda trembled without
believing them. In our own more enlightened days, there are few whose
undoubting mind and native courage have not felt Minna's high wrought
tone of enthusiasm; and perhaps still fewer, who have not, at one time
or other, felt, like Brenda, their nerves confess the influence of
terrors which their reason disowned and despised.
Under the power of such different feelings, Minna, when the first moment
of surprise was over, prepared to spring from her bed, and go to greet
Norna, who, she doubted not, had come on some errand fraught with fate;
while Brenda, who only beheld in her a woman partially deranged in her
understanding, and who yet, from the extravagance of her claims,
regarded her as an undefined object of awe, or rather terror, detained
her sister by an eager and terrified grasp, while she whispered in her
ear an anxious entreaty that she would call for assistance. But the soul
of Minna was too highly wrought up by the crisis at which her fate
seemed to have arrived, to permit her to follow the dictates of her
sister's fears; and, extricating herself from Brenda's hold, she hastily
threw on a loose nightgown, and, stepping boldly across the apartment,
while her heart throbbed rather with high excitement than with fear, she
thus addressed her singular visitor:
"Norna, if your mission regards us, as your words seem to express, there
is one of us, at least, who will receive its import with reverence, but
without fear."
"Norna, dear Norna," said the tremulous voice of Brenda,--who, feeling
no safety in the bed after Minna quitted it, had followed her, as
fugitives crowd into the rear of an advancing army, because they dare
not remain behind, and who now stood half concealed by her sister, and
holding fast by the skirts of her gown,--"Norna, dear Norna," said she,
"whatever you are to say, let it be to-morrow. I will call Euphane Fea,
the housekeeper, and she will find you a bed for the night."
"No bed for me!" said their nocturnal visitor; "no closing of the eyes
for me! They have watched as shelf and stack appeared and disappeared
betwixt Burgh-Westra and Orkney--they have seen the Man of Hoy sink
into the sea, and the Peak of Hengcliff arise from it, and yet they have
not tasted of slumber; nor must they slumber now till my task is ended.
Sit down, then, Minna, and thou, silly trembler, sit down, while I trim
my lamp--Don your clothes, for the tale is long, and ere 'tis done, ye
will shiver with worse than cold."
"For Heaven's sake, then, put it off till daylight, dear Norna!" said
Brenda; "the dawn cannot be far distant; and if you are to tell us of
any thing frightful, let it be by daylight, and not by the dim glimmer
of that blue lamp!"
"Patience, fool!" said their uninvited guest. "Not by daylight should
Norna tell a tale that might blot the sun out of heaven, and blight the
hopes of the hundred boats that will leave this shore ere noon, to
commence their deep-sea fishing,--ay, and of the hundred families that
will await their return. The demon, whom the sounds will not fail to
awaken, must shake his dark wings over a shipless and a boatless sea, as
he rushes from his mountain to drink the accents of horror he loves so
well to listen to."
"Have pity on Brenda's fears, good Norna," said the elder sister, "and
at least postpone this frightful communication to another place and
hour."
"Maiden, no!" replied Norna, sternly; "it must be told while that lamp
yet burns. Mine is no daylight tale--by that lamp it must be told, which
is framed out of the gibbet-irons of the cruel Lord of Wodensvoe, who
murdered his brother; and has for its nourishment--but be that
nameless--enough that its food never came either from the fish or from
the fruit!--See, it waxes dim and dimmer, nor must my tale last longer
than its flame endureth. Sit ye down there, while I sit here opposite
to you, and place the lamp betwixt us; for within the sphere of its
light the demon dares not venture."
The sisters obeyed, Minna casting a slow awestruck, yet determined look
all around, as if to see the Being, who, according to the doubtful words
of Norna, hovered in their neighbourhood; while Brenda's fears were
mingled with some share both of anger and of impatience. Norna paid no
attention to either, but began her story in the following words:--
"Ye know, my daughters, that your blood is allied to mine, but in what
degree ye know not; for there was early hostility betwixt your grandsire
and him who had the misfortune to call me daughter.--Let me term him by
his Christian name of Erland, for that which marks our relation I dare
not bestow. Your grandsire Olave, was the brother of Erland. But when
the wide Udal possessions of their father Rolfe Troil, the most rich and
well estated of any who descended from the old Norse stock, were divided
betwixt the brothers, the Fowd gave to Erland his father's lands in
Orkney, and reserved for Olave those of Hialtland. Discord arose between
the brethren; for Erland held that he was wronged; and when the
Lawting,[47] with the Raddmen and Lawright-men, confirmed the
division, he went in wrath to Orkney, cursing Hialtland and its
inhabitants--cursing his brother and his blood.
"But the love of the rock and of the mountain still wrought on Erland's
mind, and he fixed his dwelling not on the soft hills of Ophir, or the
green plains of Gramesey, but in the wild and mountainous Isle of Hoy,
whose summit rises to the sky like the cliffs of Foulah and of
Feroe.[48] He knew,--that unhappy Erland,--whatever of legendary lore
Scald and Bard had left behind them; and to teach me that knowledge,
which was to cost us both so dear, was the chief occupation of his old
age. I learned to visit each lonely barrow--each lofty cairn--to tell
its appropriate tale, and to soothe with rhymes in his praise the spirit
of the stern warrior who dwelt within. I knew where the sacrifices were
made of yore to Thor and to Odin, on what stones the blood of the
victims flowed--where stood the dark-browed priest--where the crested
chiefs, who consulted the will of the idol--where the more distant crowd
of inferior worshippers, who looked on in awe or in terror. The places
most shunned by the timid peasants had no terrors for me; I dared walk
in the fairy circle, and sleep by the magic spring.
"But, for my misfortune, I was chiefly fond to linger about the Dwarfie
Stone, as it is called, a relic of antiquity, which strangers look on
with curiosity, and the natives with awe. It is a huge fragment of rock,
which lies in a broken and rude valley, full of stones and precipices,
in the recesses of the Ward-hill of Hoy. The inside of the rock has two
couches, hewn by no earthly hand, and having a small passage between
them. The doorway is now open to the weather; but beside it lies a
large stone, which, adapted to grooves still visible in the entrance,
once had served to open and to close this extraordinary dwelling, which
Trolld, a dwarf famous in the northern Sagas, is said to have framed for
his own favourite residence. The lonely shepherd avoids the place; for
at sunrise, high noon, or sunset, the misshapen form of the necromantic
owner may sometimes still be seen sitting by the Dwarfie Stone.[49] I
feared not the apparition, for, Minna, my heart was as bold, and my hand
was as innocent, as yours. In my childish courage, I was even but too
presumptuous, and the thirst after things unattainable led me, like our
primitive mother, to desire increase of knowledge, even by prohibited
means. I longed to possess the power of the Voluspæ and divining women
of our ancient race; to wield, like them, command over the elements; and
to summon the ghosts of deceased heroes from their caverns, that they
might recite their daring deeds, and impart to me their hidden
treasures. Often when watching by the Dwarfie Stone, with mine eyes
fixed on the Ward-hill, which rises above that gloomy valley, I have
distinguished, among the dark rocks, that wonderful carbuncle,[50](_p_)
which gleams ruddy as a furnace to them who view it from beneath, but
has ever become invisible to him whose daring foot has scaled the
precipices from which it darts its splendour. My vain and youthful bosom
burned to investigate these and an hundred other mysteries, which the
Sagas that I perused, or learned from Erland, rather indicated than
explained; and in my daring mood, I called on the Lord of the Dwarfie
Stone to aid me in attaining knowledge inaccessible to mere mortals."
"And the evil spirit heard your summons?" said Minna, her blood curdling
as she listened.
"Hush," said Norna, lowering her voice, "vex him not with reproach--he
is with us--he hears us even now."
Brenda started from her seat.--"I will to Euphane Fea's chamber," she
said, "and leave you, Minna and Norna, to finish your stories of
hobgoblins and of dwarfs at your own leisure; I care not for them at any
time, but I will not endure them at midnight, and by this pale
lamplight."
She was accordingly in the act of leaving the room, when her sister
detained her.
"Is this the courage," she said, "of her, that disbelieves whatever the
history of our fathers tells us of supernatural prodigy? What Norna has
to tell concerns the fate, perhaps, of our father and his house;--if I
can listen to it, trusting that God and my innocence will protect me
from all that is malignant, you, Brenda, who believe not in such
influence, have surely no cause to tremble. Credit me, that for the
guiltless there is no fear."
"There may be no danger," said Brenda, unable to suppress her natural
turn for humour, "but, as the old jest book says, there is much fear.
However, Minna, I will stay with you;--the rather," she added, in a
whisper, "that I am loath to leave you alone with this frightful woman,
and that I have a dark staircase and long passage betwixt and Euphane
Fea, else I would have her here ere I were five minutes older."