"To see a Lord Abbot, in rochet and stole, With Prior and Friar,—a strange mar-velle!— O'er a jolly full bowl, sitting cheek by jowl, And hob-nobbing away with a Devil from Hell!"

He felt in his gown of ginger brown, And he pulled out a flask from beneath; It was rather tough work to get out the cork, But he drew it at last with his teeth.

O'er a pint and a quarter of holy water, He made a sacred sign; And he dashed the whole on the soi-disant daughter Of old Plantagenet's line!

Oh! then did she reek, and squeak, and shriek, With a wild unearthly scream; And fizzled, and hissed, and produced such a mist, They were all half-choked by the steam.

Her dove-like eyes turned to coals of fire, Her beautiful nose to a horrible snout, Her hands to paws, with nasty great claws, And her bosom went in and her tail came out.

On her chin there appeared a long Nanny-goat's beard, And her tusks and her teeth no man mote tell; And her horns and her hoofs gave infallible proofs 'Twas a frightful Fiend from the nethermost hell!

The Palmer threw down his ginger gown, His hat and his cockle; and, plain to sight, Stood St. Nicholas' self, and his shaven crown Had a glow-worm halo of heavenly light.

The fiend made a grasp the Abbot to clasp; But St. Nicholas lifted his holy toe, And, just in the nick, let fly such a kick On his elderly namesake, he made him let go.

And out of the window he flew like a shot, For the foot flew up with a terrible thwack, And caught the foul demon about the spot Where his tail joins on to the small of his back.

And he bounded away like a foot-ball at play, Till into the bottomless pit he fell slap, Knocking Mammon the meagre o'er pursy Belphegor, And Lucifer into Beelzebub's lap.

Oh! happy the slip from his Succubine grip, That saved the Lord Abbot,—though breathless with fright, In escaping he tumbled, and fractured his hip, And his left leg was shorter thenceforth than his right!

* * * * *

On the banks of the Rhine, as he's stopping to dine, From a certain inn-window the traveler is shown Most picturesque ruins, the scene of these doings, Some miles up the river south-east of Cologne.

And while "sauer-kraut" she sells you, the landlady tells you That there, in those walls all roofless and bare, One Simon, a Deacon, from a lean grew a sleek one On filling a ci-devant Abbot's state chair.

How a ci-devant Abbot, all clothed in drab, but Of texture the coarsest, hair shirt and no shoes (His mitre and ring, and all that sort of thing Laid aside), in yon cave lived a pious recluse;

How he rose with the sun, limping "dot and go one," To yon rill of the mountain, in all sorts of weather, Where a Prior and a Friar, who lived somewhat higher Up the rock, used to come and eat cresses together;

How a thirsty old codger the neighbors called Roger, With them drank cold water in lieu of old wine! What its quality wanted he made up in quantity, Swigging as though he would empty the Rhine!

And how, as their bodily strength failed, the mental man Gained tenfold vigor and force in all four; And how, to the day of their death, the "Old Gentleman" Never attempted to kidnap them more.

And how, when at length, in the odor of sanctity, All of them died without grief or complaint, The monks of St. Nicholas said 'twas ridiculous Not to suppose every one was a Saint.

And how, in the Abbey, no one was so shabby As not to say yearly four masses ahead, On the eve of that supper, and kick on the crupper Which Satan received, for the souls of the dead!

How folks long held in reverence their reliques and memories, How the ci-devant Abbot's obtained greater still, When some cripples, on touching his fractured os femoris, Threw down their crutches and danced a quadrille!

And how Abbot Simon (who turned out a prime one) These words, which grew into a proverb full soon, O'er the late Abbot's grotto, stuck up as a motto, "Who Suppes with the Deville sholde have a long spoone!"

[Footnote 1: The Prince of Peripatetic Informers, and terror of Stage Coachmen, when such things were.]



SABINE BARING-GOULD

(1834-)

The Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould was born in Exeter, England, in 1834. The addition of Gould to the name of Baring came in the time of his great-grandfather, a brother of Sir Francis Baring, who married an only daughter and heiress of W.D. Gould of Devonshire. Much of the early life of Baring-Gould was passed in Germany and France, and at Clare College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1854, taking orders ten years later, and in 1881 becoming rector of Lew Trenchard, Devonshire, where he holds estates and privileges belonging to his family.

He has worked in many fields, and in all with so much acceptance that a list of his books would be the best exposition of the range of his untiring pen. To a gift of ready words and ready illustration, whether he concerns himself with diversities of early Christian belief, the course of country-dances in England, or the growth of mediaeval legends, he adds the grace of telling a tale and drawing a character. He has published nearly a hundred volumes, not one of them unreadable. But no one man may write with equal pen of German history, of comparative mythology and philology, of theological dissertations, and of the pleasures of English rural life, while he adds to these a long list of novels.

His secret of popularity lies not in his treatment, which is neither critical nor scientific, but rather in a clever, easy, diffuse, jovial, amusing way of saying clearly what at the moment comes to him to say. His books have a certain raciness and spirit that recall the English squire of tradition. They rarely smell of the lamp. Now and then appears a strain of sturdy scholarship, leading the reader to wonder what his author might have accomplished had he not enjoyed the comfortable ease of a country justice of the peace, and a rector with large landed estates, to whom his poorer neighbors appear a sort of dancing puppets.

Between 1857 and 1870, Baring-Gould had published nine volumes, the best known of these being 'Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.' From 1870 to 1890 his name appeared as author on the title-page of forty-three books: sermons, lectures, essays, archaeological treatises, memoirs, curiosities of literature, histories, and fiction; sixteen novels, tales, and romances being included. From 1890 to 1896 he published seventeen more novels, and many of his books have passed through several editions. His most successful novels are 'Mehalah; a Tale of the Salt Marshes,' 'In the Roar of the Sea,' 'Red Spider,' 'Richard Cable,' and 'Noemi; a Story of Rock-Dwellers.'

In an essay upon his fiction, Mr. J.M. Barrie writes in The Contemporary Review (February, 1890):—

"Of our eight or ten living novelists who are popular by merit, few have greater ability than Mr. Baring-Gould. His characters are bold and forcible figures, his wit is as ready as his figures of speech are apt. He has a powerful imagination, and is quaintly fanciful. When he describes a storm, we can see his trees breaking in the gale. So enormous and accurate is his general information that there is no trade or profession with which he does not seem familiar. So far as scientific knowledge is concerned, he is obviously better equipped than any contemporary writer of fiction. Yet one rises from his books with a feeling of repulsion, or at least with the glad conviction that his ignoble views of life are as untrue as the characters who illustrate them. Here is a melancholy case of a novelist, not only clever but sincere, undone by want of sympathy.... The author's want of sympathy prevents 'Mehalah's' rising to the highest art; for though we shudder at the end, there the effect of the story stops. It illustrates the futility of battling with fate, but the theme is not allowable to writers with the modern notion of a Supreme Power.... But 'Mehalah' is still one of the most powerful romances of recent years."

ST. PATRICK'S PURGATORY

From 'Curious Myths of the Middle Ages'

In that charming mediaeval romance 'Fortunatus and his Sons,' which by the way is a treasury of popular mythology, is an account of a visit paid by the favored youth to that cave of mystery in Lough Derg, the Purgatory of St. Patrick.

Fortunatus, we are told, had heard in his travels of how two days' journey from the town Valdric, in Ireland, was a town, Vernic, where was the entrance to the Purgatory; so thither he went with many servants. He found a great abbey, and behind the altar of the church a door, which led into the dark cave which is called the Purgatory of St. Patrick. In order to enter it, leave had to be obtained from the abbot; consequently Leopold, servant to Fortunatus, betook himself to that worthy and made known to him that a nobleman from Cyprus desired to enter the mysterious cavern. The abbot at once requested Leopold to bring his master to supper with him. Fortunatus bought a large jar of wine and sent it as a present to the monastery, and followed at the meal-time.

"Venerable sir!" said Fortunatus, "I understand the Purgatory of St. Patrick is here: is it so?"

The abbot replied, "It is so indeed. Many hundred years ago, this place, where stand the abbey and the town, was a howling wilderness. Not far off, however, lived a venerable hermit, Patrick by name, who often sought the desert for the purpose of therein exercising his austerities. One day he lighted on this cave, which is of vast extent. He entered it, and wandering on in the dark, lost his way, so that he could no more find how to return to the light of day. After long ramblings through the gloomy passages, he fell on his knees and besought Almighty God, if it were His will, to deliver him from the great peril wherein he lay. Whilst Patrick thus prayed, he was ware of piteous cries issuing from the depths of the cave, just such as would be the wailings of souls in purgatory. The hermit rose from his orison, and by God's mercy found his way back to the surface, and from that day exercised greater austerities, and after his death he was numbered with the saints. Pious people, who had heard the story of Patrick's adventure in the cave, built this cloister on the site."

Then Fortunatus asked whether all who ventured into the place heard likewise the howls of the tormented souls.

The abbot replied, "Some have affirmed that they have heard a bitter crying and piping therein; whilst others have heard and seen nothing. No one, however, has penetrated as yet to the furthest limits of the cavern."

Fortunatus then asked permission to enter, and the abbot cheerfully consented, only stipulating that his guest should keep near the entrance and not ramble too far, as some who had ventured in had never returned.

Next day early, Fortunatus received the Blessed Sacrament with his trusty Leopold; the door of the Purgatory was unlocked, each was provided with a taper, and then with the blessing of the abbot they were left in total darkness, and the door bolted behind them. Both wandered on in the cave, hearing faintly the chanting of the monks in the church, till the sound died away. They traversed several passages, lost their way, their candles burned out, and they sat down in despair on the ground, a prey to hunger, thirst, and fear.

The monks waited in the church hour after hour; and the visitors of the Purgatory had not returned. Day declined, vespers were sung, and still there was no sign of the two who in the morning had passed from the church into the cave. Then the servants of Fortunatus began to exhibit anger, and to insist on their master being restored to them. The abbot was frightened, and sent for an old man who had once penetrated far into the cave with a ball of twine, the end attached to the door-handle. This man volunteered to seek Fortunatus, and providentially his search was successful. After this the abbot refused permission to any one to visit the cave.

In the reign of Henry II. lived Henry of Saltrey, who wrote a history of the visit of a Knight Owen to the Purgatory of St. Patrick, which gained immense popularity, ... was soon translated into other languages, and spread the fable through mediaeval Europe.... In English there are two versions. In one of these, 'Owayne Miles,' the origin of the purgatory is thus described:—

"Holy byschoppes some tyme ther were, That tawgte me of Goddes lore. In Irlonde preched Seyn Patryke; In that londe was non hym lyke: He prechede Goddes worde full wyde, And tolde men what shullde betyde. Fyrste he preched of Heven blysse, Who ever go thyder may ryght nowgt mysse: Sethen he preched of Hell pyne, Howe we them ys that cometh therinne: And then he preched of purgatory, As he fonde in hisstory; But yet the folke of the contre Beleved not that hit mygth be; And seyed, but gyf hit were so, That eny non myth hymself go, And se alle that, and come ageyn, Then wolde they beleve fayn."

Vexed at the obstinacy of his hearers, St. Patrick besought the Almighty to make the truth manifest to the unbelievers; whereupon

"God spakke to Saynt Patryke tho By nam, and badde hym with Hym go: He ladde hym ynte a wyldernesse, Wher was no reste more no lesse, And shewed that he might se Inte the erthe a pryve entre: Hit was yn a depe dyches ende. 'What mon,' He sayde, 'that wylle hereyn wende, And dwelle theryn a day and a nyght, And hold his byleve and ryght, And come ageyn that he ne dwelle, Mony a mervayle he may of telle. And alle tho that doth thys pylgrymage, I shalle hem graunt for her wage, Whether he be sqwyer or knave, Other purgatorye shalle he non have.'"

Thereupon St. Patrick, "he ne stynte ner day ne night," till he had built there a "fayr abbey," and stocked it with pious canons. Then he made a door to the cave, and locked the door, and gave the key to the keeping of the prior. The Knight Owain, who had served under King Stephen, had lived a life of violence and dissolution; but filled with repentance, he sought by way of penance St. Patrick's Purgatory. Fifteen days he spent in preliminary devotions and alms-deeds, and then he heard mass, was washed with holy water, received the Holy Sacrament, and followed the sacred relics in procession, whilst the priests sang for him the Litany, "as lowde as they mygth crye." Then Sir Owain was locked in the cave, and he groped his way onward in darkness, till he reached a glimmering light; this brightened, and he came out into an underground land, where was a great hall and cloister, in which were men with shaven heads and white garments. These men informed the knight how he was to protect himself against the assaults of evil spirits. After having received this instruction, he heard "grete dynn," and

"Then come ther develes on every syde, Wykked gostes, I wote, fro Helle, So mony that no tonge mygte telle: They fylled the hows yn two rowes; Some grenned on hym and some mad mowes."

He then visits the different places of torment. In one, the souls are nailed to the ground with glowing hot brazen nails; in another they are fastened to the soil by their hair, and are bitten by fiery reptiles. In another, again, they are hung over fires by those members which had sinned, whilst others are roasted on spits. In one place were pits in which were molten metals. In these pits were men and women, some up to their chins, others to their breasts, others to their hams. The knight was pushed by the devils into one of these pits and was dreadfully scalded, but he cried to the Savior and escaped. Then he visited a lake where souls were tormented with great cold; and a river of pitch, which he crossed on a frail and narrow bridge. Beyond this bridge was a wall of glass, in which opened a beautiful gate, which conducted into Paradise. This place so delighted him that he would fain have remained in it had he been suffered, but he was bidden return to earth and finish there his penitence. He was put into a shorter and pleasanter way back to the cave than that by which he had come; and the prior found the knight next morning at the door, waiting to be let out, and full of his adventures. He afterwards went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and ended his life in piety....

Froissart tells us of a conversation he had with one Sir William Lisle, who had been in the Purgatory. "I asked him of what sort was the cave that is in Ireland, called St. Patrick's Purgatory, and if that were true which was related of it. He replied that there certainly was such a cave, for he and another English knight had been there whilst the king was at Dublin, and said that they entered the cave, and were shut in as the sun set, and that they remained there all night and left it next morning at sunrise. And then I asked if he had seen the strange sights and visions spoken of. Then he said that when he and his companion had passed the gate of the Purgatory of St. Patrick, that they had descended as though into a cellar, and that a hot vapor rose towards them and so affected their heads that they were obliged to sit down on the stone steps. And after sitting there awhile they felt heavy with sleep, and so fell asleep, and slept all night. Then I asked if they knew where they were in their sleep, and what sort of dreams they had had; he answered that they had been oppressed with many fancies and wonderful dreams, different from those they were accustomed to in their chambers; and in the morning when they went out, in a short while they had clean forgotten their dreams and visions; wherefore he concluded that the whole matter was fancy."

The next to give us an account of his descent into St. Patrick's Purgatory is William Staunton of Durham, who went down into the cave on the Friday next after the feast of Holyrood, in the year 1409.

"I was put in by the Prior of St. Matthew, of the same Purgatory, with procession and devout prayers of the prior, and the convent gave me an orison to bless me with, and to write the first word in my forehead, the which prayer is this, 'Jhesu Christe, Fili Dei vivi, miserere mihi peccatori.' And the prior taught me to say this prayer when any spirit, good or evil, appeared unto me, or when I heard any noise that I should be afraid of." When left in the cave, William fell asleep, and dreamed that he saw coming to him St. John of Bridlington and St. Ive, who undertook to conduct him through the scenes of mystery. After they had proceeded a while, William was found to be guilty of a trespass against Holy Church, of which he had to be purged before he could proceed much further. Of this trespass he was accused by his sister, who appeared in the way. "I make my complaint unto you against my brother that here standeth; for this man that standeth hereby loved me, and I loved him, and either of us would have had the other according to God's law, as Holy Church teaches, and I should have gotten of me three-souls to God, but my brother hindered us from marrying." St. John of Bridlington then turned to William, and asked him why he did not allow the two who loved one another to be married. "I tell thee there is no man that hindereth man or woman from being united in the bond of God, though the man be a shepherd and all his ancestors and the woman be come of kings or of emperors, or if the man be come of never so high kin and the woman of never so low kin, if they love one another, but he sinneth in Holy Church against God and his deed, and therefore he shall have much pain and tribulations." Being assoiled of this crying sin, St. John takes William to a fire "grete and styngkyng," in which he sees people burning in their gay clothes. "I saw some with collars of gold about their necks, and some of silver, and some men I saw with gay girdles of silver and gold, and harnessed with horns about their necks, some with mo jagges on their clothes than whole cloth, others full of jingles and bells of silver all over set, and some with long pokes on their sleeves, and women with gowns trailing behind them a long space, and some with chaplets on their heads of gold and pearls and other precious stones. And I looked on him that I saw first in pain, and saw the collars and gay girdles and baldrics burning, and the fiends dragging him by two fingermits. And I saw the jagges that men were clothed in turn all to adders, to dragons, and to toads, and 'many other orrible bestes,' sucking them, and biting them, and stinging them with all their might, and through every jingle I saw fiends smite burning nails of fire into their flesh. I also saw fiends drawing down the skin of their shoulders like to pokes, and cutting them off, and drawing them to the heads of those they cut them from, all burning as fire. And then I saw the women that had side trails behind them, and the side trails cut off by the fiends and burned on their head; and some took of the cutting all burning and stopped therewith their mouths, their noses, and their ears. I saw also their gay chaplets of gold and pearls and precious stones turned into nails of iron, burning, and fiends with burning hammers smiting them into their heads." These were proud and vain people. Then he saw another fire, where the fiends were putting out people's eyes and pouring molten brass and lead into the sockets, and tearing off their arms and the nails of their feet and hands, and soldering them on again. This was the doom of swearers. William saw other fires wherein the devils were executing tortures varied and horrible on their unfortunate victims. We need follow him no further.

At the end of the fifteenth century the Purgatory in Lough Derg was destroyed by orders of the Pope, on hearing the report of a monk of Eymstadt in Holland, who had visited it, and had satisfied himself that there was nothing in it more remarkable than in any ordinary cavern. The Purgatory was closed on St. Patrick's Day, 1497; but the belief in it was not so speedily banished from popular superstition. Calderon made it the subject of one of his dramas; and it became the subject of numerous popular chap-books in France and Spain, where during last century it occupied in the religious belief of the people precisely the same position which is assumed by the marvelous visions of heaven and hell sold by hawkers in England at the present day.

THE CORNISH WRECKERS

From 'The Vicar of Morwenstow'

When the Rev. R.S. Hawker came to Morwenstow in 1834, he found that he had much to contend with, not only in the external condition of church and vicarage, but also in that which is of greater importance....

"The farmers of the parish were simple-hearted and respectable; but the denizens of the hamlet, after receiving the wages of the harvest time, eked out a precarious existence in the winter, and watched eagerly and expectantly for the shipwrecks that were certain to happen, and upon the plunder of which they surely calculated for the scant provision of their families. The wrecked goods supplied them with the necessaries of life, and the rended planks of the dismembered vessel contributed to the warmth of the hovel hearthstone.

"When Mr. Hawker came to Morwenstow, 'the cruel and covetous natives of the strand, the wreckers of the seas and rocks for flotsam and jetsam,' held as an axiom and an injunction to be strictly obeyed:—

"'Save a stranger from the sea, And he'll turn your enemy!'

"The Morwenstow wreckers allowed a fainting brother to perish in the sea before their eyes without extending a hand of safety,—nay, more, for the egotistical canons of a shipwreck, superstitiously obeyed, permitted and absolved the crime of murder by 'shoving the drowning man into the sea,' to be swallowed by the waves. Cain! Cain! where is thy brother? And the wrecker of Morwenstow answered and pleaded in excuse, as in the case of undiluted brandy after meals, 'It is Cornish custom.' The illicit spirit of Cornish custom was supplied by the smuggler, and the gold of the wreck paid him for the cursed abomination of drink."

One of Mr. Hawker's parishioners, Peter Barrow, had been for full forty years a wrecker, but of a much more harmless description: he had been a watcher of the coast for such objects as the waves might turn up to reward his patience. Another was Tristam Pentire, a hero of contraband adventure, and agent for sale of smuggled cargoes in bygone times. With a merry twinkle of the eye, and in a sharp and ringing tone, he loved to tell such tales of wild adventure and of "derring do," as would make the foot of the exciseman falter and his cheek turn pale.

During the latter years of last century there lived in Wellcombe, one of Mr. Hawker's parishes, a man whose name is still remembered with terror—Cruel Coppinger. There are people still alive who remember his wife.

Local recollections of the man have molded themselves into the rhyme—

Will you hear of Cruel Coppinger? He came from a foreign land: He was brought to us by the salt water, He was carried away by the wind!"

His arrival on the north coast of Cornwall was signalized by a terrific hurricane. The storm came up Channel from the south-west. A strange vessel of foreign rig went on the reefs of Harty Race, and was broken to pieces by the waves. The only man who came ashore was the skipper. A crowd was gathered on the sand, on horseback and on foot, women as well as men, drawn together by the tidings of a probable wreck. Into their midst rushed the dripping stranger, and bounded suddenly upon the crupper of a young damsel who had ridden to the beach to see the sight. He grasped her bridle, and shouting in some foreign tongue, urged the double-laden animal into full speed, and the horse naturally took his homeward way. The damsel was Miss Dinah Hamlyn. The stranger descended at her father's door, and lifted her off her saddle. He then announced himself as a Dane, named Coppinger. He took his place at the family board, and there remained until he had secured the affections and hand of Dinah. The father died, and Coppinger at once succeeded to the management and control of the house, which thenceforth became a den and refuge of every lawless character along the coast. All kinds of wild uproar and reckless revelry appalled the neighborhood day and night. It was discovered that an organized band of smugglers, wreckers, and poachers made this house their rendezvous, and that "Cruel Coppinger" was their captain. In those days, and in that far-away region, the peaceable inhabitants were unprotected. There was not a single resident gentleman of property and weight in the entire district. No revenue officer durst exercise vigilance west of the Tamar; and to put an end to all such surveillance at once, the head of a gauger was chopped off by one of Coppinger's gang on the gunwale of a boat.

Strange vessels began to appear at regular intervals on the coast, and signals were flashed from the headlands to lead them into the safest creek or cove. Amongst these vessels, one, a full-rigged schooner, soon became ominously conspicuous. She was for long the chief terror of the Cornish Channel. Her name was The Black Prince. Once, with Coppinger on board, she led a revenue-cutter into an intricate channel near the Bull Rock, where, from knowledge of the bearings, The Black Prince escaped scathless, while the king's vessel perished with all on board. In those times, if any landsman became obnoxious to Coppinger's men, he was seized and carried on board The Black Prince, and obliged to save his life by enrolling himself in the crew. In 1835, an old man of the age of ninety-seven related to Mr. Hawker that he had been so abducted, and after two years' service had been ransomed by his friends with a large sum. "And all," said the old man very simply, "because I happened to see one man kill another, and they thought I would mention it."

Amid such practices, ill-gotten gold began to flow and ebb in the hands of Coppinger. At one time he had enough money to purchase a freehold farm bordering on the sea. When the day of transfer came, he and one of his followers appeared before the lawyer and paid the money in dollars, ducats, doubloons, and pistoles. The man of law demurred, but Coppinger with an oath bade him take this or none. The document bearing Coppinger's name is still extant. His signature is traced in stern bold characters, and under his autograph is the word "Thuro" (thorough) also in his own handwriting.

Long impunity increased Coppinger's daring. There were certain bridle roads along the fields over which he exercised exclusive control. He issued orders that no man was to pass over them by night, and accordingly from that hour none ever did. They were called "Coppinger's Tracks." They all converged at a headland which had the name of Steeple Brink. Here the cliff sheered off, and stood three hundred feet of perpendicular height, a precipice of smooth rock towards the beach, with an overhanging face one hundred feet down from the brow. Under this was a cave, only reached by a cable ladder lowered from above, and made fast below on a projecting crag. It received the name of "Coppinger's Cave." Here sheep were tethered to the rock, and fed on stolen hay and corn till slaughtered; kegs of brandy and hollands were piled around; chests of tea; and iron-bound sea-chests contained the chattels and revenues of the Coppinger royalty of the sea....

But the end arrived. Money became scarce, and more than one armed king's cutter was seen day and night hovering off the land. So he "who came with the water went with the wind." His disappearance, like his arrival, was commemorated by a storm.

A wrecker who had gone to watch the shore, saw, as the sun went down, a full-rigged vessel standing off and on. Coppinger came to the beach, put off in a boat to the vessel, and jumped on board. She spread canvas, stood off shore, and with Coppinger in her was seen no more. That night was one of storm. Whether the vessel rode it out, or was lost, none knew.

* * * * *

In 1864 a large ship was seen in distress off the coast. The Rev. A. Thynne, rector of Kilkhampton, at once drove to Morwenstow. The vessel was riding at anchor a mile off shore, west of Hartland Race. He found Mr. Hawker in the greatest excitement, pacing his room and shouting for some things he wanted to put in his greatcoat-pockets, and intensely impatient because his carriage was not round. With him was the Rev. W. Valentine, rector of Whixley in Yorkshire, then resident at Chapel in the parish of Morwenstow.

"What are you going to do?" asked the rector of Kilkhampton: "I shall drive at once to Bude for the lifeboat."

"No good!" thundered the vicar, "no good comes out of the west. You must go east. I shall go to Clovelly, and then, if that fails, to Appledore. I shall not stop till I have got a lifeboat to take those poor fellows off the wreck."

"Then," said the rector of Kilkhampton, "I shall go to Bude, and see to the lifeboat there being brought out."

"Do as you like; but mark my words, no good comes of turning to the west. Why," said he, "in the primitive church they turned to the west to renounce the Devil."

His carriage came to the door, and he drove off with Mr. Valentine as fast as his horses could spin him along the hilly, wretched roads.

Before he reached Clovelly, a boat had put off with the mate from the ship, which was the Margaret Quail, laden with salt. The captain would not leave the vessel; for, till deserted by him, no salvage could be claimed. The mate was picked up on the way, and the three reached Clovelly.

Down the street proceeded the following procession—the street of Clovelly being a flight of stairs:—

First, the vicar of Morwenstow in a claret-colored coat, with long tails flying in the gale, blue knitted jersey, and pilot-boots, his long silver locks fluttering about his head. He was appealing to the fishermen and sailors of Clovelly to put out in their lifeboat to rescue the crew of the Margaret Quail. The men stood sulky, lounging about with folded arms, or hands in their pockets, and sou'-westers slouched over their brows. The women were screaming at the tops of their voices that they would not have their husbands and sons and sweethearts enticed away to risk their lives to save wrecked men. Above the clamor of their shrill tongues and the sough of the wind rose the roar of the vicar's voice: he was convulsed with indignation, and poured forth the most sacred appeals to their compassion for drowning sailors.

Second in the procession moved the Rev. W. Valentine, with purse full of gold in his hand, offering any amount of money to the Clovelly men, if they would only go forth in the lifeboat to the wreck.

Third came the mate of the Margaret Quail, restrained by no consideration of cloth, swearing and damning right and left, in a towering rage at the cowardice of the Clovelly men.

Fourth came John, the servant of Mr. Hawker, with bottles of whisky under his arm, another inducement to the men to relent and be merciful to their imperiled brethren.

The first appeal was to their love of heaven and to their humanity; the second was to their pockets, their love of gold; the third to their terrors, their fear of Satan, to whom they were consigned; and the fourth to their stomachs, their love of grog.

But all appeals were in vain. Then Mr. Hawker returned to his carriage, and drove away farther east to Appledore, where he secured the lifeboat. It was mounted on a wagon; ten horses were harnessed to it; and as fast as possible it was conveyed to the scene of distress.

But in the mean while the captain of the Margaret Quail, despairing of help and thinking that his vessel would break up under him, came off in his boat with the rest of the crew, trusting rather to a rotten boat, patched with canvas which they had tarred over, than to the tender mercies of the covetous Clovellites, in whose veins ran the too recent blood of wreckers. The only living being left on board was a poor dog.

No sooner was the captain seen to leave the ship than the Clovelly men lost their repugnance to go to sea. They manned boats at once, gained the Margaret Quail, and claimed three thousand pounds for salvage.

There was an action in court, as the owners refused to pay such a sum; and it was lost by the Clovelly men, who however got an award of twelve hundred pounds. The case turned somewhat on the presence of the dog on the wreck; and it was argued that the vessel was not deserted, because a dog had been left on board to keep guard for its masters. The owner of the cargo failed; and the amount actually paid to the salvors was six hundred pounds to two steam-tugs (three hundred pounds each), and three hundred pounds to the Clovelly skiff and sixteen men.

Mr. Hawker went round the country indignantly denouncing the sailors of Clovelly, and with justice. It roused all the righteous wrath in his breast. And as may well be believed, no love was borne him by the inhabitants of that little fishing village. They would probably have made a wreck of him had he ventured among them.



Jane Barlow

(18-)

The general reader has yet to learn the most private and sacred events of Miss Jane Barlow's life, now known only to herself and friends. She is the daughter of Dr. Barlow of Trinity College, and lives in the seclusion of a collage at Raheny, a hamlet near Dublin. Her family has been in Ireland for generations, and she comes of German and Norman stock. As some one has said, the knowledge and skill displayed in depicting Irish peasant life, which her books show, are hers not through Celtic blood and affinities, but by a sympathetic genius and inspiration.



The publication of her writings in book form was preceded by the appearance of some poems and stories in the magazines, the Dublin University Review of 1885 containing 'Walled Out; or, Eschatology in a Bog.' 'Irish Idyls' (1892), and 'Bogland Studies' (of the same year), show the same pitiful, sombre pictures of Irish peasant life about the sodden-roofed mud hut and "pitaties" boiling, which only a genial, impulsive, generous, light-hearted, half-Greek and half-philosophic people could make endurable to the reader or attractive to the writer. The innate sweetness of the Irish character, which the author brings out with fine touches, makes it worth portrayal. "It is safe to say," writes a critic, "that the philanthropist or the political student interested in the eternal Irish problem will learn more from Miss Barlow's twin volumes than from a dozen Royal Commissions and a hundred Blue Books." Her sympathy constantly crops out, as, for instance, in the mirthful tale of 'Jerry Dunne's Basket,' where—

"Andy Joyce had an ill-advised predilection for seeing things which he called 'dacint and proper' about him, and he built some highly superior sheds on the lawn, to the bettering, no doubt, of his cattle's condition. The abrupt raising of his rent by fifty per cent, was a broad hint which most men would have taken; and it did keep Andy ruefully quiet for a season or two. Then, however, having again saved up a trifle, he could not resist the temptation to drain the swampy corner of the farthest river-field, which was as kind a bit of land as you could wish, only for the water lying on it, and in which he afterward raised himself a remarkably fine crop of white oats. The sight of them 'done his heart good,' he said, exultantly, nothing recking that it was the last touch of farmer's pride he would ever feel. Yet on the next quarter-day the Joyces received notice to quit, and their landlord determined to keep the vacated holding in his own hands; those new sheds were just the thing for his young stock. Andy, in fact, had done his best to improve himself off the face of the earth."

The long story which Miss Barlow has published, 'Kerrigan's Quality' (1894), is told with her distinguishing charm, but the book has not the close-knit force of the 'Idyls.' Miss Barlow herself prefers the 'Bogland Studies,' because, she says, they are "a sort of poetry." "I had set my heart too long upon being a poet ever to give up the idea quite contentedly; 'the old hope is hardest to be lost.' A real poet I can never be, as I have, I fear, nothing of the lyrical faculty; and a poet without that is worse than a bird without wings, so, like Mrs. Browning's Nazianzen, I am doomed to look 'at the lyre hung out of reach.'"

Besides the three books named, Miss Barlow has published 'Mockus of the Shallow Waters' (1893); 'The End of Elfintown' (1894); 'The Battle of the Frogs and Mice in English' (1894); 'Maureen's Fairing and other Stories' (1895); and 'Strangers at Lisconnel,' a second series of 'Irish Idyls' (1895). In the last book we again have the sorrows and joys of the small hamlet in the west of Ireland, where "the broad level spreads away and away to the horizon before and behind and on either side of you, very sombre-hued, yet less black-a-vised than more frequent bergs," where in the distance the mountains "loom up on its borders much less substantial, apparently, in fabric than so many spirals of blue turf smoke," and where the curlew's cry "can set a whole landscape to melancholy in one chromatic phrase."

THE WIDOW JOYCE'S CLOAK

From 'Strangers at Lisconnel'

Still, although the Tinkers' name has become a byword among us through a long series of petty offenses rather than any one flagrant crime, there is a notable misdeed on record against them, which has never been forgotten in the lapse of many years. It was perpetrated soon after the death of Mrs. Kilfoyle's mother, the Widow Joyce, an event which is but dimly recollected now at Lisconnel, as nearly half a century has gone by. She did not very long survive her husband, and he had left his roots behind in his little place at Clonmena, where, as we know, he had farmed not wisely but too well, and had been put out of it for his pains to expend his energy upon our oozy black sods and stark-white bowlders. But instead he moped about, fretting for his fair green fields, and few proudly cherished beasts,—especially the little old Kerry cow. And at his funeral the neighbors said, "Ah, bedad, poor man, God help him, he niver held up his head agin from that good day to this."

When Mrs. Joyce felt that it behooved her to settle her affairs, she found that the most important possession she had to dispose of was her large cloak. She had acquired it at the prosperous time of her marriage, and it was a very superior specimen of its kind, in dark-blue cloth being superfine, and its ample capes and capacious hood being double-lined and quilted and stitched in a way which I cannot pretend to describe, but which made it a most substantial and handsome garment. If Mrs. Joyce had been left entirely to her own choice in the matter, I think she would have bequeathed it to her younger daughter Theresa, notwithstanding that custom clearly designated Bessy Kilfoyle, the eldest of the family, as the heiress. For she said to herself that poor Bessy had her husband and childer to consowl her, any way, but little Theresa, the crathur, had ne'er such a thing at all, and wouldn't have, not she, God love her. "And the back of me hand to some I could name." It seemed to her that to leave the child the cloak would be almost like keeping a warm wing spread over her in the cold wide world; and there was no fear that Bessy would take it amiss.

But Theresa herself protested strongly against such a disposition, urging for one thing that sure she'd be lost in it entirely if ever she put it on; a not unfounded objection, as Theresa was several sizes smaller than Bessy, and even she fell far short of her mother in stature and portliness. Theresa also said confidently with a sinking heart, "But sure, anyhow, mother jewel, what matter about it? 'Twill be all gone to houles and flitters and thraneens, and so it will, plase goodness, afore there's any talk of anybody else wearin' it except your own ould self." And she expressed much the same conviction one day to her next-door neighbor, old Biddy Ryan, to whom she had run in for the loan of a sup of sour milk, which Mrs. Joyce fancied. To Biddy's sincere regret she could offer Theresa barely a skimpy noggin of milk, and only a meagre shred of encouragement; and by way of eking out the latter with its sorry substitute, consolation, she said as she tilted the jug perpendicularly to extract its last drop:—

"Well, sure, me dear, I do be sayin' me prayers for her every sun goes over our heads that she might be left wid you this great while yet; 'deed, I do so. But ah, acushla, if we could be keepin' people that-a-way, would there be e'er a funeral iver goin' black on the road at all at all? I'm thinkin' there's scarce a one livin', and he as ould and foolish and little-good-for as you plase, but some crathur'ill be grudgin' him to his grave, that's himself may be all the while wishin' he was in it. Or, morebetoken, how can we tell what quare ugly misfortin' thim that's took is took out of the road of, that we should be as good as biddin' thim stay till it comes to ruinate them? So it's prayin' away I am, honey," said old Biddy, whom Theresa could not help hating heart-sickly. "But like enough the Lord might know better than to be mindin' a word I say."

And it seemed that He did; anyway, the day soon came when the heavy blue cloak passed into Mrs. Kilfoyle's possession.

At that time it was clear, still autumn weather, with just a sprinkle of frost white on the wayside grass, like the wraith of belated moonlight, when the sun rose, and shimmering into rainbow stars by noon. But about a month later the winter swooped suddenly on Lisconnel: with wild winds and cold rain that made crystal-silver streaks down the purple of the great mountainheads peering in over our bogland.

So one perishing Saturday Mrs. Kilfoyle made up her mind that she would wear her warm legacy on the bleak walk to Mass next morning, and reaching it down from where it was stored away among the rafters wrapped in an old sack, she shook it respectfully out of its straight-creased folds. As she did so she noticed that the binding of the hood had ripped in one place, and that the lining was fraying out, a mishap which should be promptly remedied before it spread any further. She was not a very expert needlewoman, and she thought she had better run over the way to consult Mrs. O'Driscoll, then a young matron, esteemed the handiest and most helpful person in Lisconnel.

"It's the nathur of her to be settin' things straight wherever she goes," Mrs. Kilfoyle said to herself as she stood in her doorway waiting for the rain to clear off, and looking across the road to the sodden roof which sheltered her neighbor's head. It had long been lying low, vanquished by a trouble which even she could not set to rights, and some of the older people say that things have gone a little crookeder in Lisconnel ever since.

The shower was a vicious one, with the sting of sleet and hail in its drops, pelted about by gusts that ruffled up the puddles into ripples, all set on end, like the feathers of a frightened hen. The hens themselves stood disconsolately sheltering under the bank, mostly on one leg, as if they preferred to keep up the slightest possible connection with such a very damp and disagreeable earth. You could not see far in any direction for the fluttering sheets of mist, and a stranger who had been coming along the road from Duffelane stepped out of them abruptly quite close to Mrs. Kilfoyle's door, before she knew that there was anybody near. He was a tall, elderly man, gaunt and grizzled, very ragged, and so miserable-looking that Mrs. Kilfoyle could have felt nothing but compassion for him had he not carried over his shoulder a bunch of shiny cans, which was to her mind as satisfactory a passport as a ticket of leave. For although these were yet rather early days at Lisconnel, the Tinkers had already begun to establish their reputation. So when he stopped in front of her and said, "Good-day, ma'am," she only replied distantly, "It's a hardy mornin'," and hoped he would move on. But he said, "It's cruel could, ma'am," and continued to stand looking at her with wide and woful eyes, in which she conjectured—erroneously, as it happened—hunger for warmth or food. Under these circumstances, what could be done by a woman who was conscious of owning a redly glowing hearth with a big black pot, fairly well filled, clucking and bobbing upon it? To possess such wealth as this, and think seriously of withholding a share from anybody who urges the incontestable claim of wanting it, is a mood altogether foreign to Lisconnel, where the responsibilities of poverty are no doubt very imperfectly understood. Accordingly Mrs. Kilfoyle said to the tattered tramp, "Ah, thin, step inside and have a couple of hot pitaties." And when he accepted the invitation without much alacrity, as if he had something else on his mind, she picked for him out of the steam two of the biggest potatoes, whose earth-colored skins, cracking, showed a fair flouriness within; and she shook a little heap of salt, the only relish she had, onto the chipped white plate as she handed it to him, saying, "Sit you down be the fire, there, and git a taste of the heat."

Then she lifted her old shawl over her head, and ran out to see where at all Brian and Thady were gettin' their deaths on her under the pours of rain; and as she passed the Keoghs' adjacent door—which was afterward the Sheridans', whence their Larry departed so reluctantly—young Mrs. Keogh called her to come in and look at "the child," who, being a new and unique possession, was liable to develop alarmingly strange symptoms, and had now "woke up wid his head that hot, you might as well put your hand on the hob of the grate." Mrs. Kilfoyle stayed only long enough to suggest, as a possible remedy, a drop of two-milk whey. "But ah, sure, woman dear, where at all 'ud we come by that, wid the crathur of a goat scarce wettin' the bottom of the pan?" and to draw reassuring omens from the avidity with which the invalid grabbed at a sugared crust. In fact, she was less than five minutes out of her house; but when she returned to it, she found it empty. First, she noted with a moderate thrill of surprise that her visitor had gone away leaving his potatoes untouched; and next, with a rough shock of dismay, that her cloak no longer lay on the window seat where she had left it. From that moment she never felt any real doubts about what had befallen her, though for some time she kept on trying to conjure them up, and searched wildly round and round and round her little room, like a distracted bee strayed into the hollow furze-bush, before she sped over to Mrs. O'Driscoll with the news of her loss.

It spread rapidly through Lisconnel, and brought the neighbors together exclaiming and condoling, though not in great force, as there was a fair going on down beyant, which nearly all the men and some of the women had attended. This was accounted cruel unlucky, as it left the place without any one able-bodied and active enough to go in pursuit of the thief. A prompt start might have overtaken him, especially as he was said to be a "thrifle lame-futted"; though Mrs. M'Gurk, who had seen him come down the hill, opined that "'twasn't the sort of lameness 'ud hinder the miscreant of steppin' out, on'y a quare manner of flourish he had in a one of his knees, as if he was gatherin' himself up to make an offer at a grasshopper's lep, and then thinkin' better of it."

Little Thady Kilfoyle reported that he had met the strange man a bit down the road, "leggin' it along at a great rate, wid a black rowl of somethin' under his arm that he looked to be crumplin' up as small as he could,"—the word "crumpling" went acutely to Mrs. Kilfoyle's heart,—and some long-sighted people declared that they could still catch glimpses of a receding figure through the hovering fog on the way toward Sallinbeg.

"I'd think he'd be beyant seein' afore now," said Mrs. Kilfoyle, who stood in the rain, the disconsolate centre of the group about her door; all women and children except old Johnny Keogh, who was so bothered and deaf that he grasped new situations slowly and feebly, and had now an impression of somebody's house being on fire. "He must ha' took off wid himself the instiant me back was turned, for ne'er a crumb had he touched of the pitaties."

"Maybe he'd that much shame in him," said Mrs. O'Driscoll.

"They'd a right to ha' choked him, troth and they had," said Ody Rafferty's aunt.

"Is it chokin'?" said young Mrs. M'Gurk, bitterly. "Sure the bigger thief a body is, the more he'll thrive on whatever he gits; you might think villiny was as good as butter to people's pitaties, you might so. Sharne how are you? Liker he'd ate all he could swally in the last place he got the chance of layin' his hands on anythin'."

"Och, woman alive, but it's the fool you were to let him out of your sight," said Ody Rafferty's aunt. "If it had been me, I'd niver ha' took me eyes off him, for the look of him on'y goin' by made me flesh creep upon me bones."

"'Deed was I," said Mrs. Kilfoyle, sorrowfully, "a fine fool. And vexed she'd be, rael vexed, if she guessed the way it was gone on us, for the dear knows what dirty ould rapscallions 'ill get the wearin' of it now. Rael vexed she'd be."

This speculation was more saddening than the actual loss of the cloak, though that bereft her wardrobe of far and away its most valuable property, which should have descended as an heirloom to her little Katty, who, however, being at present but three months old, lay sleeping happily unaware of the cloud that had come over her prospects.

"I wish to goodness a couple of the lads 'ud step home wid themselves this minit of time," said Mrs. M'Gurk. "They'd come tip wid him yet, and take it off of him ready enough. And smash his ugly head for him, if he would be givin' them any impidence."

"Aye, and 'twould be a real charity—the mane baste;—or sling him in one of the bog-houles," said the elder Mrs. Keogh, a mild-looking little old woman. "I'd liefer than nine nine-pennies see thim comin' along. But I'm afeard it's early for thim yet."

Everybody's eyes turned, as she spoke, toward the ridge of the Knockawn, though with no particular expectation of seeing what they wished upon it. But behold, just at that moment three figures, blurred among the gray rain-mists, looming into view.

"Be the powers," said Mrs. M'Gurk, jubilantly, "it's Ody Rafferty himself. To your sowls! Now you've a great good chance, ma'am, to be gettin' it back. He's the boy 'ill leg it over all before him"—for in those days Ody was lithe and limber—"and it's hard-set the thievin' Turk 'ill be to get the better of him at a racin' match—Hi—Och." She had begun to hail him with a call eager and shrill, which broke off in a strangled croak, like a young cock's unsuccessful effort. "Och, murdher, murdher, murdher," she said to the bystanders, in a disgusted undertone. "I'll give you me misfort'nit word thim other two is the polis."

Now it might seem on the face of things that the arrival of those two active and stalwart civil servants would have been welcomed as happening just in the nick of time; yet it argues an alien ignorance to suppose such a view of the matter by any means possible. The men in invisible green tunics belonged completely to the category of pitaty-blights, rint-warnin's, fevers, and the like devastators of life, that dog a man more or less all through it, but close in on him, a pitiful quarry, when the bad seasons come and the childer and the old crathurs are starvin' wid the hunger, and his own heart is broke; therefore, to accept assistance from them in their official capacity would have been a proceeding most reprehensibly unnatural. To put a private quarrel or injury into the hands of the peelers were a disloyal making of terms with the public foe; a condoning of great permanent wrongs for the sake of a trivial temporary convenience. Lisconnel has never been skilled in the profitable and ignoble art of utilizing its enemies. Not that anybody was more than vaguely conscious of these sentiments, much less attempted to express them in set terms. When a policeman appeared there in an inquiring mood, what people said among themselves was, "Musha cock him up. I hope he'll get his health till I would be tellin' him," or words to that effect; while in reply to his questions, they made statements superficially so clear and simple, and essentially so bewilderingly involved, that the longest experience could do little more for a constable than teach him the futility of wasting his time in attempts to disentangle them.

Thus it was that when Mrs. Kilfoyle saw who Ody's companions were, she bade a regretful adieu to her hopes of recovering her stolen property. For how could she set him on the Tinker's felonious track without apprising them likewise? You might as well try to huroosh one chicken off a rafter and not scare the couple that were huddled beside it. The impossibility became more obvious presently as the constables, striding quickly down to where the group of women stood in the rain and wind with fluttering shawls and flapping cap-borders, said briskly, "Good-day to you all. Did any of yous happen to see e'er a one of them tinkerin' people goin' by here this mornin'?"

It was a moment of strong temptation to everybody, but especially to Mrs. Kilfoyle, who had in her mind that vivid picture of her precious cloak receding from her along the wet road, recklessly wisped up in the grasp of as thankless a thievin' black-hearted slieveen as ever stepped, and not yet, perhaps, utterly out of reach, though every fleeting instant carried it nearer to that hopeless point. However, she and her neighbors stood the test unshaken. Mrs. Ryan rolled her eyes deliberatively, and said to Mrs. M'Gurk, "The saints bless us, was it yisterday or the day before, me dear, you said you seen a couple of them below, near ould O'Beirne's?"

And Mrs. M'Gurk replied, "Ah, sure, not at all, ma'am, glory be to goodness. I couldn't ha' tould you such a thing, for I wasn't next or nigh the place. Would it ha' been Ody Rafferty's aunt? She was below there fetchin' up a bag of male, and bedad she came home that dhreeped, the crathur, you might ha' thought she'd been after fishin' it up out of the botthom of one of thim bog-houles."

And Mrs. Kilfoyle heroically hustled her Thady into the house, as she saw him on the brink of beginning loudly to relate his encounter with a strange man, and desired him to whisht and stay where he was in a manner so sternly repressive that he actually remained there as if he had been a pebble dropped into a pool, and not, as usual, a cork to bob up again immediately.

Then Mrs. M'Gurk made a bold stroke, designed to shake off the hampering presence of the professionals, and enable Ody's amateur services to be utilized while there was yet time.

"I declare," she said, "now that I think of it, I seen a feller crossin' the ridge along there a while ago, like as if he was comin' from Sallinbeg ways; and according to the apparence of him, I wouldn't won'er if he was a one of thim tinker crathures—carryin' a big clump of cans he was, at any rate—I noticed the shine of thim. And he couldn't ha' got any great way yet to spake of, supposin' there was anybody lookin' to folly after him."

But Constable Black crushed her hopes as he replied, "Ah, it's nobody comin' from Sallinbeg that we've anything to say to. There's after bein' a robbery last night, down below at Jerry Dunne's—a shawl as good as new took, that his wife's ragin' over frantic, along wid a sight of fowl and other things. And the Tinkers that was settled this long while in the boreen at the back of his haggard is quit out of it afore daylight this mornin', every rogue of them. So we'd have more than a notion where the property's went to if we could tell the road they've took. We thought like enough some of them might ha' come this way."

Now, Mr. Jerry Dunne was not a popular person in Lisconnel, where he has even become, as we have seen, proverbial for what we call "ould naygurliness." So there was a general tendency to say, "The divil's cure to him," and listen complacently to any details their visitors could impart. For in his private capacity a policeman, provided that he be otherwise "a dacint lad," which to do him justice is commonly the case, may join, with a few unobtrusive restrictions, in our neighborly gossips; the rule in fact being—Free admission except on business.

Only Mrs. Kilfoyle was so much cast down by her misfortune that she could not raise herself to the level of an interest in the affairs of her thrifty suitor, and the babble of voices relating and commenting sounded as meaningless as the patter of the drops which jumped like little fishes in the large puddle at their feet. It had spread considerably before Constable Black said to his comrade:—

"Well, Daly, we'd better be steppin' home wid ourselves as wise as we come, as the man said when he'd axed his road of the ould black horse in the dark lane. There's no good goin' further, for the whole gang of them's scattered over the counthry agin now like a seedin' thistle in a high win'."

"Aye, bedad," said Constable Daly, "and be the same token, this win' ud skin a tanned elephant. It's on'y bogged and drenched we'd git. Look at what's comin' up over there. That rain's snow on the hills, every could drop of it; I seen Ben Bawn this mornin' as white as the top of a musharoon, and it's thickenin' wid sleet here this minute, and so it is."

The landscape did, indeed, frown upon further explorations. In quarters where the rain had abated it seemed as if the mists had curdled on the breath of the bitter air, and they lay floating in long white bars and reefs low on the track of their own shadow, which threw down upon the sombre bogland deeper stains of gloom. Here and there one caught on the crest of some gray-bowldered knoll, and was teazed into fleecy threads that trailed melting instead of tangling. But toward the north the horizon was all blank, with one vast, smooth slant of slate-color, like a pent-house roof, which had a sliding motion onwards.

Ody Rafferty pointed to it and said, "Troth, it's teemin' powerful this instiant up there in the mountains. 'Twill be much if you land home afore it's atop of you; for 'twould be the most I could do myself."

And as the constables departed hastily, most people forgot the stolen cloak for a while to wonder whether their friends would escape being entirely drowned on the way back from the fair.

Mrs. Kilfoyle, however, still stood in deep dejection at her door, and said, "Och, but she was the great fool to go let the likes of him set fut widin' her house."

To console her Mrs. O'Driscoll said, "Ah, sure, sorra a fool were you, woman dear; how would you know the villiny of him? And if you'd turned the man away widout givin' him e'er a bit, it's bad you'd be thinkin' of it all the day after."

And to improve the occasion for her juniors, old Mrs. Keogh added, "Aye, and morebetoken you'd ha' been committin' a sin."

But Mrs. Kilfoyle replied with much candor, "'Deed, then, I'd a dale liefer be after committin' a sin, or a dozen sins, than to have me poor mother's good cloak thieved away on me, and walkin' wild about the world."

As it happened, the fate of Mrs. Kilfoyle's cloak was very different from her forecast. But I do not think that a knowledge of it would have teen consolatory to her by any means. If she had heard of it, she would probably have said, "The cross of Christ upon us. God be good to the misfort'nit crathur." For she was not at all of an implacable temper, and would, under the circumstances, have condoned even the injury that obliged her to appear at Mass with a flannel petticoat over her head until the end of her days. Yet she did hold the Tinkers in a perhaps somewhat too unqualified reprobation. For there are tinkers and tinkers. Some of them, indeed, are stout and sturdy thieves,—veritable birds of prey,—whose rapacity is continually questing for plunder. But some of them have merely the magpies' and jackdaws' thievish propensity for picking up what lies temptingly in their way. And some few are so honest that they pass by as harmlessly as a wedge of high-flying wild duck. And I have heard it said that to places like Lisconnel their pickings and stealings have at worst never been so serious a matter as those of another flock, finer of feather, but not less predacious in their habits, who roosted, for the most part, a long way off, and made their collections by deputy.

Copyrighted 1895, by Dodd, Mead and Company.

WALLED OUT

From 'Bogland Studies'

An' wanst we were restin' a bit in the sun on the smooth hillside, Where the grass felt warm to your hand as the fleece of a sheep, for wide, As ye'd look overhead an' around, 'twas all a-blaze and a-glow, An' the blue was blinkin' up from the blackest bog-holes below;

An' the scent o' the bogmint was sthrong on the air, an' never a sound But the plover's pipe that ye'll seldom miss by a lone bit o' ground. An' he laned—Misther Pierce—on his elbow, an' stared at the sky as he smoked, Till just in an idle way he sthretched out his hand an' sthroked The feathers o' wan of the snipe that was kilt an' lay close by on the grass; An' there was the death in the crathur's eyes like a breath upon glass.

An' sez he, "It's quare to think that a hole ye might bore wid a pin 'Ill be wide enough to let such a power o' darkness in On such a power o' light; an' it's quarer to think," sez he, "That wan o' these days the like is bound to happen to you an' me." Thin Misther Barry, he sez: "Musha, how's wan to know but there's light On t'other side o' the dark, as the day comes afther the night?" An' "Och," says Misther Pierce, "what more's our knowin'—save the mark— Than guessin' which way the chances run, an' thinks I they run to the dark; Or else agin now some glint of a bame'd ha' come slithered an' slid; Sure light's not aisy to hide, an' what for should it be hid?" Up he stood with a sort o' laugh: "If on light," sez he, "ye're set, Let's make the most o' this same, as it's all that we're like to get."

Thim were his words, as I minded well, for often afore an' sin, The 'dintical thought 'ud bother me head that seemed to bother him thin; An' many's the time I'd be wond'rin' whatever it all might mane, The sky, an' the lan', an' the bastes, an' the rest o' thim plain as plain, And all behind an' beyant thim a big black shadow let fall; Ye'll sthrain the sight out of your eyes, but there it stands like a wall.

"An' there," sez I to meself, "we're goin' wherever we go, But where we'll be whin we git there it's never a know I know." Thin whiles I thought I was maybe a sthookawn to throuble me mind

Wid sthrivin' to comprehind onnathural things o' the kind; An' Quality, now, that have larnin', might know the rights o' the case, But ignorant wans like me had betther lave it in pace.

Priest, tubbe sure, an' Parson, accordin' to what they say, The whole matther's plain as a pikestaff an' clear as the day, An' to hear thim talk of a world beyant, ye'd think at the laste They'd been dead an' buried half their lives, an' had thramped it from west to aist; An' who's for above an' who's for below they've as pat as if they could tell The name of every saint in heaven an' every divil in hell. But cock up the lives of thimselves to be settlin' it all to their taste— I sez, and the wife she sez I'm no more nor a haythin baste—

For mighty few o' thim's rael Quality, musha, they're mostly a pack O' playbians, each wid a tag to his name an' a long black coat to his back; An' it's on'y romancin' they are belike; a man must stick be his trade, An' they git their livin' by lettin' on they know how wan's sowl is made.

And in chapel or church they're bound to know somethin' for sure, good or bad, Or where'd be the sinse o' their preachin' an' prayers an' hymns an' howlin' like mad? So who'd go mindin' o' thim? barrin' women, in coorse, an' wanes, That believe 'most aught ye tell thim, if they don't understand what it manes— Bedad, if it worn't the nathur o' women to want the wit, Parson and Priest I'm a-thinkin' might shut up their shop an' quit.

But, och, it's lost an' disthracted the crathurs 'ud be without Their bit of divarsion on Sundays whin all o' thim gits about, Cluth'rin' an' pluth'rin' together like hins, an' a-roostin' in rows, An' meetin' their frins an' their neighbors, and wearin' their dacint clothes. An' sure it's quare that the clergy can't ever agree to keep Be tellin' the same thrue story, sin' they know such a won'erful heap;

For many a thing Priest tells ye that Parson sez is a lie, An' which has a right to be wrong, the divil a much know I, For all the differ I see 'twixt the pair o' thim 'd fit in a nut: Wan for the Union, an' wan for the League, an' both o' thim bitther as sut. But Misther Pierce, that's a gintleman born, an' has college larnin' and all, There he was starin' no wiser than me where the shadow stands like a wall.

Authorized American Edition, Dodd, Mead and Company.



JOEL BARLOW

(1754-1812)

One morning late in the July of 1778, a select company gathered in the little chapel of Yale College to listen to orations and other exercises by a picked number of students of the Senior class, one of whom, named Barlow, had been given the coveted honor of delivering what was termed the 'Commencement Poem.' Those of the audience who came from a distance carried back to their homes in elm-shaded Norwich, or Stratford, or Litchfield, high on its hills, lively recollections of a handsome young man and of his 'Prospect of Peace,' whose cheerful prophecies in heroic verse so greatly "improved the occasion." They had heard that he was a farmer's son from Redding, Connecticut, who had been to school at Hanover, New Hampshire, and had entered Dartmouth College, but soon removed to Yale on account of its superior advantages; that he had twice seen active service in the Continental army, and that he was engaged to marry a beautiful New Haven girl.



The brilliant career predicted for Barlow did not begin immediately. Distaste for war, hope of securing a tutorship in college, and—we may well believe—Miss Ruth's entreaties, kept him in New Haven two years longer, engaged in teaching and in various courses of study. 'The Prospect of Peace' had been issued in pamphlet form, and the compliments paid the author incited him to plan a poem of a philosophic character on the subject of America at large, bearing the title 'The Vision of Columbus.' The appointment as tutor never came, and instead of cultivating the Muse in peaceful New Haven, he was forced to evoke her aid in a tent on the banks of the Hudson, whither after a hurried course in theology, he proceeded as an army chaplain in 1780. During his connection with the army, which lasted until its disbandment in 1783, he won repute by lyrics written to encourage the soldiers, and by "a flaming political sermon," as he termed it, on the treason of Arnold.

Army life ended, Barlow removed to Hartford, where he studied law, edited the American Mercury,—a weekly paper he had helped to found,—- and with John Trumbull, Lemuel Hopkins, and David Humphreys formed a literary club which became widely known as the "Hartford Wits." Its chief publication, a series of political lampoons styled 'The Anarchiad,' satirized those factions whose disputes imperiled the young republic, and did much to influence public opinion in Connecticut and elsewhere in favor of the Federal Constitution. A revision and enlargement of Dr. Watts's 'Book of Psalmody,' and the publication (1787) of his own 'Vision of Columbus,' occupied part of Barlow's time while in Hartford. The latter poem was extravagantly praised, ran through several editions, and was republished in London and Paris; but the poet, who now had a wife to support, could not live by his pen nor by the law, and when in 1788 he was urged by the Scioto Land Company to become its agent in Paris, he gladly accepted. The company was a private association, formed to buy large tracts of government land situated in Ohio and sell them in Europe to capitalists or actual settlers. This failed disastrously, and Barlow was left stranded in Paris, where he remained, supporting himself partly by writing, partly by business ventures. Becoming intimate with the leaders of the Girondist party, the man who had dedicated his 'Vision of Columbus' to Louis XVI., and had also dined with the nobility, now began to figure as a zealous Republican and as a Liberal in religion. From 1790 to 1793 he passed most of his time in London, where he wrote a number of political pamphlets for the Society for Constitutional Information, an organization openly favoring French Republicanism and a revision of the British Constitution. Here also, in 1791, he finished a work entitled 'Advice to the Privileged Orders,' which probably would have run through many editions had it not been suppressed by the British government. The book was an arraignment of tyranny in church and state, and was quickly followed by 'The Conspiracy of Kings,' an attack in verse on those European countries which had combined to kill Republicanism in France. In 1792 Barlow was made a citizen of France as a mark of appreciation of a 'Letter' addressed to the National Convention, giving that body advice, and when the convention sent commissioners to organize the province of Savoy into a department, Barlow was one of the number. As a candidate for deputy from Savoy, he was defeated; but his visit was not fruitless, for at Chambery the sight of a dish of maize-meal porridge reminded him of his early home in Connecticut, and inspired him to write in that ancient French town a typical Yankee poem, 'Hasty Pudding.' Its preface, in prose, addressed to Mrs. Washington, assured her that simplicity of diet was one of the virtues; and if cherished by her, as it doubtless was, it would be more highly regarded by her countrywomen.

Between the years of 1795-97, Barlow held the important but unenviable position of United States Consul at Algiers, and succeeded both in liberating many of his countrymen who were held as prisoners, and in perfecting treaties with the rulers of the Barbary States, which gave United States vessels entrance to their ports and secured them from piratical attacks. On his return to Paris he translated Volney's 'Ruins' into English, made preparations for writing histories of the American and French revolutions, and expanded his 'Vision of Columbus' into a volume which as 'The Columbiad'—a beautiful specimen of typography—was published in Philadelphia in 1807 and republished in London. The poem was held to have increased Barlow's fame; but it is stilted and monotonous, and 'Hasty Pudding' has done more to perpetuate his name.

In 1805 Barlow returned to the United States and bought an estate near Washington, D.C., where he entertained distinguished visitors. In 1811 he returned to France authorized to negotiate a treaty of commerce. After waiting nine months, he was invited by Napoleon, who was then in Poland, to a conference at Wilna. On his arrival Barlow found the French army on the retreat from Moscow, and endured such privations on the march that on December 24th he died of exhaustion at the village of Zarnowiec, near Cracow, and there was buried.

Barlow's part in developing American literature was important, and therefore he has a rightful place in a work which traces that development. He certainly was a man of varied ability and power, who advanced more than one good cause and stimulated the movement toward higher thought. The only complete 'Life and Letters of Joel Barlow,' by Charles Burr Todd, published in 1888, gives him unstinted praise as excelling in statesmanship, letters, and philosophy. With more assured justice, which all can echo, it praises his nobility of spirit as a man. No one can read the letter to his wife, written from Algiers when he thought himself in danger of death, without a warm feeling for so unselfish and affectionate a nature.

A FEAST

From 'Hasty Pudding'

There are various ways of preparing and eating Hasty Pudding, with molasses, butter, sugar, cream, and fried. Why so excellent a thing cannot be eaten alone? Nothing is perfect alone; even man, who boasts of so much perfection, is nothing without his fellow-substance. In eating, beware of the lurking heat that lies deep in the mass; dip your spoon gently, take shallow dips and cool it by degrees. It is sometimes necessary to blow. This is indicated by certain signs which every experienced feeder knows. They should be taught to young beginners. I have known a child's tongue blistered for want of this attention, and then the school-dame would insist that the poor thing had told a lie. A mistake: the falsehood was in the faithless pudding. A prudent mother will cool it for her child with her own sweet breath. The husband, seeing this, pretends his own wants blowing, too, from the same lips. A sly deceit of love. She knows the cheat, but, feigning ignorance, lends her pouting lips and gives a gentle blast, which warms the husband's heart more than it cools his pudding.

The days grow short; but though the falling sun To the glad swain proclaims his day's work done, Night's pleasing shades his various tasks prolong, And yield new subjects to my various song. For now, the corn-house filled, the harvest home, The invited neighbors to the husking come; A frolic scene, where work and mirth and play Unite their charms to chase the hours away. Where the huge heap lies centred in the hall, The lamp suspended from the cheerful wall, Brown corn-fed nymphs, and strong hard-handed beaux, Alternate ranged, extend in circling rows, Assume their seats, the solid mass attack; The dry husks rustle, and the corn-cobs crack; The song, the laugh, alternate notes resound, And the sweet cider trips in silence round. The laws of husking every wight can tell; And sure, no laws he ever keeps so well: For each red ear a general kiss he gains, With each smut ear he smuts the luckless swains; But when to some sweet maid a prize is cast, Red as her lips, and taper as her waist, She walks the round, and culls one favored beau, Who leaps, the luscious tribute to bestow. Various the sport, as are the wits and brains Of well-pleased lasses and contending swains; Till the vast mound of corn is swept away, And he that gets the last ear wins the day. Meanwhile the housewife urges all her care, The well-earned feast to hasten and prepare. The sifted meal already waits her hand, The milk is strained, the bowls in order stand, The fire flames high; and as a pool (that takes The headlong stream that o'er the mill-dam breaks) Foams, roars, and rages with incessant toils, So the vexed caldron rages, roars and boils. First with clean salt she seasons well the food, Then strews the flour, and thickens well the flood. Long o'er the simmering fire she lets it stand; To stir it well demands a stronger hand: The husband takes his turn, and round and round The ladle flies; at last the toil is crowned; When to the board the thronging huskers pour, And take their seats as at the corn before. I leave them to their feast. There still belong More useful matters to my faithful song. For rules there are, though ne'er unfolded yet, Nice rules and wise, how pudding should be ate. Some with molasses grace the luscious treat, And mix, like bards, the useful and the sweet; A wholesome dish, and well deserving praise, A great resource in those bleak wintry days, When the chilled earth lies buried deep in snow, And raging Boreas dries the shivering cow. Blest cow! thy praise shall still my notes employ, Great source of health, the only source of joy; Mother of Egypt's god, but sure, for me, Were I to leave my God, I'd worship thee. How oft thy teats these pious hands have pressed! How oft thy bounties prove my only feast! How oft I've fed thee with my favorite grain! And roared, like thee, to see thy children slain. Ye swains who know her various worth to prize, Ah! house her well from winter's angry skies. Potatoes, pumpkins, should her sadness cheer, Corn from your crib, and mashes from your beer; When spring returns, she'll well acquit the loan, And nurse at once your infants and her own. Milk, then, with pudding I should always choose; To this in future I confine my muse, Till she in haste some further hints unfold, Good for the young, nor useless to the old. First in your bowl the milk abundant take, Then drop with care along the silver lake Your flakes of pudding: these at first will hide Their little bulk beneath the swelling tide; But when their growing mass no more can sink, When the soft island looms above the brink, Then check your hand; you've got the portion due, So taught my sire, and what he taught is true. There is a choice in spoons. Though small appear The nice distinction, yet to me 'tis clear. The deep-bowled Gallic spoon, contrived to scoop In ample draughts the thin diluted soup, Performs not well in those substantial things, Whose mass adhesive to the metal clings; Where the strong labial muscles must embrace The gentle curve, and sweep the hollow space. With ease to enter and discharge the freight, A bowl less concave, but still more dilate, Becomes the pudding best. The shape, the size, A secret rests, unknown to vulgar eyes. Experienced feeders can alone impart A rule so much above the lore of art. These tuneful lips that thousand spoons have tried, With just precision could the point decide, Though not in song—the muse but poorly shines In cones, and cubes, and geometric lines; Yet the true form, as near as she can tell, Is that small section of a goose-egg shell, Which in two equal portions shall divide The distance from the centre to the side. Fear not to slaver; 'tis no deadly sin;— Like the free Frenchman, from your joyous chin Suspend the ready napkin; or like me, Poise with one hand your bowl upon your knee; Just in the zenith your wise head project, Your full spoon rising in a line direct, Bold as a bucket, heed no drops that fall. The wide-mouthed bowl will surely catch them all!



WILLIAM BARNES

(1800-1886)

Had he chosen to write solely in familiar English, rather than in the dialect of his native Dorsetshire, every modern anthology would be graced by the verses of William Barnes, and to multitudes who now know him not, his name would have become associated with many a country sight and sound. Other poets have taken homely subjects for their themes,—the hayfield, the chimney-nook, milking-time, the blossoming of "high-boughed hedges"; but it is not every one who has sung out of the fullness of his heart and with a naive delight in that of which he sung: and so by reason of their faithfulness to every-day life and to nature, and by their spontaneity and tenderness, his lyrics, fables, and eclogues appeal to cultivated readers as well as to the rustics whose quaint speech he made his own.

Short and simple are the annals of his life; for, a brief period excepted, it was passed in his native county—though Dorset, for all his purposes, was as wide as the world itself. His birthplace was Bagbere in the vale of Blackmore, far up the valley of the Stour, where his ancestors had been freeholders. The death of his parents while he was a boy threw him on his own resources; and while he was at school at Sturminster and Dorchester he supported himself by clerical work in attorneys' offices. After he left school his education was mainly self-gained; but it was so thorough that in 1827 he became master of a school at Mere, Wilts, and in 1835 opened a boarding-school in Dorchester, which he conducted for a number of years. A little later he spent a few terms at Cambridge, and in 1847 received ordination. From that time until his death in 1886, most of his days were spent in the little parishes of Whitcombe and Winterbourne Came, near Dorchester, where his duties as rector left him plenty of time to spend on his favorite studies. To the last, Barnes wore the picturesque dress of the eighteenth century, and to the tourist he became almost as much a curiosity as the relics of Roman occupation described in a guide-book he compiled.

When one is at the same time a linguist, a musician, an antiquary, a profound student of philology, and skilled withal in the graphic arts, it would seem inevitable that he should have more than a local reputation; but when, in 1844, a thin volume entitled 'Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect' appeared in London, few bookshop frequenters had ever heard of the author. But he was already well known throughout Dorset, and there he was content to be known; a welcome guest in castle and hall, but never happier than when, gathering about him the Jobs and Lettys with whom Thomas Hardy has made us familiar, he delighted their ears by reciting his verses. The dialect of Dorset, he boasted, was the least corrupted form of English; therefore to commend it as a vehicle of expression and to help preserve his mother tongue from corruption, and to purge it of words not of Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic origin,—this was one of the dreams of his life,—he put his impressions of rural scenery and his knowledge of human character into metrical form. He is remembered by scholars here and there for a number of works on philology, and one ('Outline of English Speech-Craft') in which, with zeal, but with the battle against him, he aimed to teach the English language by using words of Teutonic derivation only; but it is through his four volumes of poems that he is better remembered. These include 'Hwomely Rhymes' (1859), 'Poems of Rural Life' (1862), and 'Poems of Rural Life in Common English' (1863). The three collections of dialect poems were brought out in one volume, with a glossary, in 1879.

"A poet fresh as the dew," "The first of English purely pastoral poets," "The best writer of eclogues since Theocritus,"—these are some of the tardy tributes paid him. With a sympathy for his fellow-man and a humor akin to that of Burns, with a feeling for nature as keen as Wordsworth's, though less subjective, and with a power of depicting a scene with a few well-chosen epithets which recalls Tennyson, Barnes has fairly earned his title to remembrance.

'The Life of William Barnes, Poet and Philologist,' written by his daughter, Mrs. Baxter, was published in 1887. There are numerous articles relating to him in periodical literature, one of which, a sketch by Thomas Hardy, in Vol. 86 of the 'Athenaeum,' is of peculiar interest.

BLACKMWORE MAIDENS

The primrwose in the sheaede do blow, The cowslip in the zun, The thyme upon the down do grow, The clote where streams do run; An' where do pretty maidens grow An' blow, but where the tow'r Do rise among the bricken tuns, In Blackmwore by the Stour?

If you could zee their comely gait, An' pretty feaeces' smiles, A-trippen on so light o' waight, An' steppen off the stiles; A-gwain to church, as bells do swing An' ring 'ithin the tow'r, You'd own the pretty maidens' pleaece Is Blackmwore by the Stour?

If you vrom Wimborne took your road, To Stower or Paladore, An' all the farmers' housen show'd Their daughters at the door; You'd cry to bachelors at hwome— "Here, come: 'ithin an hour You'll vind ten maidens to your mind, In Blackmwore by the Stour."

An' if you look'd 'ithin their door, To zee em in their pleaece, A-doen housework up avore Their smilen mother's feaece; You'd cry,—"Why, if a man would wive An' thrive, 'ithout a dow'r, Then let en look en out a wife In Blackmwore by the Stour."

As I upon my road did pass A school-house back in May, There out upon the beaeten grass Wer maidens at their play; An' as the pretty souls did tweil An' smile, I cried, "The flow'r O' beauty, then, is still in bud In Blackmwore by the Stour."

MAY

Come out o' door, 'tis Spring! 'tis May! The trees be green, the yields be gay; The weather's warm, the winter blast, Wi' all his train o' clouds, is past; The zun do rise while vo'k do sleep, To teaeke a higher daily zweep, Wi' cloudless feaece a-flingen down His sparklen light upon the groun'. The air's a-streamen soft,—come drow The winder open; let it blow In drough the house, where vire, an' door A-shut, kept out the cwold avore. Come, let the vew dull embers die, An' come below the open sky; An' wear your best, vor fear the groun' In colors gaey mid sheaeme your gown: An' goo an' rig wi' me a mile Or two up over geaete an' stile, Drough zunny parrocks that do lead, Wi' crooked hedges, to the meaed, Where elems high, in steaetely ranks, Do rise vrom yollow cowslip-banks, An' birds do twitter vrom the spraey O' bushes deck'd wi' snow-white maey; An' gil' cups, wi' the deaeisy bed, Be under ev'ry step you tread. We'll wind up roun' the hill, an' look All down the thickly timber'd nook, Out where the squier's house do show His gray-walled peaks up drough the row O' sheaedy elems, where the rock Do build her nest; an' where the brook Do creep along the meaeds, an' lie To catch the brightness o' the sky; An' cows, in water to their knees, Do stan' a-whisken off the vlees. Mother o' blossoms, and ov all That's feaeir a-vield vrom Spring till Fall, The gookoo over white-weaev'd seas Do come to zing in thy green trees, An' buttervlees, in giddy flight, Do gleaem the mwost by thy gaey light.



Oh! when, at last, my fleshly eyes Shall shut upon the vields an' skies, Mid zummer's zunny days be gone, An' winter's clouds be comen on: Nor mid I draw upon the e'th, O' thy sweet air my leaetest breath; Alassen I mid want to staey Behine' for thee, O flow'ry May!

MILKEN TIME

'Poems of Rural Life'

'Twer when the busy birds did vlee, Wi' sheenen wings, vrom tree to tree, To build upon the mossy lim' Their hollow nestes' rounded rim; The while the zun, a-zinken low, Did roll along his evenen bow, I come along where wide-horn'd cows, 'Ithin a nook, a-screen'd by boughs, Did stan' an' flip the white-hooped pails Wi' heaeiry tufts o' swingen tails; An' there were Jenny Coom a-gone Along the path a vew steps on, A-beaeren on her head, upstraight, Her pail, wi' slowly-riden waight, An hoops a-sheenen, lily-white, Ageaen the evenen's slanten light; An' zo I took her pail, an' left Her neck a-freed vrom all his heft; An' she a-looken up an' down, Wi' sheaeply head an' glossy crown, Then took my zide, an' kept my peaece, A-talken on wi' smilen feaece, An' zetten things in sich a light, I'd fain ha' heaer'd her talk all night; An' when I brought her milk avore The geaete, she took it in to door, An' if her pail had but allow'd Her head to vall, she would ha' bow'd; An' still, as 'twer, I had the zight Ov' her sweet smile, droughout the night.

JESSIE LEE

Above the timber's benden sh'ouds, The western wind did softly blow; An' up avore the knap, the clouds Did ride as white as driven snow. Vrom west to east the clouds did zwim Wi' wind that plied the elem's lim'; Vrom west to east the stream did glide, A sheenen wide, wi' winden brim.

How feaeir, I thought, avore the sky The slowly-zwimmen clouds do look; How soft the win's a-streamen by; How bright do roll the weaevy brook: When there, a-passen on my right, A-walken slow, an' treaden light, Young Jessie Lee come by, an' there Took all my ceaere, an' all my zight.

Vor lovely wer the looks her feaece Held up avore the western sky: An' comely wer the steps her peaece Did meaeke a-walken slowly by: But I went east, wi' beaten breast, Wi' wind, an' cloud, an' brook, vor rest, Wi' rest a-lost, vor Jessie gone So lovely on, toward the west.

Blow on, O winds, athirt the hill; Zwim on, O clouds; O waters vall, Down maeshy rocks, vrom mill to mill: I now can overlook ye all. But roll, O zun, an' bring to me My day, if such a day there be, When zome dear path to my abode Shall be the road o' Jessie Lee.

THE TURNSTILE

Ah! sad wer we as we did peaece The wold church road, wi' downcast feaece, The while the bells, that mwoan'd so deep Above our child a-left asleep, Wer now a-zingen all alive Wi' tother bells to meaeke the vive. But up at woone pleaece we come by, 'Twere hard to keep woone's two eyes dry; On Steaen-cliff road, 'ithin the drong, Up where, as vo'k do pass along, The turnen stile, a-painted white, Do sheen by day an' show by night. Vor always there, as we did goo To church, thik stile did let us drough, Wi' spreaden eaerms that wheel'd to guide Us each in turn to tother zide. An' vu'st ov all the train he took My wife, wi' winsome gait an' look; An' then zent on my little maid, A-skippen onward, overjaey'd To reach ageaen the pleaece o' pride, Her comely mother's left han' zide. An' then, a-wheelen roun' he took On me, 'ithin his third white nook. An' in the fourth, a-sheaeken wild, He zent us on our giddy child. But eesterday he guided slow My downcast Jenny, vull o' woe, An' then my little maid in black, A-walken softly on her track; An' after he'd a-turn'd ageaen, To let me goo along the leaene, He had noo little bwoy to vill His last white eaerms, an' they stood still.

TO THE WATER-CROWFOOT

O small-feaec'd flow'r that now dost bloom, To stud wi' white the shallow Frome, An' leaeve the [2]clote to spread his flow'r On darksome pools o' stwoneless Stour, When sof'ly-rizen airs do cool The water in the sheenen pool, Thy beds o' snow white buds do gleam So feaeir upon the sky-blue stream, As whitest clouds, a-hangen high Avore the blueness of the sky.

[Footnote 2: The yellow water-lily.]

ZUMMER AN' WINTER

When I led by zummer streams The pride o' Lea, as naighbours thought her, While the zun, wi' evenen beams, Did cast our sheaedes athirt the water: Winds a-blowen, Streams a-flowen, Skies a-glowen, Tokens ov my jay zoo fleeten, Heightened it, that happy meeten.

Then, when maid and man took pleaeces, Gay in winter's Chris'mas dances, Showen in their merry feaeces Kindly smiles an' glisnen glances: Stars a-winken, Days a-shrinken, Sheaedes a-zinken, Brought anew the happy meeten, That did meaeke the night too fleeten.



JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE

(1860-)

James Matthew Barrie was born May 9th, 1860, at Kirriemuir, Scotland ('Thrums'); son of a physician whom he has lovingly embodied as 'Dr. McQueen,' and with a mother and sister who will live as 'Jess' and 'Leeby.' After an academy course at Dumfries he entered the University of Edinburgh at eighteen, where he graduated M.A., and took honors in the English Literature class. A few months later he took a place on a newspaper in Nottingham, England, and in the spring of 1885 went to London, where the papers had begun to accept his work.



Above all, the St. James's Gazette had published the first of the 'Auld Licht Idylls' November 17th, 1884; and the editor, Frederick Greenwood, instantly perceiving a new and rich genius, advised him to work the vein further, enforcing the advice by refusing to accept his contributions on other subjects.

He had the usual painful struggle to become a successful journalist, detailed in 'When a Man's Single'; but his real work was other and greater. In 1887 'When a Man's Single' came out serially in the British Weekly; it has little merit except in the Scottish prelude, which is of high quality in style and pathos. It is curious how utterly his powers desert him the moment he leaves his native heath: like Antaeus, he is a giant on his mother earth and a pigmy off it. His first published book was 'Better Dead' (1887); it works out a cynical idea which would be amusing in five pages, but is diluted into tediousness by being spread over fifty. But in 1889 came a second masterpiece, 'A Window in Thrums,' a continuation of the Auld Licht series from an inside instead of an outside standpoint,—not superior to the first, but their full equals in a deliciousness of which one cannot say how much is matter and how much style. 'My Lady Nicotine' appeared in 1890; it was very popular, and has some amusing sketches, but no enduring quality. 'An Edinburgh Eleven' (1890) is a set of sketches of his classmates and professors.

In 1891 the third of his Scotch works appeared,—'The Little Minister,'—which raised him from the rank of an admirable sketch writer to that of an admirable novelist, despite its fantastic plot and detail. Since then he has written three plays,—'Walker, London,' 'Jane Annie,' and 'The Professor's Love Story,' the latter very successful and adding to his reputation; but no literature except his novel 'Sentimental Tommy,' just closed in Scribner's Magazine. This novel is not only a great advance on 'The Little Minister' in symmetry of construction, reality of matter, tragic power, and insight, but its tone is very different. Though as rich in humor, the humor is largely of a grim, bitter, and sardonic sort. The light, gay, buoyant fun of 'The Little Minister,' which makes it a perpetual enjoyment, has mostly vanished; in its stead we feel that the writer's sensitive nature is wrung by the swarming catastrophes he cannot avert, the endless wrecks on the ocean of life he cannot succor, and hardly less by those spiritual tragedies and ironies so much worse, on a true scale of valuation, than any material misfortune.