Waverley; Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since. Walter Scott
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Captain Waverley,' observed Rose, 'and once stood firm when a whole synod of Presbyterian divines were put to the rout by a sudden apparition of the foul fiend.'
Waverley looked as if desirous to hear more.
Must I tell my story as well as sing my song?—Well.—Once upon a time there lived an old woman, called Janet Gellatley, who was suspected to be a witch, on the infallible grounds that she was very old, very ugly, very poor, and had two sons, one of whom was a poet, and the other a fool, which visitation, all the neighbourhood agreed, had come upon her for the sin of witchcraft. And she was imprisoned for a week in the steeple of the parish church, and sparingly supplied with food, and not permitted to sleep, until she herself became as much persuaded of her being a witch as her accusers; and in this lucid and happy state of mind was brought forth to make a clean breast, that is, to make open confession of her sorceries, before all the Whig gentry and ministers in the vicinity, who were no conjurers themselves. My father went to see fair play between the witch and the clergy; for the witch had been born on his estate. 'And while the witch was confessing that the Enemy appeared, and made his addresses to her as a handsome black man—which, if you could have seen poor old blear-eyed Janet, reflected little honour on Apollyon's taste—and while the auditors listened with astonished ears, and the clerk recorded with a trembling hand, she, all of a sudden, changed the low mumbling tone with which she spoke into a shrill yell, and exclaimed, "Look to yourselves! look to yourselves! I see the Evil One sitting in the midst of ye." The surprise was general, and terror and flight its immediate consequences. Happy were those who were next the door; and many were the disasters that befell hats, bands, cuffs, and wigs, before they could get out of the church, where they left the obstinate prelatist to settle matters with the witch and her admirer, at his own peril or pleasure.'
'RISU SOLVUNTUR TABULAE,' said the Baron: 'when they recovered their panic trepidation, they were too much ashamed to bring any wakening of the process against Janet Gellatley.' [The story last told was said to have happened in the south of Scotland; but—CEDANT ARMA TOGAE—and let the gown have its dues. It was an old clergyman, who had wisdom and firmness enough to resist the panic which seized his brethren, who was the means of rescuing a poor insane creature from the cruel fate which would otherwise have overtaken her. The accounts of the trials for witchcraft form one of the most deplorable chapters in Scottish story.]
This anecdote led to a long discussion of
All those idle thoughts and fantasies,
Devices, dreams, opinions unsound,
Shows, visions, soothsays, and prophecies,
And all that feigned is, as leasings, tales, and lies.
With such conversation, and the romantic legends which it produced, closed our hero's second evening in the house of Tully-Veolan.
CHAPTER XIV
A DISCOVERY—WAVERLEY BECOMES DOMESTICATED AT TULLY-VEOLAN
The next day Edward arose betimes, and in a morning walk around the house and its vicinity, came suddenly upon a small court in front of the dog-kennel, where his friend Davie was employed about his four-footed charge. One quick glance of his eye recognized Waverley, when, instantly turning his back, as if he had not observed him, he began to sing part of an old ballad:—
Young men will love thee more fair and more fast;
HEARD YE SO MERRY THE LITTLE BIRD SING?
Old men's love the longest will last,
AND THE THROSTLE-COCK'S HEAD IS UNDER HIS WING.
The young man's wrath is like light straw on fire;
HEARD YE SO MERRY THE LITTLE BIRD SING?
But like red-hot steel is the old man's ire,
AND THE THROSTLE-COCK'S HEAD IS UNDER HIS WING.
The young man will brawl at the evening board;
HEARD YE SO MERRY THE LITTLE BIRD SING?
But the old man will draw at the dawning the sword,
AND THE THROSTLE-COCK'S HEAD IS UNDER HIS WING.
Waverley could not avoid observing that Davie laid something like a satirical emphasis on these lines. He therefore approached, and endeavoured, by sundry queries, to elicit from him what the innuendo might mean; but Davie had no mind to explain, and had wit enough to make his folly cloak his knavery. Edward could collect nothing from him, excepting that the Laird of Balmawhapple had gone home yesterday morning, 'wi' his boots fu' o' bluid.' In the garden, however, he met the old butler, who no longer attempted to conceal, that, having been bred in the nursery line with Sumack & Co., of Newcastle, he sometimes wrought a turn in the flower-borders to oblige the Laird and Miss Rose. By a series of queries, Edward at length discovered, with a painful feeling of surprise and shame, that Balmawhapple's submission and apology had been the consequence of a rencontre with the Baron before his guest had quitted his pillow, in which the younger combatant had been disarmed and wounded in the sword-arm.
Greatly mortified at this information, Edward sought out his friendly host, and anxiously expostulated with him upon the injustice he had done him in anticipating his meeting with Mr. Falconer, a circumstance which, considering his youth and the profession of arms which he had just adopted, was capable of being represented much to his prejudice. The Baron justified himself at greater length than I choose to repeat. He urged that the quarrel was common to them, and that Balmawhapple could not, by the code of honour, EVITE giving satisfaction to both, which he had done in his case by an honourable meeting, and in that of Edward by such a PALINODE as rendered the use of the sword unnecessary, and which, being made and accepted, must necessarily SOPITE the whole affair.
With this excuse or explanation, Waverley was silenced, if not satisfied; but he could not help testifying some displeasure against the Blessed Bear, which had given rise to the quarrel, nor refrain from hinting, that the sanctified epithet was hardly appropriate. The Baron observed, he could not deny that 'the Bear, though allowed by heralds as a most honourable ordinary, had, nevertheless, somewhat fierce, churlish, and morose in his disposition (as might be read in Archibald Simson, pastor of Dalkeith's HIEROGLYPHICA ANIMALIUM), and had thus been the type of many quarrels and dissensions which had occurred in the house of Bradwardine; of which,' he continued, 'I might commemorate mine own unfortunate dissension with my third cousin by the mother's side, Sir Hew Halbert, who was so unthinking as to deride my family name, as if it had been QUASI BEARWARDEN; a most uncivil jest, since it not only insinuated that the founder of our house occupied such a mean situation as to be a custodier of wild beasts, a charge which, ye must have observed, is only entrusted to the very basest plebeians; but, moreover, seemed to infer that our coat-armour had not been achieved by honourable actions in war, but bestowed by way of PARONOMASIA, or pun upon our family appellation—a sort of bearing which the French call ARMOIRES PARLANTES; the Latins ARMA CANTANTIA; and your English authorities, canting heraldry; being indeed a species of emblazoning more befitting canters, gaberlunzies, and such-like mendicants, whose gibberish is formed upon playing upon the word, than the noble, honourable, and useful science of heraldry, which assigns armorial bearings as the reward of noble and generous actions, and not to tickle the ear with vain quodlibets, such as are found in jest-books.' 9 Of his quarrel with Sir Hew, he said nothing more, than that it was settled in a fitting manner.
Having been so minute with respect to the diversions of Tully-Veolan, on the first days of Edward's arrival, for the purpose of introducing its inmates to the reader's acquaintance, it becomes less necessary to trace the progress of his intercourse with the same accuracy. It is probable that a young man, accustomed to more cheerful society, would have tired of the conversation of so violent an asserter of the 'boast of heraldry' as the Baron; but Edward found an agreeable variety