Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry/Richard Faulder, Mariner
RICHARD FAULDER, MARINER.
It's sweet to go with hound and hawk,
O'er moor and mountain roamin';
It's sweeter to walk on the Solway side,
With a fair maid at the gloamin';
But its sweeter to bound o'er the deep green sea,
When the flood is chafed and foamin;
For the seaboy has then the prayer of good men,
And the sighing of lovesome' woman.
The wind is up, and the sail is spread,
And look at the foaming furrow,
Behind the bark as she shoots away,
As fleet as the outlaw's arrow;
And the tears drop fast from lovely eyes,
And hands are wrung in sorrow;
But when we come back, there is shout and clap,
And mirth both night and morrow.
On a harvest afternoon, when the ripe grain, which clothed the western slope of the Cumberland hills, had partly submitted to the sickle, a party of reapers were seated on a small green knoll, enjoying the brief luxury of the dinner-hour. The young men lay stretched on the grass; the maidens sat plaiting and arranging their locks into more graceful and seducing ringlets; while three hoary old men sat abreast and upright, looking on the Sea of Solway, which was spread out, with all its romantic variety of headland and rock and bay, below them. The midday sun had been unusually sultry, accompanied with hot and suffocating rushings of wind; and the appearance of a huge and dark cloud, which hung, like a canopy of smoke and flame over a burning city, betokened, to an experienced swain, an approaching storm. One of the old reapers shook his head, and combing the remainder snow over his forehead with his fingers, said, "Woe's me! one token comes, and another token arises, of tempest and wrath on that darkening water. It comes to my memory like a dream—for I was but a boy then groping trouts in Ellenwater—that it was on such a day, some fifty years ago, that the Bonnie Babie Allan, of Saint Bees, was wrecked on that rock, o'er the top of which the tide is whirling and boiling—and the father and three brethren of Richard Faulder were drowned. How can I forget such a sea! It leaped on the shore, among these shells and pebbles, as high as the mast of a brig; and threw its foam as far as the corn-ricks of Walter Selby's stackyard—and that's a good half-mile."
"Ise warrant," interrupted a squat and demure old man, whose speech was a singular mixture of Cumbrian English and Border Scotch—"Ise warrant, Willie, your memory will be rifer o' the loss of the Lovely Lass, of Annanwater, who whomel'd, keel upward, on the hip of the Mermaid rock, and spilt her wameful of rare brandy into the thankless Solway. Faith, mickle good liquor has been thrown into that punchbowl; but fiend a drop of grog was ever made out of such a thriftless basin. It will aiblens be long afore such a gudesend comes to our coast again. There was Saunders Macmichael was drunk between yule and yule—forbye"
"Wae's me, well may I remember that duleful day," interrupted the third bandsman; "it cost me a fair son—my youngest, and my best. I had seven once—alas, what have I now! Three were devoured by that false and unstable water, three perished by the sharp swords of those Highland invaders who slew so many of the gallant Dacres of Clifton and Carlisle; but the Cumberland ravens had their revenge!—I mind the head and lang yellow hair of him who slew my son hanging over the Scottish gate of Carlisle. Ay, I was avenged no doubt. But the son I have left has disgraced for ever our pure blood by wedding a border Gordon, with as mickle gipsy blood in her veins as would make plebeians of all the Howards and the Percies. I would rather have stretched him in the church-ground of Allanbay, with the mark of a Hielandman's brand on his brow, as was the lot of his brave brothers—or gathered his body from among these rocks, as I did those of my other children! But oh, sirs, when did man witness so fearful a coming on as yon dark sky forebodes?"
While this conversation went on, the clouds had assembled on the summits of the Scottish and Cumbrian mountains, and a thick canopy of vapour, which hung over the Isle of Man, waxed more ominous and vast. A light, as of a fierce fire burning, dropped frequent from its bosom, throwing a sort of supernatural flame along the surface of the water, and showing distinctly the haven, and houses, and shipping, and haunted castle of the isle. The old men sat silently gazing on the scene, while cloud succeeded cloud, till the whole congregating vapour, unable to sustain itself longer, stooped suddenly down from the opposing peaks of Criffel and Skiddaw, filling up the mighty space between the mountains, and approaching so close to the bosom of the ocean, as to leave room alone for the visible flight of the seamew and cormorant.
The water-fowl, starting from the sea, flew landward in a flock, fanning the waves with their wings, and uttering that wild and piercing scream which distinguishes them from all other fowl when their haunts are disturbed. The clouds and darkness increased, and the bird on the rock, the cattle in the fold, and the reapers in the field, all looked upward and seaward, expecting the coming of the storm.
"Benjamin Forster," said an old reaper to me, as I approached his side, and stood gazing on the sea, "I counsel thee, youth, to go home, and shelter these young hairs beneath thy mother's roof. The mountains have covered their heads—and hearken, too, that hollow moan running among the cliffs! There is a voice of mourning, my child, goes along the sea-cliffs of Solway before she swallows up the seafaring man. Seven times have I heard that warning voice in one season—and it cries, woe to the wives and the maids of Cumberland!"
On the summit of a knoll, which swelled gently from the margin of a small beck or rivulet, and which was about a dozen yards apart from the main body of the reapers, sat a young Cumbrian maiden, who seemed wholly intent on the arrangement of a profusion of nut-brown locks, which descended, in clustering masses, upon her back and shoulders. This wilderness of ringlets owed, apparently, as much of its curling elegance to nature as to art, and flowed down on all sides with a profusion rivalling the luxuriant tresses of the Madonnas of the Roman painters. Half in coquetry, and half in willingness to restrain her tresses under a small fillet of green silk, her fingers, long, round, and white, continued shedding and disposing this beautiful fleece. At length the locks were fastened under the fillet—a band denoting maidenhood—and her lily-looking hands, dropping across each other in repose from their toil, allowed the eye to admire a smooth and swan-white neck, which presented one of those natural and elegant sinuous lines that sculptors desire so much to communicate to marble. Amid all this sweetness and simplicity there appeared something of rustic archness and coquetry; but it was a kind of natural and born vanity, a little of which gives a grace and joyousness to beauty. Those pure creations of female simplicity, which shine in pastoral speculations, are unknown among the ruddy and buxom damsels of Cumberland. The maritime nymphs of Allanbay are not unconscious of their charms, or careless about their preservation; and to this sweet maiden Nature had given so much female tact as enabled her to know that a beautiful face and large dark hazel eyes have some influence among men. When she had wreathed up her tresses to her own satisfaction, she began to cast around her such glances—suddenly shot, and as suddenly withdrawn—as would have been dangerous concentrated on one object, but which, divided with care, even to the fractional part of a glance, among several hinds, infused a sort of limited joy without exciting hope. Indeed, this was the work of the maiden's eyes alone, for her heart was employed about its own peculiar care, and its concern was fixed on a distant and different object. She pulled from her bosom a silken case, curiously wrought with the needle. A youth sat on the figured prow of a bark, and beneath him a mermaid swam on the green silken sea, waving back her long tresses with one hand and supplicating the young seaman with the other. This singular production seemed the sanctuary of her triumphs over the hearts of men. She began to empty out its contents in her lap; and the jealousy of many a Cumbrian maiden, from Allanbay to Saint Bees Head, would have been excited by learning whose loves these emblems represented. There were letters expressing the ardour of rustic affection—locks of hair, both black and brown, tied up in shreds of silk—and keepsakes, from the magnitude of a simple brass pin, watered with gold, to a massy brooch of price and beauty. She arranged these primitive treasures, and seemed to ponder over the vicissitudes of her youthful affections. Her eyes, after lending a brief scrutiny to each keepsake and symbol, finally fixed their attention upon a brooch of pure gold: as she gazed on it, she gave a sigh, and looked seaward, with a glance which showed that her eye was following in the train of her affections. The maiden's brow saddened at once, as she beheld the thick gathering of the clouds; and, depositing her treasure in her bosom, she continued to gaze on the darkening sea, with a look of increasing emotion,
The experienced mariners on the Scottish and Cumbrian coasts appeared busy mooring, and double mooring, their vessels. Some sought a securer haven; and those who allowed their barks to remain prepared them, with all their skill, for the encounter of a storm, which no one reckoned distant. Something now appeared in the space between the sea and the cloud, and, emerging more fully, and keeping the centre of the sea, it was soon known to be a heavily laden ship, apparently making for the haven of Allanbay. When the cry of "A ship! a ship!" arose among the reapers, one of the old men, whose eyes were something faded, after gazing intently, said, with a tone of sympathy, "It is a ship indeed—and woe's me but the path it is in be perilous in a moment like this!"
"She'll never pass the sunken rocks of Saint Bees' Head," said one old man. "Nor weather the headland of Barnhourie and the caverns of Colvend," said another. "And should she pass both," said a third, "the coming tempest, which now heaves up the sea within a cable's length of her stern, will devour her ere she finds shelter in kindly Allanbay!"
"Gude send," said he of the mixed brood of Cumberland and Caledonia—"since she maun be wrecked, that she spills nae her treasure on the thankless shores of Galloway! These northerns be a keen people, with a ready hand, and a clutch like steel: besides, she seems a Cumberland bark, and its meet that we have our ane fish-guts to our ane seamaws."
"Oh, see, see!" said the old man, three of whose children had perished when the Bonnie Babie Allan sank—"see how the waves are beginning to be lifted up! Hearken how deep calls to deep; and hear and see how the winds and the windows of heaven are loosened! Save thy servants—even those seafaring men—should there be but one righteous person on board!" And the old reaper rose, and stretched out his hands in supplication as he spoke.
The ship came boldly down the middle of the bay, the masts bending and quivering, and the small deck crowded with busy men, who looked wistfully to the coast of Cumberland.
"She is the Lady Johnstone, of Annanwater," said one, "coming with wood from Norway."
"She is the Buxom Bess, of Allanbay," said another, "laden with the best of West India rum."
"And I," said the third old man, "would have thought her the Mermaid, of Richard Faulder—but," added he, in a lower tone, "the Mermaid has not been heard of, nor seen, for many months—and the Faulders are a doomed race: his bonny brig and he are in the bottom of the sea, and with them sleeps the pride of Cumberland, Frank Forster of Derwentwater."
The subject of their conversation approached within a couple of miles, turned her head for Allanbay, and, though the darkness almost covered her as a shroud, there seemed every chance that she would reach the port ere the tempest burst. But just as she turned for the Cumbrian shore, a rush of wind shot across the bay, furrowing the sea as hollow as the deepest glen, and heaving it up masthead high. The cloud, too, dropped down upon the surface of the sea; the winds, loosened at once, lifted the waves in multitudes against the cliffs; and the foam fell upon the reapers, like a shower of snow. The loud chafing of the waters on the rocks prevented the peasants from hearing the cries of men whom they had given up to destruction. At length the wind, which came in whirlwind gusts, becoming silent for a little while, the voice of a person singing was heard from the sea, far above the turbulence of the waves. Old William Dacre uttered a shout, and said:
"That is the voice of Richard Faulder, if ever I heard it in a body. He is a fearful man, and never sings in the hour of gladness, but in the hour of danger—terror and death are beside him when he lifts his voice to sing. This is the third time I have listened to his melody, and many mothers will weep, and maidens too, if his song have the same ending as of old."
The voice waxed bolder, and approached the shore; and as nothing could be discerned, so thick was the darkness, the song was impressive, and even awful.
THE SONG OF RICHARD FAULDER.
It's merry, it's merry, among the moonlight,
When the pipe and the cittern are sounding,
To rein, like a war-steed, my shallop, and go
O'er the bright waters merrily bounding.
It's merry, it's merry, when fair Allanbay,
With its bridal candles is glancing,
To spread the white sails of my vessel, and go
Among the wild sea-waters dancing.
And it's blithesomer still, when the storm is come on,
And the Solway's wild waves are ascending
In huge and dark curls, and the shaven masts groan,
And the canvas to ribbons is rending;
When the dark heaven stoops down unto the dark deep,
And the thunder speaks 'mid the commotion,
Awaken and see, ye who slumber and sleep,
The might of the Lord on the ocean!
This frail bark, so late growing green in the wood
Where the roebuck is joyously ranging—
Now doomed for to roam o'er the wild fishy flood,
When the wind to all quarters is changing—
Is as safe to thy feet as the proud palace floor,
And as firm as green Skiddaw below thee;
For God has come down to the ocean's dread deeps,
His might and his mercy to show thee.
As the voice ceased, the ship appeared, through the cloud, approaching the coast in full swing; her sails rent, and the wave and foam flashing over her, midmast high. The maiden, who has already been introduced to the affection of the reader, gazed on the ship, and, half suppressing a shriek of joy, flew down to the shore, where the cliffs, sloping backwards from the sea, presented a ready landing-place when the waves were more tranquil than now. Her fellow-reapers came crowding to her side, and looked on the address and hardihood of the crew, who, with great skill and success, navigated their little bark through and among the sandbanks and sunken rocks, which make the Solway so perilous and fatal to seamen. At last they obtained the shelter of a huge cliff, which, stretching like a promontory into the sea, broke the impetuosity of the waves, and afforded them hopes of communicating with their friends, who, with ropes and horses, were seen hastening to the shore.
But although Richard Faulder and his Mermaid were now little more than a cable-length distant from the land, the peril of their situation seemed little lessened. The winds had greatly abated; but the sea, with that impulse communicated by the storm, threw itself against the rocks, elevating its waters high over the summits of the highest cliffs, and leaping and foaming around the bark, with a force that made her reel and quiver, and threatened to stave her to pieces. The old and skilful mariner himself was observed amid the confusion and danger, as collected and self-possessed as if he had been entering the bay in the tranquillity of a summer evening, with a hundred hands waving and welcoming his return. His spirit and deliberation seemed more or less communicated to his little crew; but chiefly to Frank Forster, who, in the ardent buoyancy of youth, moved as he moved, thought as he thought, and acted from his looks alone, as if they had been both in formed with one soul. In those times, the benevolence of individuals had not been turned to multiply the means of preserving seamen's lives; and the mariner, in the hour of peril, owed his life to chance, his own endeavours, or the intrepid exertions of the humane peasantry.
The extreme agitation of the sea rendered it difficult to moor or abandon the bark with safety; and several young men ventured fearlessly into the flood on horseback, but could not reach the rope which the crew threw out to form a communication with the land. Young Forster, whose eye seemed to have singled out some object of regard on shore, seized the rope; then leaping with a plunge into the sea, he made the waters flash! Though for a moment he seemed swallowed up, he emerged from the billows like a waterfowl, and swam shoreward with unexpected agility and strength. The old mariner gazed after him with a look of deep concern; but none seemed more alarmed than the maiden with many keepsakes. As he seized the rope, the lily suddenly chased the rose from her cheek, and uttering a loud scream, and crying out, "Oh, help him, save him!" she flew down to the shore, and plunged into the water, holding out her arms, while the flood burst against her, breast high.
"God guide me, Maud Marchbank," cried William Dacre, "ye'll drown the poor lad out of pure love. I think," continued he, stepping back, and shaking the brine from his clothes, "I am the mad person myself—a caress and a kiss from young Frank of Derwentwater is making her comfortable enough. Alas! but youth be easily pleased—it is as the Northern song says:
Contented wi' little and cantie wi' mair;
but old age is a delightless time!"
To moor the bark was the labour of a few moments; and fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts welcomed the youths they had long reckoned among the dead with affection and tears. All had some friendly hand and eye to welcome and rejoice in them, save the brave old mariner, Richard Faulder alone. To him no one spoke, on him no eye was turned; all seemed desirous of shunning communication with a man to whom common belief attributed endowments and powers, which came not as knowledge and might come to other men; and whose wisdom was of that kind against which the most prudent divines and the most skilful legislators, directed the rebuke of church and law. I remember hearing my father say, that when Richard Faulder, who was equally skilful in horsemanship and navigation, offered to stand on his grey horse's bare back, and gallop down the street of Allanbay, he was prevented from betting against the accomplishment of this equestrian vaunt by a wary Scotchman, who, in the brief manner of his country, said, "Dinna wager, Thomas—God guide your wits—that man's no cannie!" At that time, though a stripling of seventeen, and possessed strongly with the belief of the mariner's singular powers, I could not avoid sympathizing with his fortune and the forlorn look with which he stood on the deck while his companions were welcomed and caressed on shore. Nothing, indeed, could equal the joy which fathers and mothers manifested towards their children but the affection and tenderness with which they were hailed by the bright eyes of the Cumbrian maidens.
"His name be praised!" said one old man, to whose bosom a son had been unexpectedly delivered from the waves.
"And blessed be the hour ye were saved from the salt sea and that fearful man," said a maiden, whose blushing cheek and brightening eye indicated more than common sympathy.
"And oh! Stephen Porter, my son," resumed the father, "never set foot on shipboard with that mariner more!"
In another group stood a young seaman with his sister's arms linked round his neck, receiving the blessings and the admonitions which female lips shower so vainly upon the sterner sex: "This is the third time, Giles, thou hast sailed with Richard Faulder, and every time my alarm and thy perils increase. Many a fair face he has witnessed the fate of, and many a fair ship has he survived the wreck of: think of the sea, since think of it thou must, but never more think of it with such a companion."
In another group a young woman stood gazing on a sailor's face, and in her looks fear and love held equal mastery. "Oh! William Rowanberry," said she, and her hand trembled with affection in his while she spoke, "I would have held my heart widowed for one year and a day, in memory of thee; and though there be fair lads in Ullswater, and fairer still in Allanbay, I'll no say they would have prevailed against my regard for thee before the summer. But I warn thee," and she whispered, waving her hand seaward to give importance to her words, "never be found on the great deep with that man again!"
Meanwhile, the subject of this singular conversation kept pacing from stem to stern of the Mermaid; gazing, now and then, wistfully shoreward, though he saw not a soul with whom he might share his affections. His grey hair, and his melancholy look, won their way to my youthful regard, while his hale and stalwart frame could not fail of making an impression on one not wholly insensible to the merits of the exterior person. A powerful mind should in poetical justice have a noble place of abode. I detached myself a little from the mass of people that filled the shore, and, seeming to busy myself with some drift wood, which the storm had brought to the hollow of a small rock, I had an opportunity of hearing the old mariner chant, as he paced to and fro, the fragment of an old maritime ballad, part of which is still current among the seamen of Solway, along with many other singular rhymes full of marine superstition and adventure.
SIR RICHARD'S VOYAGE.
Sir Richard shot swift from the shore, and sailed
Till he reached Barnhourie's steep,
And a voice came to him from the green land,
And one from the barren deep.
The green sea shuddered, and he did shake,
For the words were those which no mortals make.
Away he sailed—and the lightning came,
And streamed from the top of his mast;
Away he sailed, and the thunder came,
And spoke from the depth of the blast:
"O God!" he said, and his tresses so hoar
Shone bright i' the flame, as he shot from the shore.
Away he sailed—and the green isles smiled,
And the sea-birds sang around:
He sought to land—and down sank the shores
With a loud and a murmuring sound;
And where the greenwood and the sweet sod should be
There tumbled a wild and a shoreless sea.
Away he sailed—and the moon looked out,
With one large star by her side—
Down shot the star, and up sprang the sea-fowl
With a shriek—and roared the tide!
The bark, with a leap, seemed the stars to sweep,
And then to dive in the hollowest deep.
Criffel's green mountain towered on his right—
Upon his left, Saint Bees—
Behind, Caerlaverock's charmed ground—
Before, the wild wide seas:
And there a witch-fire, broad and bright,
Shed far a wild unworldly light!
A lady sat high on Saint Bees' Head,
With her pale cheek on her hand;
She gazed forth on the troubled sea,
And on the troubled land;
She lifted her hands to heaven—her eyes
Rained down bright tears—still the shallop flies.
The shallop shoulders the surge and flies,
But at that lady's prayer
The charmed wind fell mute, nor stirred
The rings of her golden hair:
And over the sea there passed a breath
From heaven—the sea lay mute as death.
And the shallop sunders the gentle flood,
No breathing wind is near:
And the shallop sunders the gentle flood,
And the flood lies still with fear—
And the ocean, the earth, and the heaven smile sweet
While the old mariner chanted this maritime rhyme, he looked upon me from time to time, and perhaps felt pleased in exciting the interest of a youthful mind, and obtaining a regard which had been but sparingly bestowed in his native land. He loosed a little skiff, and, stepping into it, pushed through the surge to the place where I stood, and was in a moment beside me. I could not help gazing, with an eye reflecting wonder and respect, on a face—bold, mournful, and martial, as his was—which had braved so long "the battle and the breeze." He threw across my shoulders a mantle of leopard skin, and said, as he walked towards his little cottage on the rock: "Youth, I promised that mantle to the first one who welcomed me from a voyage of great peril. Take it, and be happier than the giver—and glad am I to be welcomed by the son of my old captain, Randal Forster."
Such were the circumstances under which I became acquainted with Richard Faulder of Allanbay. At his lonely hearth I was afterwards a frequent and welcome guest, and an attentive and wondering auditor to his wild maritime legends, gathered on many an isle and mainland coast; but none of all his stories made a deeper impression on my memory than the tale of "The Last Lord of Helvellyn."