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Books: The Monastery

S >> Sir Walter Scott >> The Monastery




What I have remarked as peculiar to Editors of the class in which I
venture to enrol you, is the happy combination of fortuitous
circumstances which usually put you in possession of the works which
you have the goodness to bring into public notice. One walks on the
sea-shore, and a wave casts on land a small cylindrical trunk or
casket, containing a manuscript much damaged with sea-water, which is
with difficulty deciphered, and so forth. [Footnote: See the History
of Automathes.] Another steps into a chandler's shop, to purchase a
pound of butter, and, behold! the waste-paper on which it is laid is
the manuscript of a cabalist. [Footnote: Adventures of a Guinea.] A
third is so fortunate as to obtain from a woman who lets lodgings, the
curious contents of an antique bureau, the property of a deceased
lodger. [Footnote: Adventures of an Atom.] All these are certainly
possible occurrences; but, I know not how, they seldom occur to any
Editors save those of your country. At least I can answer for myself,
that in my solitary walks by the sea, I never saw it cast ashore any
thing but dulse and tangle, and now and then a deceased star-fish; my
landlady never presented me with any manuscript save her cursed bill;
and the most interesting of my discoveries in the way of waste-paper,
was finding a favourite passage of one of my own novels wrapt round an
ounce of snuff. No, Captain, the funds from which I have drawn my
power of amusing the public, have been bought otherwise than by
fortuitous adventure. I have buried myself in libraries to extract
from the nonsense of ancient days new nonsense of my own. I have
turned over volumes, which, from the pot-hooks I was obliged to
decipher, might have been the cabalistic manuscripts of Cornelius
Agrippa, although I never saw "the door open and the devil come in."
[Footnote: See Southey's Ballad on the Young Man who read in a
Conjuror's Books.] But all the domestic inhabitants of the libraries
were disturbed by the vehemence of my studies:--

From my research the boldest spider fled,
And moths, retreating, trembled as I read;

From this learned sepulchre I emerged like the Magician in the Persian
Tales, from his twelve-month's residence in the mountain, not like him
to soar over the heads of the multitude, but to mingle in the crowd,
and to elbow amongst the throng, making my way from the highest
society to the lowest, undergoing the scorn, or, what is harder to
brook, the patronizing condescension of the one, and enduring the
vulgar familiarity of the other,--and all, you will say, for
what?--to collect materials for one of those manuscripts with which
mere chance so often accommodates your country-men; in other words, to
write a successful novel.--"O Athenians, how hard we labour to deserve
your praise!"

I might stop here, my dear Clutterbuck; it would have a touching
effect, and the air of proper deference to our dear Public. But I will
not be false with you,--(though falsehood is--excuse the
observation--the current coin of your country,) the truth is, I have
studied and lived for the purpose of gratifying my own curiosity, and
passing my own time; and though the result has been, that, in one
shape or other, I have been frequently before the Public, perhaps more
frequently than prudence warranted, yet I cannot claim from them the
favour due to those who have dedicated their ease and leisure to the
improvement and entertainment of others.

Having communicated thus freely with you, my dear Captain, it follows,
of course, that I will gratefully accept of your communication, which,
as your Benedictine observed, divides itself both by subject, manner,
and age, into two parts. But I am sorry I cannot gratify your literary
ambition, by suffering your name to appear upon the title-page; and I
will candidly tell you the reason.

The Editors of your country are of such a soft and passive
disposition, that they have frequently done themselves great disgrace
by giving up the coadjutors who first brought them into public notice
and public favour, and suffering their names to be used by those
quacks and impostors who live upon the ideas of others. Thus I shame
to tell how the sage Cid Hamet Benengeli was induced by one Juan
Avellaneda to play the Turk with the ingenious Miguel Cervantes, and
to publish a Second Part of the adventures of his hero the renowned
Don Quixote, without the knowledge or co-operation of his principal
aforesaid. It is true, the Arabian sage returned to his allegiance,
and thereafter composed a genuine continuation of the Knight of La
Mancha, in which the said Avellaneda of Tordesillas is severely
chastised. For in this you pseudo-editors resemble the juggler's
disciplined ape, to which a sly old Scotsman likened James I., "if you
have Jackoo in your hand, you can make him bite me; if I have Jackoo
in my hand, I can make him bite you." Yet, notwithstanding the
_amende honorable_ thus made by Cid Hamet Benengeli, his
temporary defection did not the less occasion the decease of the
ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote, if he can be said to die, whose memory
is immortal. Cervantes put him to death, lest he should again fall
into bad hands. Awful, yet just consequence of Cid Hamet's defection!

To quote a more modern and much less important instance. I am sorry to
observe my old acquaintance Jedediah Cleishbotham has misbehaved
himself so far as to desert his original patron, and set up for
himself. I am afraid the poor pedagogue will make little by his new
allies, unless the pleasure of entertaining the public, and, for aught
I know, the gentlemen of the long robe, with disputes about his
identity.

[Footnote: I am since more correctly informed, that Mr. Cleishbotham
died some months since at Gandercleuch, and that the person assuming
his name is an impostor. The real Jedediah made a most Christian and
edifying end; and, as I am credibly informed, having sent for a
Cameronian clergyman when he was _in extremis_, was so fortunate
as to convince the good man, that, after all, he had no wish to bring
down on the scattered remnant of Mountain folks, "the bonnets of Bonny
Dundee." Hard that the speculators in print and paper will not allow a
good man to rest quiet in his grave.

This note, and the passages in the text, were occasioned by a London
bookseller having printed, as a Speculation, an additional collection
of Tales of My Landlord, which was not so fortunate as to succeed in
passing on the world as genuine.]

Observe, therefore, Captain Clutterbuck, that, wise by these great
examples, I receive you as a partner, but a sleeping partner only. As
I give you no title to employ or use the firm of the copartnery we are
about to form, I will announce my property in my title-page, and put
my own mark on my own chattels, which the attorney tells me it will be
a crime to counterfeit, as much as it would to imitate the autograph
of any other empiric--a crime amounting, as advertisements upon little
vials assure to us, to nothing short of felony. If, therefore, my
dear friend, your name should hereafter appear in any title-page
without mine, readers will know what to think of you. I scorn to use
either arguments or threats; but you cannot but be sensible, that, as
you owe your literary existence to me on the one hand, so, on the
other, your very all is at my disposal. I can at pleasure cut off your
annuity, strike your name from the half-pay establishment, nay,
actually put you to death, without being answerable to any one. These
are plain words to a gentleman who has served during the whole war;
but, I am aware, you will take nothing amiss at my hands.

And now, my good sir, let us address ourselves to our task, and
arrange, as we best can, the manuscript of your Benedictine, so as to
suit the taste of this critical age. You will find I have made very
liberal use of his permission, to alter whatever seemed too favourable
to the Church of Rome, which I abominate, were it but for her fasts
and penances.

Our reader is doubtless impatient, and we must own, with John Bunyan,

We have too long detain'd him in the porch,
And kept him from the sunshine with a torch.

Adieu, therefore, my dear Captain--remember me respectfully to the
parson, the schoolmaster, and the bailie, and all friends of the happy
club in the village of Kennaquhair. I have never seen, and never shall
see, one of their faces; and notwithstanding, I believe that as yet I
am better acquainted with them than any other man who lives.--I shall
soon introduce you to my jocund friend, Mr. John Ballantyne of Trinity
Grove, whom you will find warm from his match at single-stick with a
brother Publisher. [Footnote: In consequence of the pseudo Tales of My
Landlord printed in London, as already mentioned, the late Mr. John
Ballantyne, the author's publisher, had a controversy with the
interloping bibliopolist, each insisting that his Jedediah
Cleishbotham was the real Simon Pure.] Peace to their differences! It
is a wrathful trade, and the _irritabile genus_ comprehends the
bookselling as well as the book-writing species.--Once more adieu!

THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY.



* * * * *

THE MONASTERY.




Chapter the First.


O ay! the Monks, the Monks they did the mischief!
Theirs all the grossness, all the superstition
Of a most gross and superstitious age--
May He be praised that sent the healthful tempest
And scatter'd all these pestilential vapours!
But that we owed them _all_ to yonder Harlot
Throned on the seven hills with her cup of gold,
I will as soon believe, with kind Sir Roger,
That old Moll White took wing with cat arid broomstick,
And raised the last night's thunder.
OLD PLAY.

The village described in the Benedictine's manuscript by the name of
Kennaquhair, bears the same Celtic termination which occurs in
Traquhair, Caquhair, and other compounds. The learned Chalmers derives
this word Quhair, from the winding course of a stream; a definition
which coincides, in a remarkable degree, with the serpentine turns of
the river Tweed near the village of which we speak. It has been long
famous for the splendid Monastery of Saint Mary, founded by David the
First of Scotland, in whose reign were formed, in the same county, the
no less splendid establishments of Melrose, Jedburgh, and Kelso. The
donations of land with which the King endowed these wealthy
fraternities procured him from the Monkish historians the epithet of
Saint, and from one of his impoverished descendants the splenetic
censure, "that he had been a sore saint for the Crown."

It seems probable, notwithstanding, that David, who was a wise as well
as a pious monarch, was not moved solely by religious motives to those
great acts of munificence to the church, but annexed political views
to his pious generosity. His possessions in Northumberland and
Cumberland became precarious after the loss of the Battle of the
Standard; and since the comparatively fertile valley of Teviot-dale
was likely to become the frontier of his kingdom, it is probable he
wished to secure at least a part of these valuable possessions by
placing them in the hands of the monks, whose property was for a long
time respected, even amidst the rage of a frontier war. In this manner
alone had the King some chance of ensuring protection and security to
the cultivators of the soil; and, in fact, for several ages the
possessions of these Abbeys were each a sort of Goshen, enjoying the
calm light of peace and immunity, while the rest of the country,
occupied by wild clans and marauding barons, was one dark scene of
confusion, blood, and unremitted outrage.

But these immunities did not continue down to the union of the crowns.
Long before that period the wars betwixt England and Scotland had lost
their original character of international hostilities, and had become
on the part of the English, a struggle for subjugation, on that of the
Scots a desperate and infuriated defence of their liberties. This
introduced on both sides a degree of fury and animosity unknown to the
earlier period of their history; and as religious scruples soon gave
way to national hatred spurred by a love of plunder, the patrimony of
the Church was no longer sacred from incursions on either side. Still,
however, the tenants and vassals of the great Abbeys had many
advantages over those of the lay barons, who were harassed by constant
military duty, until they became desperate, and lost all relish for
the arts of peace. The vassals of the church, on the other hand, were
only liable to be called to arms on general occasions, and at other
times were permitted in comparative quiet to possess their farms and
feus. [Footnote: Small possessions conferred upon vassals and their
heirs, held for a small quit-rent, or a moderate proportion of the
produce. This was a favourite manner, by which the churchmen peopled
the patrimony of their convents; and many descendants of such
_feuars_, as they are culled, are still to be found in possession
of their family inheritances in the neighbourhood of the great
Monasteries of Scotland.] They of course exhibited superior skill in
every thing that related to the cultivation of the soil, and were
therefore both wealthier and better informed than the military
retainers of the restless chiefs and nobles in their neighbourhood.

The residence of these church vassals was usually in a small village
or hamlet, where, for the sake of mutual aid and protection, some
thirty or forty families dwelt together. This was called the Town, and
the land belonging to the various families by whom the Town was
inhabited, was called the Township. They usually possessed the land in
common, though in various proportions, according to their several
grants. The part of the Township properly arable, and kept as such
continually under the plough, was called _in-field_. Here the use
of quantities of manure supplied in some degree the exhaustion of the
soil, and the feuars raised tolerable oats and bear, [Footnote: Or
bigg, a kind of coarse barley.] usually sowed on alternate ridges, on
which the labour of the whole community was bestowed without
distinction, the produce being divided after harvest, agreeably to
their respective interests.

There was, besides, _out-field_ land, from which it was thought
possible to extract a crop now and then, after which it was abandoned
to the "skiey influences," until the exhausted powers of vegetation
were restored. These out-field spots were selected by any feuar at his
own choice, amongst the sheep-walks and hills which were always
annexed to the Township, to serve as pasturage to the community. The
trouble of cultivating these patches of out-field, and the precarious
chance that the crop would pay the labour, were considered as giving
a right to any feuar, who chose to undertake the adventure, to the
produce which might result from it.

There remained the pasturage of extensive moors, where the valleys
often afforded good grass, and upon which the whole cattle belonging
to the community fed indiscriminately during the summer, under the
charge of the Town-herd, who regularly drove them out to pasture in
the morning, and brought them back at night, without which precaution
they would have fallen a speedy prey to some of the Snatchers in the
neighbourhood. These are things to make modern agriculturists hold up
their hands and stare; but the same mode of cultivation is not yet
entirely in desuetude in some distant parts of North Britain, and may
be witnessed in full force and exercise in the Zetland Archipelago.

The habitations of the church-feuars were not less primitive than
their agriculture. In each village or town were several small towers,
having battlements projecting over the side walls, and usually an
advanced angle or two with shot-holes for flanking the door-way, which
was always defended by a strong door of oak, studded with nails, and
often by an exterior grated door of iron. These small peel-houses were
ordinarily inhabited by the principal feuars and their families; but,
upon the alarm of approaching danger, the whole inhabitants thronged
from their own miserable cottages, which were situated around, to
garrison these points of defence. It was then no easy matter for a
hostile party to penetrate into the village, for the men were
habituated to the use of bows and fire-arms, and the towers being
generally so placed, that the discharge from one crossed that of
another, it was impossible to assault any of them individually.

The interior of these houses was usually sufficiently wretched, for it
would have been folly to have furnished them in a manner which could
excite the avarice of their lawless neighbours. Yet the families
themselves exhibited in their appearance a degree of comfort,
information, and independence, which could hardly have been expected.
Their in-field supplied them with bread and home-brewed ale, their
herds and flocks with beef and mutton (the extravagance of killing
lambs or calves was never thought of). Each family killed a mart, or
fat bullock, in November, which was salted up for winter use, to which
the good wife could, upon great occasions, add a dish of pigeons or a
fat capon,--the ill-cultivated garden afforded "lang-cale,"--and the
river gave salmon to serve as a relish during the season of Lent.

Of fuel they had plenty, for the bogs afforded turf; and the remains
of the abused woods continued to give them logs for burning, as well
as timber for the usual domestic purposes. In addition to these
comforts, the good-man would now and then sally forth to the
greenwood, and mark down a buck of season with his gun or his
cross-bow; and the Father Confessor seldom refused him absolution for
the trespass, if duly invited to take his share of the smoking haunch.
Some, still bolder, made, either with their own domestics, or by
associating themselves with the moss-troopers, in the language of
shepherds, "a start and overloup;" and the golden ornaments and silken
head-gear--worn by the females of one or two families of note, were
invidiously traced by their neighbours to such successful excursions.
This, however, was a more inexplicable crime in the eyes of the Abbot
and Community of Saint Mary's, than the borrowing one of the "gude
king's deer;" and they failed not to discountenance and punish, by
every means in their power, offences which were sure to lead to severe
retaliation upon the property of the church, and which tended to alter
the character of their peaceful vassalage.

As for the information possessed by those dependents of the Abbacies,
they might have been truly said to be better fed than taught, even
though their fare had been worse than it was. Still, however, they
enjoyed opportunities of knowledge from which others were excluded.
The monks were in general well acquainted with their vassals and
tenants, and familiar in the families of the better class among them,
where they were sure to be received with the respect due to their
twofold character of spiritual father and secular landlord. Thus it
often happened, when a boy displayed talents and inclination for
study, one of the brethren, with a view to his being bred to the
church, or out of good-nature, in order to pass away his own idle
time, if he had no better motive, initiated him into the mysteries of
reading and writing, and imparted to him such other knowledge as he
himself possessed. And the heads of these allied families, having more
time for reflection, and more skill, as well as stronger motives for
improving their small properties, bore amongst their neighbours the
character of shrewd, intelligent men, who claimed respect on account
of their comparative wealth, even while they were despised for a less
warlike and enterprising turn than the other Borderers. They lived as
much as they well could amongst themselves, avoiding the company of
others, and dreading nothing more than to be involved in the deadly
feuds and ceaseless contentions of the secular landholders.

Such is a general picture of these communities. During the fatal wars
in the commencement of Queen Mary's reign, they had suffered
dreadfully by the hostile invasions. For the English, now a Protestant
people, were so far from sparing the church-lands, that they forayed
them with more unrelenting severity than even the possessions of the
laity. But the peace of 1550 had restored some degree of tranquillity
to those distracted and harassed regions, and matters began again
gradually to settle upon the former footing. The monks repaired their
ravaged shrines--the feuar again roofed his small fortalice which the
enemy had ruined--the poor labourer rebuilt his cottage--an easy task,
where a few sods, stones, and some pieces of wood from the next copse,
furnished all the materials necessary. The cattle, lastly, were driven
out of the wastes and thickets in which the remnant of them had been
secreted; and the mighty bull moved at the head of his seraglio and
their followers, to take possession of their wonted pastures. There
ensued peace and quiet, the state of the age and nation considered, to
the Monastery of Saint Mary, and its dependencies, for several
tranquil years.




Chapter the Second.


In yon lone vale his early youth was bred,
Not solitary then--the bugle-horn
Of fell Alecto often waked its windings,
From where the brook joins the majestic river,
To the wild northern bog, the curlew's haunt,
Where oozes forth its first and feeble streamlet.
OLD PLAY.

We have said, that most of the feuars dwelt in the village belonging
to their townships. This was not, however, universally the case. A
lonely tower, to which the reader must now be introduced, was at least
one exception to the general rule.

It was of small dimensions, yet larger than those which occurred in
the village, as intimating that, in case of assault, the proprietor
would have to rely upon his own unassisted strength. Two or three
miserable huts, at the foot of the fortalice, held the bondsmen and
tenants of the feuar. The site was a beautiful green knoll, which
started up suddenly in the very throat of a wild and narrow glen, and
which, being surrounded, except on one side, by the winding of a small
stream, afforded a position of considerable strength.

But the great security of Glendearg, for so the place was called, lay
in its secluded, and almost hidden situation. To reach the tower, it
was necessary to travel three miles up the glen, crossing about twenty
times the little stream, which, winding through the narrow valley,
encountered at every hundred yards the opposition of a rock or
precipitous bank on the one side, which altered its course, and caused
it to shoot off in an oblique direction to the other. The hills which
ascend on each side of this glen are very steep, and rise boldly over
the stream, which is thus imprisoned within their barriers. The sides
of the glen are impracticable for horse, and are only to be traversed
by means of the sheep-paths which lie along their sides. It would not
be readily supposed that a road so hopeless and so difficult could
lead to any habitation more important than the summer shealing of a
shepherd.

Yet the glen, though lonely, nearly inaccessible, and sterile, was not
then absolutely void of beauty. The turf which covered the small
portion of level ground on the sides of the stream, was as close and
verdant as if it had occupied the scythes of a hundred gardeners once
a-fortnight; and it was garnished with an embroidery of daisies and
wild flowers, which the scythes would certainly have destroyed. The
little brook, now confined betwixt closer limits, now left at large to
choose its course through the narrow valley, danced carelessly on from
stream to pool, light and unturbid, as that better class of spirits
who pass their way through life, yielding to insurmountable obstacles,
but as far from being subdued by them as the sailor who meets by
chance with an unfavourable wind, and shapes his course so as to be
driven back as little as possible.

The mountains, as they would have been called in England,
_Scottice_ the steep _braes_, rose abruptly over the little
glen, here presenting the gray face of a rock, from which the turf had
been peeled by the torrents, and there displaying patches of wood and
copse, which had escaped the waste of the cattle and the sheep of the
feuars, and which, feathering naturally up the beds of empty torrents,
or occupying the concave recesses of the bank, gave at once beauty and
variety to the landscape. Above these scattered woods rose the hill,
in barren, but purple majesty; the dark rich hue, particularly in
autumn, contrasting beautifully with the thickets of oak and birch,
the mountain ashes and thorns, the alders and quivering aspens, which
checquered and varied the descent, and not less with the dark-green
and velvet turf, which composed the level part of the narrow glen.