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Victory, and wealth, and glory;
Or old Valhalla’s roaring hail,
Her ever-circling mead and ale,
#Where for eternity unite
The joys of wassail and of fight.
Headlong forward, foot and horsemen,
Charge and fight, and die like Norsemen!”
“The poor unhappy blinded heathens!” said Triptolemus, with a sigh deep enough for a groan; “ they speak of their eternal cups of ale, and I question if they kend how to manage a croft land of grain!”
“The cleverer fellows they, neighbour Yellowley,” answered the poet, “ if they made ale without barley.”
“Barley! — alack-a-day!” replied the more accurate agriculturist, “ who ever heard of barley in these parts? Bear, my dearest friend, bear is all they have, and wonderment it is to me that they ever see an awn of it. Ye scart the land with a bit thing ye ca’ a pleugh — ye might as weel give it a ritt with the teeth of a redding-kame. Oh, to see the sock, and the heel, and the sole-clout of a real steady Scottish pleugh, with a chield like a Samson between the stilts, laying a weight on them would keep down a mountain; twa stately owsen, and as many broad-breasted horse in the traces, going through soil and till, and leaving a fur in the ground would carry off water like a causeyed syver! They that have seen a sight like that, have seen something to crack about in another sort, than those unhappy auld-warld stories of war and slaughter, of which the land has seen even but too mickle, for a’ your singing and soughing awa in praise of such bloodthirsty doings, Master Claud Halcro.”
“It is a heresy,” said the animated little poet, bridling and drawing himself up, as if the whole defence of the Orcadian Archipelago rested on his single arm — ” It is a heresy so much as to name one’s native country, if a man is not prepared when and how to defend himself — ay, and to annoy another. The time has been, that if we made not good ale and aquavitae, we knew well enough where to find that which was ready made to our hand; but now the descendants of Sea-kings, and Champions, and Berserkars, are become as incapable of using their swords, as if they were so many women. Ye may praise them for a strong pull on an oar, or a sure foot on a skerry; but what else could glorious John himself say of ye, my good Hialtlanders, that any man would listen to?”
“Spoken like an angel, most noble poet,” said Cleveland, who, during an interval of the dance, stood near the party in which this conversation was held. “The old champions you talked to us about yesternight were the men to make a harp ring — gallant fellows, that were friends to the sea, and enemies to all that sailed on it. Their ships, I suppose, were clumsy enough; but if it is true that they went upon the account as far as the Levant, I scarce believe that ever better i fellows unloosed a topsail.”.
“Ay,” replied Halcro, “there you spoke them right. In those days none could call their life and means of living their own, unless they dwelt twenty miles out of sight of the blue sea. Why, they had public prayers put up in every church in Europe, for deliverance from the ire of the Northmen In France and England, ay, and in Scotland too, for as high as they hold their head nowadays, there was not a bay or a haven, but it was freer to our forefathers than to the poor devils of natives; and now we cannot, forsooth, so much as grow our own barley without Scottish help” — (here he darted a sarcastic glance at the factor) — ”I would I saw the time we were to measure arms with them again!
“Spoken like a hero once more,” said Cleveland.
“Ah!” continued the little bard, “I would it were possible-to see our barks, once the water-dragons of the world, swimming with the black raven standard waving at the topmast, and their decks glimmering with arms, instead of being heaped up with stockfish — winning with our fearless hands what the niggard soil denies — paying back all old scorr and modern injury — reaping where we never sowed, anc iellin-what we never planted — living and laughing througt the world, and smiling when we were summoned to qui it!”
So spoke Claud Halcro, in no serious, or at least most certainly in no sober mood, his brain (never the most stable whizzing under the influence of fifty well-remembered sagas besides five bumpers of usquebaugh and brandy; and Cleve land, between jest and earnest, clapped him on the shoulder, and again repeated, “ Spoken like a hero!”
“Spoken like a fool, I think,” said Magnus Troil, whose attention had been also attracted by the vehemence of the little bard — ” where would you cruise upon, or against whom? — we are all subjects of one realm, I trow, and I would have you to remember, that your voyage may bring up at Execution Dock. — I like not the Scots — no offence, Mr. Yellowley — that is, I would like them well enough if they would stay quiet in their own land, and leave us at peace with our own people, and manners, and fashions; and if they would but abide there till I went to harry them like a mad old Berserkar, I would leave them in peace till the day of judgment. With what the sea sends us, and the land lends us, as the proverb says, and a set of honest neighbourly folks to help us to consume it, so help me, Saint Magnus, as I think we are even but too happy!”
“I know what war is,” said an old man; “and I would as soon sail through Sumburgh Roost in a cockleshell, or in a worse loom, as I would venture there again.”
“And, pray, what wars knew your valour?” said Halcro, who, though forbearing to contradict his landlord from a sense of respect, was not a whit inclined to abandon his argument to any meaner authority.
“I was pressed,” answered the old Triton, “to serve under Montrose, when he came here about the sixteen hundred and fifty-one, and carried a sort of us off, will ye nill ye, to get our throats cut in the wilds of Strathnavern1 — I shall never forget it — we had been hard put to it for victuals — what would I have given for a luncheon of Burgh-Westra beef — ay, or a mess of sour sillocks? — When our Highlandmen brought in a dainty drove of kyloes, much ceremony there was not, for we shot and felled, and flayed, and roasted, and broiled, as it came to every man’s hand; till, just as our beards were at the greasiest, we heard — God preserve us — a tramp of horse, then twa or three drapping shots, — then came a full salvo, — and then, when the officers were crying on us to stand, and maist of us looking which way we might run away, down they broke, horse and foot, with old John Urry, or Hurry,1 or whatever they called him — he hurried us that day, and worried us to boot — and we began to fall as thick as the stots that we were felling five minutes before.”
1 Montrose, in his last and ill-advised attempt to invade Scotland, augmented his small army of Danes and Scottish Royalists, by some bands of raw troops, hastily levied, or rather pressed into his service, in the Orkney and Zetland Isles, who, having little heart either to the cause or manner of service, behaved but indifferently when they came into action.
“And Montrose,” said the soft voice of the graceful Minna; “ what became of Montrose, or how looked he?”
“Like a lion with the hunters before him,” answered the old gentleman; “ but I looked not twice his way, for my own lay right over the hill.”
“And so you left him?” said Minna, in a tone of the deepest contempt.
u It was no fault of mine, Mistress Minna, answered the old man, somewhat out of countenance; “ but I was there with no choice of my own; and, besides, what good could I have done? — all the rest were running like sheep, and why should I have stayed?”
“You might have died with him,” said Minna.
“And lived with him to all eternity, in immortal verse!” added Claud Halcro..
“I thank you, Mistress Minna,” replied the plain-dealing Zetlander; “ and I thank you, my old friend Claud; — but I would rather drink both your healths in this good bicker of ale, like a living man as I am, than that you should be making songs in my honour, for having died forty or fifty years agone. But what signified it, — run or fight, ‘twas all one; they took Montrose, poor fellow, for all his doughty deeds, and they took me that did no doughty deeds at all; and they hanged him, poor man, and as for me”
“I trust in Heaven they flogged