Part 45 (2/2)
”How mean you?” said Mertoun; ”speak out, short and open--whom do you speak of?”
”It is Norna of the Fitful-head,” said Swertha, ”that the Ranzelman is thinking about; for she has gone up to Saint Ringan's Kirk this morning on business of her own.”
”And what can this person know of my son?” said Mertoun; ”she is, I believe, a wandering madwoman, or impostor.”
”If she wanders,” said Swertha, ”it is for nae lack of means at hame, and that is weel known--plenty of a' thing has she of her ain, forby that the Fowd himsell would let her want naething.”
”But what is that to my son?” said Mertoun, impatiently.
”I dinna ken--she took unco pleasure in Maister Mordaunt from the time she first saw him, and mony a braw thing she gave him at ae time or another, forby the gowd chain that hangs about his bonny craig--folk say it is of fairy gold--I kenna what gold it is, but Bryce Snailsfoot says, that the value will mount to an hundred pounds English, and that is nae deaf nuts.”
”Go, Ronaldson,” said Mertoun, ”or else send some one, to seek this woman out--if you think there be a chance of her knowing any thing of my son.”
”She kens a' thing that happens in thae islands,” said Niel Ronaldson, ”muckle sooner than other folk, and that is Heaven's truth. But as to going to the kirk, or the kirkyard, to speer after her, there is not a man in Zetland will do it, for meed or for money--and that's Heaven's truth as weel as the other.”
”Cowardly, superst.i.tious fools!” said Mertoun.--”But give me my cloak, Swertha.--This woman has been at Burgh-Westra--she is related to Troil's family--she may know something of Mordaunt's absence, and its cause--I will seek her myself--She is at the Cross-kirk, you say?”
”No, not at the Cross-kirk, but at the auld Kirk of Saint Ringan's--it's a dowie bit, and far frae being canny; and if your honour,” added Swertha, ”wad walk by my rule, I wad wait until she came back, and no trouble her when she may be mair busied wi' the dead, for ony thing that we ken, than she is wi' the living. The like of her carena to have other folk's een on them when they are, gude sain us! doing their ain particular turns.”
Mertoun made no answer, but throwing his cloak loosely around him, (for the day was misty, with pa.s.sing showers,) and leaving the decayed mansion of Jarlshof, he walked at a pace much faster than was usual with him, taking the direction of the ruinous church, which stood, as he well knew, within three or four miles of his dwelling.
The Ranzelman and Swertha stood gazing after him in silence, until he was fairly out of ear-shot, when, looking seriously on each other, and shaking their sagacious heads in the same boding degree of vibration, they uttered their remarks in the same breath.
”Fools are aye fleet and fain,” said Swertha.
”Fey folk run fast,” added the Ranzelman; ”and the thing that we are born to, we cannot win by.--I have known them that tried to stop folk that were fey. You have heard of Helen Emberson of Camsey, how she stopped all the boles and windows about the house, that her gudeman might not see daylight, and rise to the Haaf-fis.h.i.+ng, because she feared foul weather; and how the boat he should have sailed in was lost in the Roost; and how she came back, rejoicing in her gudeman's safety--but ne'er may care, for there she found him drowned in his own masking-fat, within the wa's of his ain biggin; and moreover”----
But here Swertha reminded the Ranzelman that he must go down to the haven to get off the fis.h.i.+ng-boats; ”for both that my heart is sair for the bonny lad, and that I am fear'd he cast up of his ain accord before you are at sea; and, as I have often told ye, my master may lead, but he winna drive; and if ye do not his bidding, and get out to sea, the never a bodle of boat-hire will ye see.”
”Weel, weel, good dame,” said the Ranzelman, ”we will launch as fast as we can; and by good luck, neither Clawson's boat, nor Peter Grot's, is out to the Haaf this morning, for a rabbit ran across the path as they were going on board, and they came back like wise men, kenning they wad be called to other wark this day. And a marvel it is to think, Swertha, how few real judicious men are left in this land. There is our great Udaller is weel eneugh when he is fresh, but he makes ower mony voyages in his s.h.i.+p and his yawl to be lang sae; and now, they say, his daughter, Mistress Minna, is sair out of sorts.--Then there is Norna kens muckle mair than other folk, but wise woman ye cannot call her. Our tacksman here, Maister Mertoun, his wit is sprung in the bowsprit, I doubt--his son is a daft gowk; and I ken few of consequence hereabouts--excepting always myself, and maybe you, Swertha--but what may, in some sense or other, be called fules.”
”That may be, Niel Ronaldson,” said the dame; ”but if you do not hasten the faster to the sh.o.r.e, you will lose tide; and, as I said to my master some short time syne, wha will be the fule then?”
CHAPTER V.
I do love these ancient ruins-- We never tread upon them but we set Our foot upon some reverend history; And, questionless, here, in this open court, (Which now lies naked to the injuries Of stormy weather,) some men lie interr'd, Loved the Church so well, and gave so largely to it, They thought it should have canopied their bones Till doomsday;--but all things have their end-- Churches and cities, which have diseases like to men, Must have like death which we have.
_d.u.c.h.ess of Malfy._
The ruinous church of Saint Ninian had, in its time, enjoyed great celebrity; for that mighty system of Roman superst.i.tion, which spread its roots over all Europe, had not failed to extend them even to this remote archipelago, and Zetland had, in the Catholic times, her saints, her shrines, and her relics, which, though little known elsewhere, attracted the homage, and commanded the observance, of the simple inhabitants of Thule. Their devotion to this church of Saint Ninian, or, as he was provincially termed, Saint Ringan, situated, as the edifice was, close to the sea-beach, and serving, in many points, as a landmark to their boats, was particularly obstinate, and was connected with so much superst.i.tious ceremonial and credulity, that the reformed clergy thought it best, by an order of the Church Courts, to prohibit all spiritual service within its walls, as tending to foster the rooted faith of the simple and rude people around in saint-wors.h.i.+p, and other erroneous doctrines of the Romish Church.
After the Church of Saint Ninian had been thus denounced as a seat of idolatry, and desecrated of course, the public wors.h.i.+p was transferred to another church; and the roof, with its lead and its rafters, having been stripped from the little rude old Gothic building, it was left in the wilderness to the mercy of the elements. The fury of the uncontrolled winds, which howled along an exposed s.p.a.ce, resembling that which we have described at Jarlshof, very soon choked up nave and aisle, and, on the north-west side, which was chiefly exposed to the wind, hid the outside walls more than half way up with mounds of drifted sand, over which the gable-ends of the building, with the little belfry, which was built above its eastern angle, arose in ragged and shattered nakedness of ruin.
Yet, deserted as it was, the Kirk of Saint Ringan still retained some semblance of the ancient homage formerly rendered there. The rude and ignorant fishermen of Dunrossness observed a practice, of which they themselves had wellnigh forgotten the origin, and from which the Protestant Clergy in vain endeavoured to deter them. When their boats were in extreme peril, it was common amongst them to propose to vow an _awmous_, as they termed it, that is, an alms, to Saint Ringan; and when the danger was over, they never failed to absolve themselves of their vow, by coming singly and secretly to the old church, and putting off their shoes and stockings at the entrance of the churchyard, walking thrice around the ruins, observing that they did so in the course of the sun. When the circuit was accomplished for the third time, the votary dropped his offering, usually a small silver coin, through the mullions of a lanceolated window, which opened into a side aisle, and then retired, avoiding carefully to look behind him till he was beyond the precincts which had once been hallowed ground; for it was believed that the skeleton of the saint received the offering in his bony hand, and showed his ghastly death's-head at the window into which it was thrown.
Indeed, the scene was rendered more appalling to weak and ignorant minds, because the same stormy and eddying winds, which, on the one side of the church, threatened to bury the ruins with sand, and had, in fact, heaped it up in huge quant.i.ties, so as almost to hide the side-wall with its b.u.t.tresses, seemed in other places bent on uncovering the graves of those who had been laid to their long rest on the south-eastern quarter; and, after an unusually hard gale, the coffins, and sometimes the very corpses, of those who had been interred without the usual cerements, were discovered, in a ghastly manner, to the eyes of the living.
<script>