Part 6 (1/2)
When beggars die there are no comets seen: The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
Again, in ”Richard III.” (Act 3, Scene 2), _Stanley's_ messenger informs _Hastings_ that his master had commissioned him to say he had dreamt that night ”the boar (Richard) had raised off his helm.” This, he adds, his master regards as a warning to _Hastings_ and himself--
To shun the danger that his soul divines.
The boar was the cognizance, crest, or ”totem” of Richard. In the fourth scene of the same act, _Hastings_, on hearing his death sentence, exclaims:
Woe! woe for England! not a whit for me; For I, too fond, might have prevented this: Stanley did dream the boar did raise his helm; But I disdain'd it, and did scorn to fly.
In Act 4, Scene 4, _Stanley_, addressing _Sir Christopher Urswick_, says:--
Sir Christopher, tell Richmond this from me: That in the sty of this most b.l.o.o.d.y boar, My son, George Stanley, is frank'd up in hold; If I revolt, off goes young George's head; The fear of that withholds my present aid.
In _Richmond's_ address to his army, in the second scene of the fifth act, the Aryan personification of the destroying storm-wind and ”harvest blaster,” as well as ”the monster in former ages, which prowled over the neighbourhood, inflicting injury on man and beast,” is very distinctly indicated, and adds another link to the chain of evidence by which I have endeavoured to justify the hypothesis that the rude sculpture of Winwick may represent the crest or ”totem” of Penda, the ruthless pagan victor in the disastrous fight at Maserfeld, in the year 642. _Richmond_ says:--
The wretched, b.l.o.o.d.y, and usurping boar, _That spoiled your summer fields and fruitful vines_, Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough In your embowell'd bosoms--this foul swine Lies now even in the centre of this isle, Near to the town of Leicester.
There is an old rhyming couplet, referring to the three personages who were Richard's chief advisers or instruments, in his usurpation, Ratcliffe, Catesby and Lovel, which throws additional light on this beast symbolism:--
The rat and the cat, and Lovel the dog, Do govern all England under the hog.
Amongst our Scandinavian predecessors the customs and superst.i.tions now under consideration seem to have been deeply rooted. Sir G. W. Dasent, in the introduction to his translation of the Icelandic saga, the ”Story of Brunt Njal,” says the Icelander believed in wraiths and patches and guardian spirits, who followed particular persons, and belonged to certain families--a belief which seems to have sprung from the habit of regarding body and soul as two distinct beings, which at certain times took each a separate bodily shape. Sometimes the guardian spirit or Jylgja took a human shape, and at others its _form took that of some animal to foreshadow the character of the man to whom it belonged_. Thus it becomes a bear, a wolf, an ox, and even a fox, in men. The Jylgja of women were fond of taking the shape of swans. To see one's own Jylgja was unlucky, and often a sign that a man was 'fey,' or death-doomed. So, when Thord Freedmanson tells Njal that he sees the goat wallowing in its gore in the 'town' of Bergthirsknoll, the foresighted man tells him that he has seen his own Jylgja, and that he must be doomed to die. Finer and n.o.bler natures often saw the guardian spirits of others.... From the Jylgja of the individual it was easy to rise to the still more abstract notion of the guardian spirits of a family, who sometimes, if a great change in the house is about to begin, even show themselves as hurtful to some member of the house. He believed also that some men had more than one shape (voru eigi einhamir); that they could either take the shapes of animals, as bears or wolves, and so work mischief; or that without undergoing bodily change, an access of rage and strength came over them, and more especially towards night, which made them more than a match for ordinary men.”
To those who may fancy that in this inquiry I have carried conjecture and apparent a.n.a.logy beyond the domain of legitimate critical inference, I answer in the words of Professor Gervinus, in his comments on the sonnets of Shakspere--”The caution of the critic does not require that we should repudiate a supposition so extraordinarily probable; it requires alone that we should not obstinately insist upon it and set it up as an established certainty, but that we should lend a willing ear to better and surer knowledge whenever it is offered.” Professor Tyndall, too, in his ”Lectures on Light,” referring to the genesis of all scientific knowledge, says--”All our notions of nature, however exalted or however grotesque, have some foundations in experience. The notion of personal volition in nature had this basis. In the fury and the serenity of natural phenomena the savage saw the transcript of his own varying moods, and he accordingly ascribed these phenomena to beings of like pa.s.sions with himself, but vastly transcending him in power. Thus the notion of _causality_--the a.s.sumption that natural things did not come of themselves, but had unseen antecedents--lay at the root of even the savage's interpretation of nature. Out of this bias of the human mind to seek for the antecedents of phenomena, all science has sprung.”
The value of ”comparative folk-lore,” in the elucidation of obscure pa.s.sages in the early history of mankind, especially with regard to manners, customs, and superst.i.tious faiths, is now pretty generally acknowledged by archaeological students. Since this chapter was first written I find the subject has been ably treated by Mr. J. A. Farrer, in the _Cornhill Magazine_ of January, 1875. He says--”The evidence that the nations now highest in culture were once in the position of those now the lowest is ever increasing, and the study of folk-lore corroborates the conclusions long since arrived at by archaeological science. For, just as stone monuments, flint-knives, lake-piles, and sh.e.l.l-mounds point to a time when Europeans resembled races where such things are still part of actual life, so do the traces in our social organism, of fetis.h.i.+sm, totemism, and other low forms of thought, connect our past with people where such forms of thought are still predominant. The a.n.a.logies with barbarism that still flourish in civilised communities seem only explicable on the theory of a slow and more or less uniform metamorphosis to higher types and modes of life, and we are forced to believe that ere long it will appear a law of development, as firmly established on the inconceivability of the contrary, that civilization should emerge from barbarism as that b.u.t.terflies should first be caterpillars, or that ignorance should precede knowledge. It is in this way that superst.i.tion itself may be turned to the service of science.”
CHAPTER III.
BATTLES IN THE VALLEY OF THE RIBBLE, NEAR WHALLEY AND c.l.i.tHEROE.
WADA'S DEFEAT BY KING EARDULPH, AT BILLANGAHOH, A.D. 798, AND CONTEMPORARY PROPHETIC SUPERSt.i.tIONS. THE VICTORY OF THE SCOTS AT EDISFORD BRIDGE IN 1138. CIVIL WAR INCIDENTS BETWEEN CHARLES I. AND THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, under the date 798, says--”This year there was a great fight at Hwelleage (Whalley), in the land of the Northumbrians, during Lent, on the 4th before the Nones of April, and there Alric, the son of Herbert, was slain, and many others with him.”
Simeon of Durham has the following reference to this battle:--”A.D. 798.
A conspiracy having been organised by the murderers of Ethelred, the king, Wada, the chief of that conspiracy, commenced a war against Eardulph, and fought a battle at a place called by the English Billangahoh, near Walalega, and, after many had fallen on both sides, Wada and his army were totally routed.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP 2.]
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle informs us that four years previously (794), ”Ethelred, king of the Northumbrians, was slain by his own people, on the 13th before the Kalends of May.” This Ethelred seems to have been a very unfortunate or a very tyrannical ruler, even for those barbarous times, for we find, on the same authority, he, in company with Herbert, ”slew three high reves, on the 11th before the Kalends of April,” 778, and that afterwards ”Alfwold obtained the kingdom, and drove Ethelred out of the country; and he (Alfwold) reigned ten years.” This same Alfwold was evidently regarded as a patriot and not as an usurper, for the Chronicle tells us that he ”was slain by Siga, on the 8th before the Kalends of October; and a heavenly light was frequently seen at the place where he was slain; and he was buried at Hexham within the church.” He was succeeded by his nephew, Osred, who, the Chronicle says, afterwards ”was betrayed and driven from the kingdom; and Ethelred, the son of Ethelwald, again obtained the government.” Two years later, from the same authority, we learn that ”Osred, who had been king of the Northhumbrians, having come home from his exile, was seized and slain on the 18th before the Kalends of October,” (792).
These facts throw much light on the social and political state of the country at the period, and demonstrate that Ethelred's murder was by no means an exceptional occurrence. Indeed, the slaying of kings by their own people appears to have been the rule rather than the exception amongst our ancestors, especially in Northumbria, about this period.
Sharon Turner, in his ”History of the Anglo-Saxons,” referring to the internecine conflicts which took place in the North of England for a lengthened period, and especially about this time, says--”Of all the Anglo-Saxon Governments the kingdom of Northumbria had been always the most perturbed. Usurper murdering usurper is the prevailing incident. A crowd of ghastly monarchs pa.s.s swiftly along the page of history as we gaze, and scarcely was the sword of the a.s.sa.s.sin sheathed before it was drawn against its master, and he was carried to the sepulchre which he had just closed upon another. In this manner, during the last century and a half, no fewer than seventeen sceptered chiefs hurled each other from their joyless thrones, and the deaths of the greatest number were accompanied by hecatombs of their friends.”
The public mind, under such circ.u.mstances, must of necessity have been deeply perturbed, and superst.i.tion a.s.sociated the social and political anarchy which prevailed with the ”war of elements,” and other attendant mysterious physical phenomena. The trusty old chronicler, duly impressed with the solemnity of his theme, informs us that during the year preceding the murder of Ethelred ”dire forewarnings came over the land of the Northumbrians and miserably terrified the people; these were excessive whirlwinds and lightnings, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine soon followed these tokens; and a little after that, in the same year, on the 6th before the Ides of January, the ravaging of heathen men lamentably destroyed G.o.d's Church at Lindisfarne through rapine and slaughter.”
The ”heathen men” here referred to were Danish rovers. These ”Northmen, out of Haeretha-land” (Denmark), had a few years previously (787), in three s.h.i.+ps, ”first sought the land of the English nation,” and, having found it and p.r.o.nounced it good, they ceased not their invasions until they became masters of the entire kingdom, under Canute the Great. This conquest of the Northmen mainly resulted from the fact that the English monarchs of the Heptarchy were continually at war either with the Britons or amongst themselves. ”Domestic treason and fierce civil strife” added additional strength to the foe, for both regal enemy and rebellious subject eagerly sought the aid of the pirates, or selected the occasion of their hostile visits to hara.s.s their opponents. Although we have no record of Danish or other Northmen's ravages in Lancas.h.i.+re in the reign of Ethelred or his successor, yet we get a very distinct view of their doings on the eastern coast of Northumbria, and of the internecine strife which rendered the kingdom a relatively easy prey to the brave but brutal and remorseless heathen pirates.
The battles described in the previous chapters were more or less conjectural in some of their aspects; at least the true character of the presumed Arthurian victories on the Douglas, as well as the site of that of Penda over St. Oswald, at Maserfield, have not been demonstrated with such certainty as to obtain universal a.s.sent. Such, however, is not the case with the minor struggle now under consideration. The site a.s.signed to it has never been doubted. The names recorded by the old chroniclers are still extant in the locality, with such orthographic or phonetic changes in their descent from the eighth to the nineteenth century as philologists would antic.i.p.ate. The _Hwelleage_ of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as well as the monk of Durham's mediaeval Latin _Walalega_, are identical with the present Whalley; while _Billangahoh_ is represented by its descendants Billinge, Billington, and Langho.
Archaeological remains have likewise contributed important evidence.
Three large tumuli for centuries have marked the scene of the struggle, one of which, near to Langho, has been removed, and the remains of a buried warrior exhumed. According to J. M. Kemble and other Anglo-Saxon scholars, Billington signifies the homestead or settlement of the sept or clan of the Billings, as Birmingham is that of the Beormings. This rule likewise applies to many other localities where the local nomenclature presents similar features. Consequently, from legitimate a.n.a.logy, we learn that Waddington, on the right bank of the Ribble opposite c.l.i.theroe, is the homestead, town, or settlement of Wadda and his dependents; and Waddow, in its immediate neighbourhood, the how or hill of Wadda.