One winter’s night, when evening had shut in unusually early, owing to the black snow clouds that hung like night close around the horizon, she sat looking dreamily into the fire; she saw in the blaze the two children of her imagination roaming to and fro; her old sheep dog, Fly, lay at her feet; the cows were foddered for the night; the sheep were penned up in the outhouse close by. Fly had been with her while these duties were being done three hours ago; what made the old dog so suddenly restless then? Why did he prick up his ears, and go snuffing to the door; and then pace back to her with such a meaning look?
“Lie down, Fly - good dog!” said she, anxious to resume her dreaming. But Fly would not lie down; and she could no longer dream. Somebody, something must be abroad in this heavy snow- storm; she said afterwards to a neighbour, she felt as “if she must go up to the Fell;” and sure enough it was God’s guiding which led her out. With the foresight common to the Dale’s people, who know what mountain storms are, she took under her cloak a little vial of gin, which had long been stored up for any emergency. She set out with Fly; the snow fell so fast she was almost blinded at first, and the drifts lay thick where the wind blew them. But she had long confidence in Fly, and he ran straight up the little steep path which led through the wood to the more open part of Loughrigg Fell. On she went, her cloak white with snow, which fell on her face, her very eyelashes; when she emerged into the more open ground, it even fell so thickly that she lost sight of Fly, and stood bewildered until he should return to guide her. The wind had ceased for a time, and the air was still and motionless, - every bird and beast was in its sheltering home, and the quiet on those moors was almost awful. Suddenly a child’s feeble, wailing, hopeless cry smote her ear, and in an instant she pressed on in the direction from whence it came. As she gained upon it, she heard Fly’s loud howl for assistance; and that gave her more guidance, for she was sure he was by the lost wanderer. At last, panting and agitated, she reached the spot where, what seemed in that obscurity to be merely a black heap, was fast becoming whitened by the ceaseless snow. It was a child half asleep, in the fatal sleep which precedes death, but not yet unconscious to the pain of the excessive cold which was freezing up his life-blood, for though he could not speak in reply to her anxious words, he moaned dreamily. Now came in the use for the gin; she wetted his lips, she poured a little down his throat; she raised him up, and, past youth as she long had been, she yet found strength to carry him a little way down the hill; then she stopped, overpowered, for a short time; then again with desperate effort she bore him on to the wood, where at any rate the cold was less piercing. Again she gave him a little gin; and now he was able to walk a few steps; and so with passionate prayers to God, who looked down upon her that wild night, she dragged him along to her cottage, and laid him down within the warm influence of the fire. She threw herself on the ground in utter exhaustion for a minute or two; then she arose, stripped him of his wet things, wrapped him in her cloak, and began to chafe his limbs. Then presently he recovered and was able to tell his short story.
“Father had sent him up to the fells for a sheep that was missing; but their dog was not well broken in to the woods, and left him; and night and snow came on, and ho got wildered on the fells, for they had only lately come to live near Rydal, and he did not know the landmarks.” Something in his dark-blue eyes prompted the sudden question, “What do they call you, lad?” The answer was, “John Hawkshaw.”
“Is your father’s name William Hawkshaw? Did you ever live in Troutbeck?” asked Martha, as calmly as she could; for her heart gave a leap, a mist came before her eyes as she uttered the name once so familiar, but so long unspoken by her lips that the sound seemed strange and wild.
Yes! it was Will Hawkshaw’s child she had saved. She fed him and put him warm to bed, and placing the candle where the light fell on his face, without awakening him, she sat down to watch him through the night. His mouth was very different from what Will’s had been; that feature he must have inherited from his mother; and it almost seemed strange to her that she was not his mother; for the maternal breast which is in every woman yearned after him.
She sent word at break of day, by the nearest neighbours, to his parents living three miles away; then she returned to watch him once more. He slept so long and so soundly that, when his mother came with all the speed of anxious love, she found him only at breakfast - sitting like a little king, at a round table, covered with a clean coarse cloth, and feasting away on clap-bread and “sweet butter,” that regular Westmoreland dainty, composed of rum, butter, and sugar, and made only for high days and holidays. Mrs. Hawkshaw, bonny and bright, younger looking than her years, (happy matron as she was,) little dreamed that she saw a former rival in the worn, sad-looking woman, who had saved her child’s life. Martha’s face hardly brightened as she listened to Mrs. Hawkshaw’s overpowering gratitude; she longed so to retain the child, who was now to be taken away from her. She refused all the pressing invitations showered upon her by the wife of the lover of her youth. She only said very earnestly:
“You will let the lad come and see me sometimes.”
“To be sure! we’ll all come. My master would have been here by now to thank ye, but it’s Ambleside cattle market, and he never misses a market.”
Martha wondered if any other reason hindered him from coming on the very natural errand of fetching home his lost child; but she said nothing, and when left alone that day she dreamed more than ever of the days of her youth.
John Hawkshaw often came - sent by his grateful mother; sent by his far-casting father, who thought in his heart that possibly Martha might be induced to leave the land, he had so early coveted, to his son. But from whatever motive he came, he was ever and always welcome, and his own sweet nature harboured no selfish motives. He came as a child for the amusement and the variety of the thing, but he came as a youth and as a man for the real love and respect he felt for his aunt (for so she would have him call her). Such was the state of things when first I saw the cottage, and heard the history. Martha had never cared for her wealth; had never realized the power it gave her. But all at once a bright light broke upon her, of the happiness it might create, when she learnt from “her boy” (a grown man he was), how he loved a poor girl in Grasmere; a good daughter to her parents, and a braid-sitter; but how they could not marry for many years, for she had nothing, and he was but one out of a large family. He looked forward to this long engagement with resigned regret, and she said nothing at the time. But she made long inquiry about the girl: all answers were satisfactory. She surprised her nephew when next he came, with the statement of her property in the bank; she told him he should marry the girl, and bring her to the old wood-house as to her home; and they should dwell with her, and be to her as a son and a daughter.
Now she holds the honoured place of a grandmother. She nurses a little Martha on her knee, while a “Johnnie” (for whom she puts up many an earnest prayer) strays out with toddling steps, and makes that childish garden you saw, with many a crow of delight, and call to “Granny” to come and look.
There will not be a grave in Grasmere church-yard, more decked with flowers - more visited with respect, regret, and tears, and faithful trust, than that of Martha Preston when she dies.
MODERN GREEK SONGS
I have lately met with a French book which has interested me much; and, as it is now out of print, and was never very extensively known, I imagine some account of it may not be displeasing to the readers of “Household Words.”
It is called “Chants Populaires de la Grèce Moderne, par C. Fauriel.” M. Fauriel is a Greek, in spite of his French name, and the language in which he writes. The plan on which he has collected these “Chants Populaires resembles that of Sir Walter Scott, in his Border Minstrelsy.” In both cases there is a preliminary discourse explaining the manners and peculiar character of the people among whom these ballads circulate, and the history of whose ancestors and popular heroes they commemorate. This discourse and the explanatory
notes give the principal interest to the book, as they tell of the habits and customs and traditions of a people whom we are apt to moan over, as having fallen low from the high estate of the civilisation of their ancestors. But, as there are four millions of men who claim a direct descent from the most polished people the world has ever known, it becomes worth one’s while to learn something of their present state.
M. Fauriel divides the poetry of modern Greece into two kinds; works of literature, written down as composed, and corrected and revised in strict accordance with the rules of art, and the real ballads - poems springing out of the heart of the nation whenever it is deeply stirred, and circulating from man to man with the rapidity of flame never written down, but never forgotten. Some of these songs relate to domestic, but the majority to popular, events.
Let us take the household songs. There are two feasts which are celebrated in every house. The first is on New Year’s Day, the feast of St. Basil in the Greek Church. The account which M. Fauriel gives reminds me much of a Scottish New Year’s Day. The young men pass from one house to another until all their friends have been visited; bringing with them presents, and going, in glad procession, to salute all their acquaintances. But, instead of our “I wish you a happy new year and many of them,” the young Greeks, on entering each house, sing some verses in honour of the master or head of the family; others in honour of the mistress; the sons of the house have each their song, nor are the daughters forgotten. Those who are absent or dead receive this compliment last of all. The key changes; the remembrance of the lost is sung mournfully and sadly; but none of the family are left out on the feast of St. Basil. As they go along the streets they sing in honour of the saint. I was once, in England, most kindly received by a Greek family, who allowed me to witness their Easter-day ceremonies; which, in the expression of good wishes and the glad visits of congratulation paid by all the gentlemen to their friends, must have resembled a feast of St. Basil without the songs. The family consisted of a Greek mother, a most lovely daughter, and a son, who left his own home on this day to visit his friends.
In one corner of the small English drawing-room there was spread a table covered with mellow-looking sweetmeats, all as if the glow of sunset rested on their amber and crimson colours; and there were decanters containing mysterious liquids to match. In came one Greek gentleman after another with some short sentence, which burst forth as if it contained the perfection of joy. It was the Greek for “Christ is risen.” Then all shook hands; the visitors tasted of the jewel-like sweetmeats, and rushed off to go somewhere else, and to have their places taken by other troops of friends. But we had no songs; nor do I know if, in our cold northern climate, the Greeks keep up the feast of the coming Spring. In Greece this is held on the first of March; the first of May would often be early greeting to the spring in England. At this pretty holiday, the children in their spring of human life join the young men, and go singing about the streets, and asking for small presents in honour of the soft and budding time; and every one gives them an egg, or some cheese, or some other simple produce of the country. The song they sing is one which, for its grace and the breath of spring and flowers which perfumes it, is known in many countries, as well as in Greece, under the name of the Song of the Swallow. The children carry about with them the figure of a swallow rudely cut in wood, and fastened to a kind of little windmill, which is turned by a piece of string fastened to a cylinder.
The modern Greeks are an essentially commercial people. I have heard a saying which shows the popular opinion of their bargaining talents: “It takes two Englishmen to cheat a Scotchman; two Scotchmen to cheat a Jew; two Jews to cheat a Greek.” This turn for commerce, added to the poverty of their own country, and the uncertain tenure of property there, causes numbers of Greeks to become merchants in other countries; but they suffer acutely on first leaving their homes; the nearer to the mountains the more they mourn; and their sadness as well as their joy is expressed by song.
When anyone is leaving his home to go into a strange land, his friends and companions meet together at his house to share with him one final meal; and, after that, they accompany him on a part of his way, as Orpah and Ruth accompanied Naomi; as Raphael’s companions, for the great love they bore him, went with him when he left the studio of Perugino. And as they walk along they sing. There are songs set apart from time immemorial for the sad occasion of a Greek’s departure from Greece; and others are made on the spot, out of the excited feelings of the moment. There is a story told of a youth - the youngest of three brothers - but little beloved by his mother: the poor fellow endeavoured in vain to win some scanty sprinkling of the affection that was showered on his elder brothers; and at last he determined to become an exile from that home which was no home to him. So he set forth, accompanied by his young companions, his brothers, his sisters, and, as a matter of form, by his mother herself. Four or five miles from his birthplace there was a small gorge through which the narrow road wound. This was the determined point of separation; and here, among the rocky echoes, were sung the most doleful farewell songs. Suddenly the young man mounted upon a rock, and improvised a poem on the sufferings he had experienced from the indifference of his mother. He cried to her to bless him once, before he went away for ever, with something of the wild entreaty of Esau when he adjured Isaac to “Bless me, also, O my father!” Nor was this strange poetic appeal in vain: “the mother, with a sudden Eastern change of feeling, could hardly wait until the improvised song was finished (I have sometimes felt as impatient over an improvised sermon), before she in her turn sang her repentance; and promised, if he would remain at home, that she would be a better mother for the future.” M. Fauriel says no more. I should not have been sorry to have had the old fairy-tale ending affixed to this true story, “And they lived together very happily for ever after.”
Now let us hear about the marriage-songs. Life seems like an opera amongst the modern Greeks; all emotions, all events, require the relief of singing. But a marriage is a singing time among human beings as well as birds. Among the Greeks the youth of both sexes are kept apart, and do not meet excepting on the occasion of some public feast, when the young Greek makes choice of his bride, and asks her parents for their consent. If they give it, all is arranged for the betrothal; but the young people are not allowed to see each other again until that event. There are parts of Greece where the young man is allowed to declare his passion himself to the object of it. Not in words, however, does he breathe his tender suit. He tries to meet with her in some path, or other place in which he may throw her an apple or a flower. If the former missile be chosen, one can only hope that the young lady is apt at catching, as a blow from a moderately hard apple is rather too violent a token of love. After this apple or flower throwing, his only chance of meeting with his love is at the fountain; to which all Greek maidens go to draw water, as Rebekah went, of old, to the well.
The ceremony of betrothal is very simple. On an appointed evening, the relations of the lovers meet together in the presence of a priest, either at the house of the father of the future husband, or at that of the parents of the bride elect. After the marriage contract is signed, two young girls bring in the affianced maiden - who is covered all over with a veil - and present her to her lover, who takes her by the hand, and leads her up to the priest. They exchange rings before him, and he gives them his blessing. The bride then retires; but all the rest of the company remain, and spend the day in merry-making and drinking the health of the young couple. The interval between the betrothal and the marriage may be but a few hours; it may be months, and it may be years; but, whatever the length of time, the lovers must never meet again until the wedding day comes. Three or four days before that time, the father and mother of the bride send round their notes of invitation; each of which is accompanied by the present of a bottle of wine. The answers come in with even more substantial accompaniments. Those who have great pleasure in accepting, send a present with their reply; the most frequent is a ram or lamb
dressed up with ribands and flowers; but the poorest send their quarter of mutton as their contribution to the wedding-feast.
The eve of the marriage, or rather during the night, the friends on each side go to deck out the bride and groom for the approaching ceremony. The bridegroom is shaved by his paranymph or groom’s man, in a very grave and dignified manner, in the presence of all the young ladies invited. Fancy the attitude of the bridegroom anxious and motionless under the hands of his unpractised barber, his nose held lightly up between a finger and thumb, while a crowd of young girls look gravely on at the graceful operation! The bride is decked, for her part, by her young companions; who dress her in white, and cover her all over with a long veil made of the finest stuff. Early the next morning the young man and all his friends come forth, like a bridegroom out of his chamber, to seek the bride, and carry her off from her father’s house. Then she, in songs as ancient as the ruins of the old temples that lie around her, sings her sorrowful farewell to the father who has cared for her and protected her hitherto; to the mother who has borne her, and cherished her; to the companions of her maidenhood; to her early home; to the fountain whence she daily fetched water; to the trees which shaded her childish play; and every now and then she gives way to natural tears: then, according to immemorial usage, the paranymph turns to the glad yet sympathetic procession, and says in a sentence which has become proverbial on such occasions - “Let her alone! she weeps!” To which she must make answer, “Lead me away, but let me weep!” After the cortège has borne the bride to the house of her husband, the whole party adjourn to church, where the religious ceremony is performed. Then they return to the dwelling of the bridegroom, where they all sit down and feast; except the bride, who remains veiled, standing alone, until the middle of the banquet, when the paranymph draws near, unlooses the veil, which falls down, and she stands blushing, exposed to the eyes of all the guests. The next day is given up to the performance of dances peculiar to a wedding. The third day the relations and friends meet all together, and lead the bride to the fountain, from the waters of which she fills a new earthen vessel; and into which she throws various provisions. They afterwards dance in circles round the fountain.
Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell Page 482
