The Works of William Harrison Ainsworth

by William Harrison Ainsworth

  Soon after mid-day, and when the bells began to peal merrily again (for even ringers must recruit themselves), at a small cottage in the outskirts of the village, and close to the Calder, whose waters swept past the trimly kept garden attached to it, two young girls were employed in attiring a third, who was to represent Maid Marian, or Queen of May, in the pageant then about to ensue. And, certainly, by sovereign and prescriptive right of beauty, no one better deserved the high title and distinction conferred upon her than this fair girl. Lovelier maiden in the whole county, and however high her degree, than this rustic damsel, it was impossible to find; and though the becoming and fanciful costume in which she was decked could not heighten her natural charms, it certainly displayed them to advantage. Upon her smooth and beautiful brow sat a gilt crown, while her dark and luxuriant hair, covered behind with a scarlet coif, embroidered with gold; and tied with yellow, white, and crimson ribands, but otherwise wholly unconfirmed, swept down almost to the ground. Slight and fragile, her figure was of such just proportion that every movement and gesture had an indescribable charm. The most courtly dame might have envied her fine and taper fingers, and fancied she could improve them by protecting them against the sun, or by rendering them snowy white with paste or cosmetic, but this was questionable; nothing certainly could improve the small foot and finely-turned ankle, so well displayed in the red hose and smart little yellow buskin, fringed with gold. A stomacher of scarlet cloth, braided with yellow lace in cross bars, confined her slender waist. Her robe was of carnation-coloured silk, with wide sleeves, and the gold-fringed skirt descended only a little below the knee, like the dress of a modern Swiss peasant, so as to reveal the exquisite symmetry of her limbs. Over all she wore a surcoat of azure silk, lined with white, and edged with gold. In her left hand she held a red pink as an emblem of the season. So enchanting was her appearance altogether, so fresh the character of her beauty, so bright the bloom that dyed her lovely checks, that she might have been taken for a personification of May herself. She was indeed in the very May of life — the mingling of spring and summer in womanhood; and the tender blue eyes, bright and clear as diamonds of purest water, the soft regular features, and the merry mouth, whose ruddy parted lips ever and anon displayed two rows of pearls, completed the similitude to the attributes of the jocund month.

  Her handmaidens, both of whom were simple girls, and though not destitute of some pretensions to beauty themselves, in nowise to be compared with her, were at the moment employed in knotting the ribands in her hair, and adjusting the azure surcoat.

  Attentively watching these proceedings sat on a stool, placed in a corner, a little girl, some nine or ten years old, with a basket of flowers on her knee. The child was very diminutive, even for her age, and her smallness was increased by personal deformity, occasioned by contraction of the chest, and spinal curvature, which raised her back above her shoulders; but her features were sharp and cunning, indeed almost malignant, and there was a singular and unpleasant look about the eyes, which were not placed evenly in the head. Altogether she had a strange old-fashioned look, and from her habitual bitterness of speech, as well as from her vindictive character, which, young as she was, had been displayed, with some effect, on more than one occasion, she was no great favourite with any one. It was curious now to watch the eager and envious interest she took in the progress of her sister’s adornment — for such was the degree of relationship in which she stood to the May Queen — and when the surcoat was finally adjusted, and the last riband tied, she broke forth, having hitherto preserved a sullen silence.

  The May Queen.

  “Weel, sister Alizon, ye may a farrently May Queen, ey mun say” she observed, spitefully, “but to my mind other Suky Worseley, or Nancy Holt, here, would ha’ looked prottier.”

  “Nah, nah, that we shouldna,” rejoined one of the damsels referred to; “there is na a lass i’ Lonkyshiar to hold a condle near Alizon Device.”

  “Fie upon ye, for an ill-favort minx, Jennet,” cried Nancy Holt; “yo’re jealous o’ your protty sister.”

  “Ey jealous,” cried Jennet, reddening, “an whoy the firrups should ey be jealous, ey, thou saucy jade! Whon ey grow older ey’st may a prottier May Queen than onny on you, an so the lads aw tell me.”

  “And so you will, Jennet,” said Alizon Device, checking, by a gentle look, the jeering laugh in which Nancy seemed disposed to indulge— “so you will, my pretty little sister,” she added, kissing her; “and I will ‘tire you as well and as carefully as Susan and Nancy have just ‘tired me.”

  “Mayhap ey shanna live till then,” rejoined Jennet, peevishly, “and when ey’m dead an’ gone, an’ laid i’ t’ cowld churchyard, yo an they win be sorry fo having werreted me so.”

  “I have never intentionally vexed you, Jennet, love,” said Alizon, “and I am sure these two girls love you dearly.”

  “Eigh, we may allowance fo her feaw tempers,” observed Susan Worseley; “fo we knoa that ailments an deformities are sure to may folk fretful.”

  “Eigh, there it is,” cried Jennet, sharply. “My high shoulthers an sma size are always thrown i’ my feace. Boh ey’st grow tall i’ time, an get straight — eigh straighter than yo, Suky, wi’ your broad back an short neck — boh if ey dunna, whot matters it? Ey shall be feared at onny rate — ay, feared, wenches, by ye both.”

  “Nah doubt on’t, theaw little good-fo’-nothin piece o’ mischief,” muttered Susan.

  “Whot’s that yo sayn, Suky?” cried Jennet, whose quick ears had caught the words, “Tak care whot ye do to offend me, lass,” she added, shaking her thin fingers, armed with talon-like claws, threateningly at her, “or ey’ll ask my granddame, Mother Demdike, to quieten ye.”

  At the mention of this name a sudden shade came over Susan’s countenance. Changing colour, and slightly trembling, she turned away from the child, who, noticing the effect of her threat, could not repress her triumph. But again Alizon interposed.

  “Do not be alarmed, Susan,” she said, “my grandmother will never harm you, I am sure; indeed, she will never harm any one; and do not heed what little Jennet says, for she is not aware of the effect of her own words, or of the injury they might do our grandmother, if repeated.”

  “Ey dunna wish to repeat them, or to think of em,” sobbed Susan.

  “That’s good, that’s kind of you, Susan,” replied Alizon, taking her hand. “Do not be cross any more, Jennet. You see you have made her weep.”

  “Ey’m glad on it,” rejoined the little girl, laughing; “let her cry on. It’ll do her good, an teach her to mend her manners, and nah offend me again.”

  “Ey didna mean to offend ye, Jennet,” sobbed Susan, “boh yo’re so wrythen an marr’d, a body canna speak to please ye.”

  “Weel, if ye confess your fault, ey’m satisfied,” replied the little girl; “boh let it be a lesson to ye, Suky, to keep guard o’ your tongue i’ future.”

  “It shall, ey promise ye,” replied Susan, drying her eyes.

  At this moment a door opened, and a woman entered from an inner room, having a high-crowned, conical-shaped hat on her head, and broad white pinners over her cheeks. Her dress was of dark red camlet, with high-heeled shoes. She stooped slightly, and being rather lame, supported herself on a crutch-handled stick. In age she might be between forty and fifty, but she looked much older, and her features were not at all prepossessing from a hooked nose and chin, while their sinister effect was increased by a formation of the eyes similar to that in Jennet, only more strongly noticeable in her case. This woman was Elizabeth Device, widow of John Device, about whose death there was a mystery to be inquired into hereafter, and mother of Alizon and Jennet, though how she came to have a daughter so unlike herself in all respects as the former, no one could conceive; but so it was.

  “Soh, ye ha donned your finery at last, Alizon,” said Elizabeth. “Your brother Jem has just run up to say that t’ rush-cart has set out, and that Robin Hood and his merry men are comin’ for their Queen.�
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  “And their Queen is quite ready for them,” replied Alizon, moving towards the door.

  “Neigh, let’s ha’ a look at ye fust, wench,” cried Elizabeth, staying her; “fine fitthers may fine brids — ey warrant me now yo’n getten these May gewgaws on, yo fancy yourself a queen in arnest.”

  “A queen of a day, mother; a queen of a little village festival; nothing more,” replied Alizon. “Oh, if I were a queen in right earnest, or even a great lady—”

  “Whot would yo do?” demanded Elizabeth Device, sourly.

  “I’d make you rich, mother, and build you a grand house to live in,” replied Alizon; “much grander than Browsholme, or Downham, or Middleton.”

  “Pity yo’re nah a queen then, Alizon,” replied Elizabeth, relaxing her harsh features into a wintry smile.

  “Whot would ye do fo me, Alizon, if ye were a queen?” asked little Jennet, looking up at her.

  “Why, let me see,” was the reply; “I’d indulge every one of your whims and wishes. You should only need ask to have.”

  “Poh — poh — yo’d never content her,” observed Elizabeth, testily.

  “It’s nah your way to try an content me, mother, even whon ye might,” rejoined Jennet, who, if she loved few people, loved her mother least of all, and never lost an opportunity of testifying her dislike to her.

  “Awt o’pontee, little wasp,” cried her mother; “theaw desarves nowt boh whot theaw dustna get often enough — a good whipping.”

  “Yo hanna towd us whot yo’d do fo yurself if yo war a great lady, Alizon?” interposed Susan.

  “Oh, I haven’t thought about myself,” replied the other, laughing.

  “Ey con tell ye what she’d do, Suky,” replied little Jennet, knowingly; “she’d marry Master Richard Assheton, o’ Middleton.”

  “Jennet!” exclaimed Alizon, blushing crimson.

  “It’s true,” replied the little girl; “ye knoa ye would, Alizon, Look at her feace,” she added, with a screaming laugh.

  “Howd te tongue, little plague,” cried Elizabeth, rapping her knuckles with her stick, “and behave thyself, or theaw shanna go out to t’ wake.”

  Jennet dealt her mother a bitterly vindictive look, but she neither uttered cry, nor made remark.

  In the momentary silence that ensued the blithe jingling of bells was heard, accompanied by the merry sound of tabor and pipe.

  “Ah! here come the rush-cart and the morris-dancers,” cried Alizon, rushing joyously to the window, which, being left partly open, admitted the scent of the woodbine and eglantine by which it was overgrown, as well as the humming sound of the bees by which the flowers were invaded.

  Almost immediately afterwards a frolic troop, like a band of masquers, approached the cottage, and drew up before it, while the jingling of bells ceasing at the same moment, told that the rush-cart had stopped likewise. Chief amongst the party was Robin Hood clad in a suit of Lincoln green, with a sheaf of arrows at his back, a bugle dangling from his baldric, a bow in his hand, and a broad-leaved green hat on his head, looped up on one side, and decorated with a heron’s feather. The hero of Sherwood was personated by a tall, well-limbed fellow, to whom, being really a forester of Bowland, the character was natural. Beside him stood a very different figure, a jovial friar, with shaven crown, rubicund cheeks, bull throat, and mighty paunch, covered by a russet habit, and girded in by a red cord, decorated with golden twist and tassel. He wore red hose and sandal shoon, and carried in his girdle a Wallet, to contain a roast capon, a neat’s tongue, or any other dainty given him. Friar Tuck, for such he was, found his representative in Ned Huddlestone, porter at the abbey, who, as the largest and stoutest man in the village, was chosen on that account to the part. Next to him came a character of no little importance, and upon whom much of the mirth of the pageant depended, and this devolved upon the village cobbler, Jack Roby, a dapper little fellow, who fitted the part of the Fool to a nicety. With bauble in hand, and blue coxcomb hood adorned with long white asses’ ears on head, with jerkin of green, striped with yellow; hose of different colours, the left leg being yellow, with a red pantoufle, and the right blue, terminated with a yellow shoe; with bells hung upon various parts of his motley attire, so that he could not move without producing a jingling sound, Jack Roby looked wonderful indeed; and was constantly dancing about, and dealing a blow with his bauble. Next came Will Scarlet, Stukely, and Little John, all proper men and tall, attired in Lincoln green, like Robin Hood, and similarly equipped. Like him, too, they were all foresters of Bowland, owning service to the bow-bearer, Mr. Parker of Browsholme hall; and the representative of Little John, who was six feet and a half high, and stout in proportion, was Lawrence Blackrod, Mr. Parker’s head keeper. After the foresters came Tom the Piper, a wandering minstrel, habited for the occasion in a blue doublet, with sleeves of the same colour, turned up with yellow, red hose, and brown buskins, red bonnet, and green surcoat lined with yellow. Beside the piper was another minstrel, similarly attired, and provided with a tabor. Lastly came one of the main features of the pageant, and which, together with the Fool, contributed most materially to the amusement of the spectators. This was the Hobby-horse. The hue of this, spirited charger was a pinkish white, and his housings were of crimson cloth hanging to the ground, so as to conceal the rider’s real legs, though a pair of sham ones dangled at the side. His bit was of gold, and his bridle red morocco leather, while his rider was very sumptuously arrayed in a purple mantle, bordered with gold, with a rich cap of the same regal hue on his head, encircled with gold, and having a red feather stuck in it. The hobby-horse had a plume of nodding feathers on his head, and careered from side to side, now rearing in front, now kicking behind, now prancing, now gently ambling, and in short indulging in playful fancies and vagaries, such as horse never indulged in before, to the imminent danger, it seemed, of his rider, and to the huge delight of the beholders. Nor must it be omitted, as it was matter of great wonderment to the lookers-on, that by some legerdemain contrivance the rider of the hobby-horse had a couple of daggers stuck in his cheeks, while from his steed’s bridle hung a silver ladle, which he held now and then to the crowd, and in which, when he did so, a few coins were sure to rattle. After the hobby-horse came the May-pole, not the tall pole so called and which was already planted in the green, but a stout staff elevated some six feet above the head of the bearer, with a coronal of flowers atop, and four long garlands hanging down, each held by a morris-dancer. Then came the May Queen’s gentleman usher, a fantastic personage in habiliments of blue guarded with white, and holding a long willow wand in his hand. After the usher came the main troop of morris-dancers — the men attired in a graceful costume, which set off their light active figures to advantage, consisting of a slashed-jerkin of black and white velvet, with cut sleeves left open so as to reveal the snowy shirt beneath, white hose, and shoes of black Spanish leather with large roses. Ribands were every where in their dresses — ribands and tinsel adorned their caps, ribands crossed their hose, and ribands were tied round their arms. In either hand they held a long white handkerchief knotted with ribands. The female morris-dancers were habited in white, decorated like the dresses of the men; they had ribands and wreaths of flowers round their heads, bows in their hair, and in their hands long white knotted kerchiefs.

  In the rear of the performers in the pageant came the rush-cart drawn by a team of eight stout horses, with their manes and tails tied with ribands, their collars fringed with red and yellow worsted, and hung with bells, which jingled blithely at every movement, and their heads decked with flowers. The cart itself consisted of an enormous pile of rushes, banded and twisted together, rising to a considerable height, and terminated in a sharp ridge, like the point of a Gothic window. The sides and top were decorated with flowers and ribands, and there were eaves in front and at the back, and on the space within them, which was covered with white paper, were strings of gaudy flowers, embedded in moss, amongst which were suspended all the ornaments and finery tha
t could be collected for the occasion: to wit, flagons of silver, spoons, ladles, chains, watches, and bracelets, so as to make a brave and resplendent show. The wonder was how articles of so much value would be trusted forth on such an occasion; but nothing was ever lost. On the top of the rush-cart, and bestriding its sharp ridges, sat half a dozen men, habited somewhat like the morris-dancers, in garments bedecked with tinsel and ribands, holding garlands formed by hoops, decorated with flowers, and attached to poles ornamented with silver paper, cut into various figures and devices, and diminishing gradually in size as they rose to a point, where they were crowned with wreaths of daffodils.

  A large crowd of rustics, of all ages, accompanied the morris-dancers and rush-cart.

  This gay troop having come to a halt, as described, before the cottage, the gentleman-usher entered it, and, tapping against the inner door with his wand, took off his cap as soon as it was opened, and bowing deferentially to the ground, said he was come to invite the Queen of May to join the pageant, and that it only awaited her presence to proceed to the green. Having delivered this speech in as good set phrase as he could command, and being the parish clerk and schoolmaster to boot, Sampson Harrop by name, he was somewhat more polished than the rest of the hinds; and having, moreover, received a gracious response from the May Queen, who condescendingly replied that she was quite ready to accompany him, he took her hand, and led her ceremoniously to the door, whither they were followed by the others.

  Loud was the shout that greeted Alizon’s appearance, and tremendous was the pushing to obtain a sight of her; and so much was she abashed by the enthusiastic greeting, which was wholly unexpected on her part, that she would have drawn back again, if it had been possible; but the usher led her forward, and Robin Hood and the foresters having bent the knee before her, the hobby-horse began to curvet anew among the spectators, and tread on their toes, the fool to rap their knuckles with his bauble, the piper to play, the taborer to beat his tambourine, and the morris-dancers to toss their kerchiefs over their heads. Thus the pageant being put in motion, the rush-cart began to roll on, its horses’ bells jingling merrily, and the spectators cheering lustily.