From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England. Katharine Lee Bates

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СКАЧАТЬ Scott of Buccleuch, could bear.

      "And have they ta'en him, Kinmont Willie,

       Against the truce of the Border tide,

       And forgotten that the bauld Buccleuch

       Is Keeper on the Scottish side?

      "And have they ta'en him, Kinmont Willie,

       Withouten either dread or fear,

       And forgotten that the bauld Buccleuch

       Can back a steed or shake a spear?

      "O! were there war between the lands,

       As well I wot that there is nane,

       I would slight Carlisle castle high

       Though it were builded of marble stane.

      "I would set that castle in a low[1] And sloken it with English blood; There's never a man in Cumberland Should ken where Carlisle Castle stood.

      "But since nae war's between the lands,

       And there is peace, and peace should be,

       I'll neither harm English lad or lass,

       And yet the Kinmont freed shall be."

      So Buccleuch rode out, one dark night, with a small party of Borderers, and succeeded, aided by one of the gusty storms of the region, in making his way to Carlisle undetected.

      "And when we left the Staneshaw-bank,

       The wind began full loud to blaw;

       But 'twas wind and weet, and fire and sleet,

       When we came beneath the castle wa'."

      The sudden uproar raised by the little band bewildered the garrison, and to Kinmont Willie, heavily ironed in the inner dungeon and expecting death in the morning, came the voices of friends.

      "Wi' coulters, and wi' forehammers,

       We garr'd[2] the bars bang merrilie, Until we cam' to the inner prison, Where Willie o' Kinmont he did lie.

      "And when we cam' to the lower prison,

       Where Willie o' Kinmont he did lie:

       'O sleep ye, wake ye, Kinmont Willie,

       Upon the morn that thou's to die?'

      "'O I sleep saft, and I wake aft;

       It's lang since sleeping was fley'd frae me!

       Gie my service back to my wife and bairns,

       And a' gude fellows that spier[3] for me.'"

      But his spirits rose to the occasion, and when Red Rowan,

      "The starkest man in Teviotdale,"

      hoisted Kinmont Willie, whose fetters there was no time to knock off, on his back and carried him up to the breach they had made in the wall, from which they went down by a ladder they had brought with them, the man so narrowly delivered from the noose had his jest ready:

      "Then shoulder-high with shout and cry

       We bore him down the ladder lang;

       At every stride Red Rowan made

       I wot the Kinmont's airns[4] play'd clang.

      "'O mony a time,' quo' Kinmont Willie,

       'I have ridden horse baith wild and wood.[5] But a rougher beast than Red Rowan I ween my legs have ne'er bestrode.

      "'And mony a time,' quo' Kinmont Willie,

       'I've pricked a horse out owre the furse,

       But since the day I back'd a steed,

       I never wore sic cumbrous spurs.'"

      It is high time that we, too, escaped from Carlisle Castle into the open-air delights of the surrounding country. Five miles to the east lies the pleasant village of Wetheral on the Eden. Corby Castle, seat of a branch of the great Howard family, crowns the wooded hill across the river, but we lingered in Wetheral Church for the sake of one who may have been an ancestor of "the fause Sakelde." This stately sleeper is described as Sir Richard Salkeld, "Captain and Keeper of Carlisle," who, at about the time of Henry VII, "in this land was mickle of might." His effigy is sadly battered; both arms are gone, a part of a leg, and the whole body is marred and dinted, with latter-day initials profanely scrawled upon it. But he, lying on the outside, has taken the brunt of abuse and, like a chivalrous lord, protected Dame Jane, his lady, whose alabaster gown still falls in even folds.

      We drove eastward ten miles farther, under sun and shower, now by broad meadows where sleek kine, secure at last from cattle-lifters, were tranquilly grazing, now by solemn ranks of Scotch firs and far-reaching parks of smooth-barked, muscular beeches, now through stone-paved hamlets above whose shop-doors we would read the familiar ballad names, Scott, Graham (Graeme), Armstrong, Musgrave, Johnston, Kerr, and wonder how the wild blood of the Border had been tamed to the selling of picture postal cards.

      Our goal was Naworth, one of the most romantic of English castles. Its two great towers, as we approached, called imagination back to the days

      "When, from beneath the greenwood tree,

       Rode forth Lord Howard's chivalry,

      And minstrels, as they marched in order,

       Played, 'Noble Lord Dacre, he dwells on the Border.'"

      Naworth is the heart of a luxuriant valley. The position owes its defensive strength to the gorges cut by the Irthing and two tributaries. These three streams, when supplemented by the old moat, made Naworth an island fortress. The seat of the Earls of Carlisle, it was built by Ranulph Dacre in the fourteenth century. Even the present Lady Carlisle, a pronounced Liberal and a vigorous worker in the causes of Temperance and Woman Suffrage, though claiming to be a more thoroughgoing Republican than any of us in the United States, points out with something akin to pride "the stone man" on the Dacre Tower who has upheld the family escutcheon there for a little matter of five hundred years. In the sixteenth century the Dacre lands passed by marriage to the Howards, and "Belted Will," as Sir Walter Scott dubbed Lord William Howard, proved, under Elizabeth and James, an efficient agent of law and order. Two suits of his plate armour still bear witness to the warrior, whom the people called "Bauld Willie," with the same homely directness that named his wife, in recognition of the ample dower she brought him, "Bessie with the braid apron," but his tastes were scholarly and his disposition devout. Lord William's Tower, with its rugged stone walls, its loopholes and battlements, its steep and narrow winding-stair guarded by a massive iron door, its secret passage to the dungeons, is feudal enough in suggestion, yet here may be seen his library with the oak-panelled roof and the СКАЧАТЬ