University of Virginia Library

One breezy day, when all the sea was white
With hoary crests, that rose upon the brine,
Like ruffled plumes upon a fretted bird,
Behind St. Andrews old grey towers I stood,
And paced with pensive foot the high-raised walk,
Which northward looks across the bay, to where
The far red headland, eastward stretching, flouts
The keen dry blast. As I was musing there
Of ancient times and new, bishops and priests,
Martyrs and saints, and sage philosophers,
And bright-eyed dames, who shine in learning's halls,
Like gay birds flitting through a dusky grove;
There comes before my path a little man,
Smooth and close-shaven, very trig and smug,
And well-appointed, not a speck of dust
On all his long black coat, which down beneath
His slender hams, near to his ankle fell;
A snow-white neckcloth with a dainty tie
Embraced his neck, whose skin was fair and fine
As any damsel's:—with a simpering lisp
He spake, and asked me—Pray, Sir, can you tell
What man was Walter Myln? I, like a Scot,
Replied—Why ask you that? I read, quoth he,
That name upon the obelisk, which stands
High-perched above the benty golfing ground,
And, being here a stranger, fain would know
What names you honour in this Northern land;
Our saints in Oxford have a larger fame,
And sound through time, their own interpreter.
O yes! I said, you Southern Square-caps know
As much of Scotland, as a fly that's bred
In a grocer's sugar-cask may comprehend
Of honeyed heather and of mountain bees.
Our glens, you deem, are pleasant hunting-ground
For London brewers and ducal debauchees,
And our fair lochs and mountains a rare show
To salve blear eyes, sick with a six months' view
Of peevish faces in a hot saloon!
But, since your question hints some stray regard
For Scottish worthies, and the sacred blood
That glued the stones of our stout Scottish Kirk,
I'll tell you what I know,—though, in good sooth,
Not much is known of Myln, and even that little
By flippant wits is mostly overskipped,
Whose eye is all for courts and cavaliers,
Crowns, mitres, coronets, and gaudy crests,
Stars, crosses, ribbons, painted heraldries,
The pomp and flare of life; but quiet worth
In strong-souled martyr, or meek-suffering saint,
Like some fair flower in hollow glen remote,
Finds not their roving eye. So said, I drew
A circle round my thoughts, and them adjured
To do their master's will; and to the smug,
Smooth-lipped Oxonian thus my tale began:
Myln, like most men, in those unbookish days,
Who had no taste for arms, was bred to the Church;
And as our Scotland lies remote, a small
Creek in the wide sea of the world, where tides
Are latest felt, he sailed abroad, and spread
The germing blossoms of his youthful thought,
To burst before the doctors of Almayne,
Most learned and subtle. There, belike, his ear
Caught the first stirrings of the God-sent gale,
Which, blown tempestuous from the shrilling trump
Of a poor Saxon monk, smote branchy Rome
With dwindling fear, and from the roots uptore
Her pride o'er half the world. Thence he returned,
Stirred by new thoughts, and thrilled by poignant doubts,
To his dear Scotland, where for many years
The daily offices of the church he used,
And plied the faithful round of priestly service,
In Lunan's sandy bay. The outward man
Long time was calm; but still the ferment worked
Of the new doctrine, which the times had imped
Into his budding soul, and his heart swayed
With strange discomfort; till his ripened thoughts
Grew larger than his place, and he must burst
Old bonds of life. Then, like an embryo bird,
One day—he knew not how, but God that morn
Had pricked his soul—he cracked his shelly case,
Claimed his due portion in a larger life,
And stood a freeman in a land of slaves.
Like as a man, who, in some dusty nook
Of an old lumber-room, amid a heap
Of yellowed papers, lavishly bescrawled
With silly records of ephemeral loves,
And trivial sorrows, suddenly hath spied
A parchment signed and sealed, whose stamp revives
Lost claims, his rusted right refurbishes,
And makes him lord of long mislorded roods;
Into new life he starts, surveys the world
With bolder scope, breathes a more ample breath,
And stands a peer, who late had crouched a slave:
Even so this simple priest, before the power
Of misvouched creeds and a mistutored church,
Stood, with the new-found Bible in his hand,
Which God's own finger wrote.—Forthwith he went,
And preached the precious truth he knew to all,
As free as he had found it; but not all
Would gladly hear it. Few had wit to know;
And of these few, the fewest with strong nerve
Could bear the radiant truth, but dubious lived,
Fearing the dark, and blinking at the day.
Who flings broad truth into a falsèd age
Must count his foes by thousands, and his friends
By units. So, indeed, the priesthood raised
About poor Myln a clattering hue and cry,
As he were known a thief, and rent the ears
O' the fevered time with fretful bickerment;
And him at length in Dysart town—a place
More bruited then than now—they rudely seized,
And to St. Andrews hoary castle haled,
And barred him in yon tower beside the sea,
Whose dungeon yet smelt rank with innocent blood
Of Wishart, and the noble Hamilton.
There first with baits of fleshly lure they tipped
Their churchly hooks, and promised him a stall
In rich Dunfermline's abbey, there to live
In fatted comfort, and to slide at ease
Into a cushioned grave. But not such man
Such straw might tickle. So, from prison dragged,
Before the assembly of the priests he stood,
Even in the pulpit of the Bishop's church
Impeached of heresy; and fearless there
With meek aspect fronted the proud array
Of priests and bishops, priors, provosts, all
The knighthood of the Pope, with motley troops
Of friars, black, and white, and grey, as thick
As flies, that on a sweltering summer day
Have scented carrion in a clover field—
Even in the great church metropolitan
He in the pulpit stood, a weak old man,
But firm, with face serene, and shaded soft
With the mild dignity of fourscore years,
To answer for his faith. They on a bench
Sate lofty-throned, and with full lofty looks
Surveyed the people, or with face composed
To meek devotion, while high-vaulting pride
Housed in their hearts; some only fat and dull,
And gross with swinish habitude of soul,
That made them grunt, when any cleanly foot
Intruded on their sty. Before such court
Sworn in God's name, and to their murtherous work
Invoking Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
Stood Walter Myln. How they accused him, what
The counts of his offending, you may read
In Foxe's book of gospel witnesses;
How he had dared, as any creature dares,
To find a mate, and mingle with his like;
How he had said that bread was bread, not flesh,
And wine plain wine, not very blood of God;
How he declared that bishops were no bishops,
Who marketed in holy things, to feed
Not Christ's dear flock, but their own pride; and how
From land to land he pilgrimed, not to kiss
The bones of maundering monks, and patter prayers
To swart-faced Maries prinked with trumperies,
But with free power to preach the eternal law
Of truth and love, and righteousness to men!
All this he patient heard, and inly wept
To think that reasoning men should reason use,
To lift flat nonsense into attitudes
Of lofty sense, strutting on learnèd stilts,
And weaving curious webs of twisted phrase,
Not to reveal the truth, but to conceal.
Then, when their talk was done, he rose, and flung
Their trivial charges from his swelling soul,
Like straw before the wind; for God inspired
The old man's heart with breath of truth, that he,
His hot youth boiling in his aged breast,
Made nave and choir to ring and sound again,
So stoutly he protested. Wilt thou recant?
Quoth Oliphant—so hight the questioning clerk—
If not, the fire is waiting; thou shalt die.
Then calmly thus the old man spake: I stand
Accused of life. I know that I must die,
Some day not distant. Therefore what you do,
Do quickly. Prove me. I will not recant
God's truth; for I am corn; I am no chaff.
Neither with wind shall I be blown away,
Nor burst by flail; but I will both abide.
And so he made his brave confession, words
Worth libraries of tinkling rhetoric,
Words that made Scotland free, and eftsoons drave
The tyrannous Pope and all his company
Of mitred hirelings from our ransomed land.
But first he gave, like Socrates, his life
To pledge his words; and so with gore they shent
His silvery locks, and for a winding-sheet
Swathed him in flaming pitch; yet not without
Deep grudge of honest men. The people's heart
Was sick of blood, nor wished the old man dead.
The minions of the priesthood were constrained—
For none would lend a rope—to cut the cords
Of their own tents, to bind him to the stake;
Where being fixed, he stood like one entranced
With holy rapture and serene discourse.
Yet not with dumb submission died; once more,
While life remained, and the keen-crackling blaze
Choked not his utterance, his free voice he raised
For truth and right, and God and Christ. And all
The people's hearts were moved; and many wept—
Though tears were perilous then—and inly curst
The priestly bonds they had no strength to break.

And so my tale was told. I saw my smooth
Oxonian friend had only half a mind
To hear my story out; for these Square-caps
Give their free right hand to the Pope, to us
With grudging grace their left; but I was pleased
To blurt a dash of broad-cast Scottish truth,
Athwart his lisping lips. Well, well! he says,
You Scotsmen are a pertinacious brood,
And have that harsh-grained stuff in you, which makes
Bigots and martyrs, democrats and bores;
Fitly you wear the thistle in your cap,
As in your grim theology! I laughed.
O we're not all so fierce! God knows, you'll find
Well-combed and smooth-licked gentlemen enough
In our saloons, who will rejoice with you
To sneer at massive Calvin's close-wedged creed,
And deem John Knox a boor, who dared to speak
Truth to a pretty face topped with a crown;
Who hold that preachers should, like peers, avouch
Their right to preach, by links of pedigree
From Paul or Peter; whom a fervid prayer,
Or a bold word turns to nice squeamishness;
Who sigh for liturgies and surplices,
And all the frippery of your silken church!
Fear not!—the memory of our iron times
Frets the fine nerves of this soft-nurtured age.
Our very streets are prankt with Prelacy;
The squares of breezy Edinburgh show
Statues to perjured princes, men who lived
Chief captains of a swinish court, and died
With rotten souls embalmed in Popery.
Proud monuments are piled to eternise
Lawyers with supple conscience and glib tongue,
And frizzled kings, with never a deeper thought
Than their rolled waistcoats—but you'll beat in vain
Those streets to find one stone to memorise
Dauntless John Knox, or faithful Walter Myln.

So my Scotch bile I vented; and our ways
We parted: he across the golfing ground,
Whence blew the railway's screeching whistle; I
To hold discourse with sage philosophers
Of knowing and of being, and to feed
Mine eyes with pleasant play of kindly looks
From bright-eyed dames, who shine in learning's halls,
Like gay birds flitting through a dusky grove.