University of Virginia Library

27. CHAPTER XXVII.
THE BRIDAL DAY.

The dark winter months, with their alternate snows, sheeting
the wide moorlands, and roofing the mighty mountaintops
of the lake country with inviolate white, and soft thaws
swelling the streamlets into torrents, inundating the grassy
meadows, and converting the mountain tarns into inland seas,
had passed away; nor passed away all gloomily, or without
their appropriate and peculiar pleasures, from the sojourners
in Hawkshead Castle.

All over Merrie England, but in no part of it more than in
the north country, was Christmas the gladdest and the blythest
time of all the circling year; when every door stood open,
from that of the baron's castle and the franklin's hall to that
of the poorest cotter's cabin; when the yule log was kindled,
and the yule candle lighted; when the furmety smoked on
every English board, and the wassail bowl was spiced for all
comers; when the waits sang Christmas carols under the
clear cold moon in the frosty midnights, and the morris-dancers
and the mummers rioted and reveled to the rude
minstrelsy of the time, and made the most of the shortlived
wintery sunshine; when ancient feuds were often reconciled,

and ancient friendships riveted by closer ties; when families
long dissevered were re-collected and re-united about the old
ancestral hearth-stones; when the noble and the rich filled
their abundant halls with sumptuous luxury and loud-rejoicing
merriment, and the poor were not forgotten by the great.

Indeed, though there was much that was coarse and rude,
much that was hard, cruel, and oppressive, in the social life
of England, in those old and almost forgotten days, there was
much also that was good and generous and genial, much that
was sound and hearty, much that was brave and hale and
masculine, which has vanished and departed from the world
forever, with the vaunted progress of civilization and refinement,

Above all, there was this great redeeming virtue, conspicuous
among the flagrant wrongs and innate evils of society
under the feudal system, that between the governors and the
governed, between the lord and his lieges, nay, even between
the master and his serfs, there was then no such social gulf
established, as now yawns, in these boasted days of civilizing
progress and political equality, between castes and classes,
separated by little else than their worth, estimated by the
standard of gold—gold, which seems, daily and hourly, more
and more to be over-riding all distinctions of honored ancestry,
high name, noble deeds, personal deserts, nay, even of distinguished
bearing, of intellect, of education, of accomplishment,
much more of truth, integrity or honor.

During these wintery months, accordingly, there had been
all the free, open-hearted hospitality of the day, displayed
throughout the wide manors of Hawkshead, Coniston, and
Yewdale, and in the neighboring demesnes of Rydal, and
something more even than the wonted merriment and joviality
of that sacred yet joyous season.

Many of the grand baronial families of the vicinity, attracted
as much, perhaps, by the singular and romantic interest
attaching to the great events, which had filled all the
north country with the rumor of their fame as with the blast
of a martial trumpet, as by the ties of caste and kindred, had
visited the castle palace of Sir Yvo de Taillebois, almost in
the guise of bridal guests; for the approaching nuptials of the
fair Guendolen with Aradas the Brave were openly announced,
although the ceremonial was deferred until the balmy days
of spring-time, and the genial month of May. The Cliffords
of Barden, the Howards, from Naworth and Carlisle, the Percy,
from his already famous strength of Alnwick, the Scropes, the
Umfravilles, the Nevilles, from their almost royal principality
of Middleham on the Ure, had all in turn tasted the Christmas
cheer, and shared the older sports of Yule, in the wild
recesses of Kendale; had congratulated the young and noble
victor on his double conquest, scarce knowing which was
most to be envied, that of the felon knight in the black lists
of Lancaster, or that of the soft ladye in the sweetest valley of
the lone lake country.

But now, the wintery days had passed away, the snipe was
heard drumming every where on vibrated pinions, as he soared
and dived in mid-air over the deep morasses, in which he annually
bred unmolested; the swallows had returned from their

unknown pilgrimage to the spicy isles of ocean, or the central
waters of untrodden Africa, and might be seen skimming
with rapid wing, the blue mirror of Winandermere, and dimpling
its surface in pursuit of their insect prey; the cuckoo
had been heard in the birch-woods among the ghylls, and in
the huge sycamores around the village garths; the heath-cocks
blew their clarion call of amorous defiance from every
heath-clad knoll of the wide moorlands; the cushat had
donned the iris hues which paint his swelling neck in the
spring days of love and courtship; the meadows were alive
with crocuses, brown-streaked and purple, white and golden;
the snow-drops had raised their silvery bells, almost before the
earth was clear of its winter covering; the primroses gemmed
all the banks with their pale saffron blossoms, the air was
redolent with the delicious perfume of the violets.

It was the eve of May, and as the sun was setting over the
misty hills that keep guard over high Yewdale, amid a long
and joyous train, dragged slowly by ten yoke of milk-white
oxen, with nosegays on their horns, and branches of the fragrant
May canopying their harness, escorted by troops of
village girls, and stout hill shepherds, dancing along and
caroling to the cadence of the pipe, the tabor, and the rebeck,
the mighty Maypole was brought in triumph up the weary
winding road to the green esplanade before the castle gates
of Hawkshead; and there, before midnight, was swung into
its place, crowned with garlands, and fluttering with gay
streamers, and glad with the leafy garniture of Spring,
“shrouds and stays holding it fast,” holding it erect toward
heaven, an emblem of that which never can, whatever fanatics
and bigots may declare, be unacceptable on High, the innocent

and pure rejoicings of humble loving hearts, forgetting
toil and care, and casting away sorrow for one happy day, at
least, the merriest and the maddest of the three hundred and
sixty-five, which sum the checkered score of man's annual vicissitudes
of labor and repose, brief merriment and lasting sorrow.

During the night deep silence and deep slumber fell like a
shadow over keep and cottage, and not a sound disturbed the
stillness of the vernal night, unless it were the quavering cry
of some night-bird among the tufted woods, or the shrill bark
of the hill fox from the mountain side, or the deep harmonious
call “All's well,” from the warder on the lofty battlements.

But long before the paly dawn had begun to throw its
faint yellow glimmer up the eastern sky, while the moon was
yet riding lustrous in the cloudless azure, with the morningstar
flashing like a diamond by her side, many a cottage door
in the silent hamlet, many a one on the gentle slopes of the
green hill sides, many a one in the broad pastoral valley, was
unbolted, and revolved on noiseless hinges, to send forth the
peasant maids, in shy yet merry bands to gather, with many
a mystic rite and ceremonial borrowed, unknown to them,
from the mythology of other lands, when Flora ruled the
month of flowers, to gather the puissant dews of May.

When the sun rose fair above the eastern hills,

his appearance was welcomed by such a burst of joyous and
hilarious music from the battlements, as never before had
waked the echoes of Scafell and Skiddaw. In that triumphant
gush of music there were blended, not only the resounding
clangor of the Norman kettle-drums and trumpets, with the
clear notes of the mellow bugle, but the tones of a thousand
instruments, scarce known on English soil, having been introduced
only by the Crusaders from those Oriental climates, in
which music is indigenous and native, and from which the retainers
of Sir Yvo de Taillebois had imported, not the instruments
only but the skill necessary to give them utterance and
expression, and the very airs to which, in the cedar-vales, and
among the haunted hills of Palestine, they had of old been vocal.

The musical chime of many bells attuned, the silver clash
of the cymbals, the roll of the Syrian atabals, the soft tones
of the lute, and shrill strains of the Eastern reed-pipes, were
blended strangely, but most sonorously with the stirring war-notes
of the west. And instantly, as if awakened from sleep
by that rejoicing strain, the little chapel bells of Bowness began
to tinkle with small merry chimes, across the bright blue
lake; and answering, yet further in the distance, though still
clearly audible, so apt to the conveyance of sounds is the
tranquillity and the clear vibrating air of those mountain regions,
the full carillon of the magnificent Abbey of Kendal
the stately ruins of which are still extant, as if to teach us
boastful men of modern days, the superiority of our semi-barbarous
ancestors, as we have the vanity to term them,
rang out, proclaiming to the sparse population of the dales,

Around the Maypole on the green, already were assembled,
not the vassals only of the great baron, his free-tenants and
his serfs, rejoicing in one happy holiday, and in the prospect
of gorging themselves ere nightfall throat-full of solid dainties
and sound ale, but half the population of the adjacent valleys,

hill-farmers, statesmen, as the small land-holders are still
called in those unsophisticated districts, burghers from the
neighboring towns, wandering monks and wandering musicians,
a merry, motley multitude, all in their best attire, all
wearing bright looks and light hearts, and expecting, as it
would seem from the eager looks directed constantly toward
the castle gates, the forthcoming of some spectacle or pageant,
on which their interest was fixed.

Two or three Welsh harpers, who had been lured from
their Cambrian wilds by the far-spread report of the approaching
festivities, and by the hope of gaining silver guerdon
from the bounty of the splendid Normans, were seated on
a grassy knoll, not far from the tall garlanded mast, which
made itself conspicuous as the emblem—as, perhaps, in former
ages, it had been the idol—of the day, and from time to time
drew from the horse-hair strings of their rude harps some of
those sweet, wild, melancholy airs which are still characteristic
of the genius of the Kymric race, which still recall the hours

but neither to them, nor to the indigenous strains, more agreeable
perhaps to their untutored ears, of two native crowders
of the dales, who were dragging out strange discords from the
wires of their rude violins—nor yet to the more captivating
and popular arts of three or four foreign jongleurs, with
apes and gitterns—the Savoyards of that remote age, though
coming at that day not from the valleys of the lower Alps,
but from the western shores of Normandy and Morbihan—did
the eager crowd vouchsafe much of their attention, or many
of their pennies.

There was a higher interest awake, a more earnest expectation,

and these were brought to their climax, when, just as
the castle bell tolled eight, the wild and startling blast of a
single trumpet rose clear and keen from the inner court, and
the great gates flew open.

A gay and gallant sight it was, which, as the heavy
drawbridge descended, the huge portcullis slowly rose, creaking
and clanking, up its grooves of stone, and the iron-studded
portals yawned, revealed itself to the eyes of the by-standers;
and loud and hearty was the cheer which it evoked from the
assembled multitude.

The whole inner court was thronged with men and horses,
gayly clad, lightly armed, and splendidly caparisoned; and, as
obedient to the signals of the officers who marshaled them,
the vaunt-couriers of the company rode out, four by four, arrayed
in Kendal green, with the silver badges and blue
sarsenet scarfs of their lord, and white satin favors with long
silver streamers, waving from their bonnets, the gleam of embroideries
and the fluttering of female garments might be discovered
within the long-withdrawing avenue. Four hundred
strong, the retainers of the high-sheriff, swept forward, with
bow and spear, and were succeeded by a herald in his quartered
tabard, and a dozen pursuivants with trumpets.

Behind these came, in proud procession, six tall priests,
nobly mounted on ambling palfreys, each bearing a gilded
cross, and then the crozier of the abbot of Furness Abbaye, followed
by that proud prelate, with his distinctive, hierarchal
head-tire, cope, and dalmatique, and all the splendid paraphernalia
of his sacred feudal dignity, supported by all his clergy
in their full canonicals, and a long train of monks and choristers,
these waving perfumed chalices, those raising loud and
clear the hymns appointed for the ceremonial.

A hundred gentlemen of birth and station, on foot, bare-headed,
clad in the liveries of the house of Taillebois, blue
velvet slashed and lined with cloth of silver laid down on
white satin, came next, the escort of the bridal party, and were
followed by a multitude of beautiful girls, dressed in virgin
white, strewing flowers before the feet of the bride's palfrey.

But when she appeared, mounted on a snow-white Andalusian
jennet, whose tail and mane literally swept the ground
in waves of silver, in her robes of white sendal and cloth of
silver, with the bridal head-tire of long-descending gauzy fillets
floating around her like a wreath of mist about a graceful
cypress, and her long auburn ringlets disheveled in their mazes
of bright curls, powdered with diamond dust and garlanded
with virgin roses, the very battlements shook to the shouts of
applause, which made the banners toss and rustle as if a
storm-wind smote them.

Two pages, dressed in cloth of silver, tended her bridlereins
on either hand, and two more bore up the long emblazoned
foot-cloths of white and silver, which would otherwise
have embarrassed the paces of the beautiful and docile steed
which bore her, timing its tread to the soft symphony of lutes and
dulcimers which harbingered the progress; while no less than
six belted knights, with their chains of gold about their necks,
bore the staves of the satin canopy, or baldacchino, which sheltered
her fair beauties from the beams of the blythe May morning.

Twelve bridesmaids, all of noble birth, mounted like herself
on snow-white palfreys, all robed and filleted in white and
silver, and garlanded with pale blush roses, nymphs worthy
of the present goddess, bridled and blushed behind her. And
there, radiant with love and triumph, making his glorious

charger—a red roan, with a mane and tail white and redundant
as the surges of the creamy sea—caracole, and bound from
the dull earth in sobresaults, croupades and balotades, which
would have crazed a professor of equitation with admiration,
apart from envy, rode Aradas de Ratcliffe, with his twelve
groom's-men glittering with gems, and glorious with silk upon
silk, silver upon silver.

Sir Yvo de Taillebois, with twenty or thirty of the greatest
barons of the north country, his cotemporaries, and many of
them his brothers-in-arms, and fellows at the council-table of
their puissant Norman monarch, whom they admitted only to
be first baron of the English barons, primus inter pares,
brought up the rear of the procession, while yet behind them
filed a long band of spears and pennoncelles, and again after
these a countless multitude, from all the country side, rejoicing
and exulting, to form a portion of the pageant which added
so much to the customary pleasures of the Maying.

Thus, for miles, they swept onward through the pleasant
meadow-land, tufted and gemmed with unnumbered flowers,
between tall hedges white with the many-blossomed May, and
overrun with flaunting clusters of the delicious wood-bine.

Once and again they were met by troops of country girls
scattering flowers, and as often rode beneath triumphal arches,
deftly framed of green leaves and gay wild-flowers by rustic
hands, in token of the heart's gratitude, until they reached the
shores of the blue lake, where Sir Yvo's yacht awaited them, convoyed
by every barque and boat that could be pressed into the
service from all the neighboring meres and lakelets of the county.

The wind blew fair and soft, and swelled the sails of cloth
of silver, and waved the long azure pennants forward, as

omens of happy days ahead; and smoothly over the rippling
waters, to the sound of the soft bridal music, galleys and
horse-boats, barques and barges, careered in fair procession,
while the great multitude, afoot, rushed, like an entering tide,
through the horse-roads and lanes around the head of the
lake, eager to share the wedding-feast and the wedding dance,
at least, if not to witness the nuptial ceremonial.

At Bowness they took horse again, and escorted by the
bailiff and burghers of Kendall, proceeded, at an increased
pace, to the splendid Abbey Church, dim with the religious
light which streamed through its deeply tinted window-panes,
and was yet further obscured by the thick clouds from the
tossed chalices of incense, through which swelled, like an angel's
choir, the pure chant of girls and children, and the deep
diapason of the mighty organ.

The nuptial ceremony was followed by a feast fit for kings,
served up in the grand hall of Kendal Castle, wherein, before
the Norman conquest, the proud Saxon Earls, Morcar and
Edwin, maternal ancestors of the fair bride, had banqueted and
rioted in state, and where, as tradition related, they had held
revel for the last time on the eve of their departure for the
fatal field of Hastings, fatal to Saxon liberty, but harbinger of
a prouder era, and first cause and creatrix of a nobler race, to
rule in Merrie England.

It needs not, here, to dwell on the strange dainties, the now
long-disused and unaccustomed viands and beverages of
those old days, more than on the romantic feudal usages and
abstruse ceremonials of the day; suffice it that, to their palates,
heronshaw, egret and peacock, venison and boar's-meat, and
chines of the wild bull, were no less dainty than the choicest

of our modern luxuries to the beaux and belles of the nineteenth
century; and that hypocras and pigment, morat and
mead and clary, made the pulses burn and the cheeks mantle
as blythely and as brightly as Champagne or Burgundy. The
ball, for the nobles in the castle-hall, for the commons on the
castle-green, followed the feast; but not till the stocking had
been thrown, and the curtain drawn, and the beautiful bride
fairly bedded, was the nuptial ceremony esteemed fully ended,
which gave the lovely Guendolen, for weal and not for woe, to
the brave and faithful Aradas de Ratcliffe.

The raptures of lovers are not to be described; and if the
pen of the ready-writer may gain inspiration to delineate the
workings of strong mental passions, of intense moral or
physical excitements, to depict stormy wrath, the agonies of
hope deferred, the slow-consuming pangs of hopeless regret,
there is one thing that must ever defy his powers of representation—the
calm enjoyment of every-day domestic happiness;
the easy and unvarying pleasures of contentment; the
placid routine of hourly duties, hourly delights, hourly labors,
hourly affections; and that soft intermixture of small cares
and passing sorrows, with great blessings tasted, and great
gratitudes due, which make up the sum of the most innocent
and blessed human life.

And such was the life of Sir Aradas and the fair Guendolen
de Ratcliffe, until, to borrow the quaint phrase of the narrator
of those incomparable tales of the Thousand and One
Nights, “they were visited by the terminator of delights, and
the separator of companions. Extolled be the perfection of
the Living, who dieth not!”

Sir Yvo de Taillebois lived long enough to see his child's

children gathered to his knee; to prognosticate, in their
promise, fresh honors to his high-born race; but not so long
as to outlive his intellect, his powers to advise, console, enjoy,
and, above all, to trust in God. Full of years and full of
honors, he was gathered to his fathers in the ripeness of his
time, and he sleeps in a quiet churchyard in his native valley,
where a green oak-tree shades his ashes, and the ever-vocal
music of the rippling Kent sings his sweet, natural requiem.

Eadwulf the Red never recovered from the starvation and
exposure endured in his escape and subsequent wanderings;
and, though he received the priceless boon of liberty, and the
king's free pardon for his crimes, though he passed his declining
days in the beautiful cottage nigh Kentmere, with his
noble brother, his fair wife, and all the treasured little ones
about him, who grew up like olive-branches round Kenric's
happy, honored board, with every thing to soothe his stubborn
heart and soften his morose and bitter spirit, he lived and died
a gloomy, disappointed, bitter, and bad-hearted man, a victim
in some sort of the vicious and cruel system which had
debased his soul more even than it had degraded his body.

Yet it was not in that accursed system, altogether; for the
gallant and good Kenric, and his sweet wife, Edith the Fair,
were living proofs, even, as the noble poet sings—

and it was no less “the spur, that the clear spirit doth raise,”
than the grand force of that holiest Saxon institution, Trial
by Jury, that raised Kenric from a Saxon serf to be an English
freeman.