|
PROBABLY the more
interesting half of the history of every country is the part
uncountenanced and little known. The conspicuous event, patent to all the
world and to all time, is apt to prove little more than dry crust of fact
unless something is known of the personal elements which lay behind it.
One asks to be made aware of the human motives and mistakes, the turn of
thought, and the seemingly trivial circumstances which have led up to the
catastrophe. A knowledge of this desire is the secret of the writing of
historic fiction, and it is by filling in between the lines, supplying the
probable train of human motive, circumstance, and passion, that the
novelist produces his enchanting tale.
This same filling in is sometimes done for us by popular legend and
tradition, and where this occurs a wonderful new realism and colour seem
added to the narrative. Scotland, in particular, possesses a singular
wealth of such tradition; and, to take one kind of it alone, it is
remarkable how often conspicuous events of Scottish history have a lurid
and significant light thrown over them by some corollary of uncanny legend
which the popular memory has preserved.
Every one is aware of the story, which Shakespeare found in Holinshed,
which Holinshed borrowed from Boece, and which Boece took and embellished
from the chronicler Wyntoun, of the appearance of the three witches to
Macbeth, their prophecy, and its tragic consequences. In Shakespeare's
play the witches appear to Macbeth and Banquo as the two are crossing a
heath near Forres on their way home from victory against rebellious
islemen in the west. And so strongly has the dramatic incident taken hold
of popular imagination that the hillock on which the witches stood when
Macbeth accosted them is actually pointed out at a spot in the Brodie
woods between Nairn and Forres, and the barrenness of its sides accounted
for by the statement that the witches poured out their horrid brewing on
the summit. The original account of the matter, however, as given by
Wyntoun, is very different. In the old chronicler's narrative the incident
is related in the form of a dream.
One night, it appears, Macbeth thought in his dreaming that he was sitting
beside the king. It was at a pause in hunting, and in his hand he held two
greyhounds in a leash. As he sat he thought he saw three women going by,
and these women he took to be three "weird sisters." The first he heard
say as she was passing, "Lo ! yonder the thane of Cromarty!" The second
woman in her turn said, "Of Moray yonder I see the thane!" Then the third
said shortly, "I see the king!" "All this," adds Wyntoun, "Macbeth heard
in his dreaming. Soon afterwards, while still in his youth, he was made
thane of these thanedoms; then next he thought to be king when Duncan's
days should be over. But in the end the fantasy of his dream moved him to
slay his uncle."
It is possible, of course, that Wyntoun, in giving this tale, modified
some tradition of an actual, tangible appearance of the three weird
sisters; but it is not likely that lie did so, for in another part of his
work, he gravely recounts an altercation which St. Serf, the patron saint
of his monastery, had with the devil in propria persona. The story,
therefore, in its successive versions, forms a very good example of the
manner in which traditions grow. But the legend in any shape, whether as
dream or as actual appearance, remains the factor of dramatic interest in
the otherwise empty story of the murder of King Duncan.
More mysterious, if less dramatic in its consequences, is a story
recounted by Wyntoun's contemporary, Fordun, in the "Scotichronicon," and
also embodied by Boece. It belongs to the last days of Alexander III.,
that "pessybill king, who kept his peace with such an iron hand, and gave
the Norsemen on the sea-slopes at Largs to know how he could keep his
kingdom.
This last of the long line of Celtic kings was a widower, past youth, and
the succession to his throne hung upon the life of his daughter's
daughter, the infant Princess of Norway. Scotland was still a land of
separate races - Scotic and Cymric, Saxon and Norman and the nobles
foresaw that, without a king to rule, the nation might easily fall to
pieces, and be lost to name and fame. In the circumstances it was well
that Alexander should marry again. bride was found in Joleta or Iolande,
daughter of the Count of Dreux; and the marriage took place amid great
rejoicings in the church of Jedburgh. In the evening - it was the 14th of
October in the year 1285 - to crown the occasion, a great masked ball was
given in the abbey. Never, say the chroniclers, had so magnificent a
spectacle been seen before in Scotland. Thane and abbot, bishop and prince
and earl-all the notables of the realm were there ; all had sought to do
honour to the hour; and the brave king himself and his new-made bride were
present to grace the occasion. Music and the dance were at their height,
and the courtly pageant was at its brightest, when suddenly, to the awe
and horror of the beholders, the apparition of a ghastly figure became
visible on the floor of the abbey. It glided silently amid the revellers,
seemed to join for some moments in the dance, and then vanished as
silently and swiftly as it had appeared. None there knew what or who it
was ; butt by all who saw it it was taken as an omen of disaster. And,
sure enough, not a- year afterwards, by an accident to his horse, the
brave Scots king lay dead under the cliff at Kinghorn, and the shadow of
the longest and most dreadful of its wars was gathering on the horizon of
Scotland.
Again, not many years after the appearance just narrated, tradition
records a strange adventure which is said to have befallen the patriot
Wallace. The story is told by Henry the Minstrel in rude but spirited
verse.
In the course of an amorous adventure in Perth the knight of Elderslie had
been all but trapped. Indeed, but for the timely remorse of his lady-love,
who had been bought over by the English governor, he must inevitably have
been taken. As it was, escaping in woman's clothes, lie was closely
pursued by his enemies, aided by a bloodhound. Accompanied by a small
party of followers, he made for the Forest of Gash, in Strathearn. After
some time, the pursuit continuing hot behind them, and their case
appearing almost desperate, one of the party, a man named Fawdoun,
suddenly declared lie could go no farther. Wallace appears to have had
previous suspicions of his follower's good faith, and these suspicions
were now strengthened by Fawdoun's conduct. The leader, at any rate, knew
that if this man fell into the English hands the fate of the party was
assured. To prevent treachery, therefore, as there was no time to lose,
Wallace drew his sword and struck off Fawdoun's head. This act saved the
lives of the party for the time, for on the hound reaching the spot it
stopped at the blood; but the occurrence had a curious sequel.
The little band, now reduced to thirteen, took up their quarters in Gask
Hall. There they made a fire, and began in haste to make ready a couple of
sheen which they had taken from a fold close by. They were about to begin
a rude supper, when they were startled by a sudden blast of horns outside.
Fearing it might be the English who had discovered his retreat, Wallace
sent out two men to bring word. After a time, no tidings being returned
and the horns still making a tremendous blast, he sent out other two.
These, however, also remained away; and presently, in anger, the leader
sent forth his whole remaining party. Wallace was now left alone,
wondering and impatient. Still the blast of horns increased; so,
concluding that the place was surounded by enemies, and that his men had
fallen into their hands, the knight himself drew his sword and went to the
door. There, standing opposite to him in the darkness, he beheld Fawdoun,
with -dreadful to relate! - his head in his hand. At the sight Wallace
crossed himself ; but the spectre hardly gave him time to do so, for, with
surprising promptitude for a dead man, he hurled the head at him. The
hero, nevertheless, proved equal to the occasion, for lie picked up the
head by the hair and as vigorously hurled it back again. By this time,
though, he had had enough of the interview, deeming his antagonist no
spirit of man, but some devil ; and considering, as the narrator quaintly
puts it, that there was little advantage to be got by remaining longer
there, he turned and fled. The last thing lie saw, as he made his way up
Strathearn, was Gask Hall in a blaze, with the spectre of Fawdoun towering
gigantic in the lurid light, as it brandished a blazing rafter over its
head.
That night Wallace swam the Forth at Cambuskenneth, and from his refuge in
the Torwood sent a woman back to the scene of his discomfiture. Strange to
say, she found Gash Hall unharmed; and there a fragment of the ruin stands
to the present day to witness to the tale, though it has been succeeded
since then by an "auld house" and a new house of Gash in turn, both famous
in sweet Scots song.
A traditional portent, not less interesting, has supplied the motive for
John Galt's romance "The Spaewife," and is related with telling effect in
D. G. Rossetti's poem "The King's Tragedy."
James I., it is said, was on his last fatal journey, to spend Christmas in
the Blackfriars' Monastery at Perth. He had reached the shore of the
Scottish Sea, as the Firth of Forth was then called, and was about to
embark for the opposite shore, when a woman threw herself on his path, and
with wild gestures and boding words urged him to turn back. Time after
time in her wanderings, she declared, she had seen his wraith, and each
time a windingsheet was wrapped higher about his figure ; and now, she
exclaimed, if he crossed that sea, lie should never again come back.
James, as we know, put aside the warning, crossed the Firth, and took up
his abode in Perth, with the tragic consequence which is matter of
history. It is said, however, that on the wild night of February on which
he was slain, just before the assassins broke in, the soothsayer once
again appeared- with her warning before the Charterhouse gates, and had
James listened to her he might even then have escaped his doom. One of the
last things he heard, before the flare of torches and clash of armour told
him the truth, was the wall of the woman's foreboding under the very
windows of his chamber, when she had been turned from the door. Tradition
has it that the soothsayer was possessed of second sight; but as she was
Highland, it may well be that she had less occult means of knowing the
plots for the king's death which Sir Robert Graham was then hatching in
"the country of the wild Scots."
Two of James I.'s descendants, if tradition is to be believed, were
favoured likewise with supernatural warnings, and in the case of James IV.
the warning occurred twice. Both occurrences are recorded by Pitscottie,
who received the account of them from an eve-witness, the famous Sir David
Lyndsay.
It was on the eve of setting out for Flodden, and James was worshipping in
the great old kirk of St. Michael, which still stands close by Linlithgow
Palace. Evensong, it appears, was nearly - done, when there came suddenly
in at the kirk door a tall man in a blue gown, belted with a linen roll
and wearing sandals on his feet. His head was bare, in his hand he carried
a great pikestaff, and he came forward rudely "cryand and speirand for the
king." Without ceremony he went up to James, and leaning his arm on the
royal praying-desk, began a brusque harangue. "My mother," he said, "hath
sent me, desiring thee not to pass whither thou art purposed; for if thou
dost, thou wilt not fare well in thy journey, nor none that passeth with
thee. Further, she bade thee melle with no woman, for if thou do it thou
wilt be confounded, and brought to shame." The king, it is recorded, was
about to make answer, but before his eyes, and in the presence of all his
lords, the man vanished " as he had been ane blink of the sunne, or a
whiss of the whirlwind," and could no more be seen.
The second occasion happened a few days later. James was at Edinburgh,
busy marshalling his army on the Boroughmuir, and getting his cannon out
of the castle for the campaign, when at midnight a cry was heard at the
Market Cross, proclaiming what the invisible herald gave out to be the
"summons of Plotcock," otherwise Pluto. This summons called upon all men
"to compear, both earl, and lord, and baron, and all honest gentlemen
within the town, every man specified by his own name, within the space of
forty days, before the said Plotcoch, where it should happen him to
appoint." All the persons thus cited, it would seem, were among the slain
afterwards at Flodden, except one. That fortunate personage, happening to
be on his outer stair, heard the summons, and, with great presence of mind
and legal knowledge, took a crown from his purse and threw it into the
street, crying, "I appeal from that summons, judgment, and sentence
thereof, and take me all whole in the mercy of God and Christ Jesus, His
Son."
Unfortunately, there is reason to believe that both of these apparitions
were stage effects got up by the astute Sir David Lyndsay himself, at the
instance of Queen Margaret, to dissuade the somewhat morbid mind of James
from the English war. The mention of a possible relation to a woman points
to a natural feminine jealousy of the king's weaknesses towards the Queen
of France and the Lady of Ford.
For the apparition which in his later days visited the sleepless eyes of
James V. the sole authority is the highly characteristic "'Historic" of
John Knox. Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, the former friend of the king,
had been tried and executed at Edinburgh upon a charge of twice attempting
the life of James once seeking to murder him in bed at Holyrood, and again
shooting at him from the steeple at Linlithgow. These charges, however,
did not satisfy the mind of Knox, who seeks to make out that the true
reason for Hamilton's condemnation was his leaning towards the cause of
the Reformers. In proof of his assertion Knox states that the king was
tormented afterwards by the apparition of his unjust judge.
"How terrible a vision," he states, "the said prince saw, lying in
Linlithgow that night that Thomas Scot, Justice-clerk, died in Edinburgh,
men of good credit can yet report. For, afraid at midnight or after, he
called aloud for torches, and raised all that lay beside him in the
palace, and told that Thomas Scot was dead"; for he had been at him with a
company of devils, and had said unto him these words, "Oh, woe to the day
that ever I knew thy service; for serving of thee against God, against His
servants, and against Justice, I am adjudged to endless torment."
It is needless to expatiate on these traditions. The chief interest which
they possess lies in the light which they reflect upon the human nature of
past times; and, for the amount of that light which they afford, they
remain of more value than many dissertations. |
