Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  The Klephts kept a constant watch against surprises all day long. At night their mountain paths were all but inaccessible, and they might sleep in the open air wrapped up in goatskins, on beds made of leaves. When they set out on a predatory expedition, it was always by night - the darker and the more stormy the better for their purpose. In their mountain hiding-places they practised shooting, until they acquired what they supposed to be extraordinary skill as marksmen. They had rifles of an unusual length, with which some of the most expert could hit an egg hung by a thread to a branch of a tree at a distance of two hundred paces. Others yet more skilful could send a bullet through a ring hardly larger; and this gave rise to a proverbial expression for a good marksman - “he can thread the ring with a bullet.” The Klephts by long practice acquired such quickness of sight that many of them could, by watching from whence the flash of an enemy’s musket fire proceeded, pick out the man, and lay him low with their rifle. They called this “firing upon fire.” Besides all these exercises, the Klephts practised some which came down to them from the ancient Greeks. One of the principal of these was the game of the disc, which was to be thrown: he who hurled it the furthest was the conqueror. The Klephts were famous leapers; and wonderful stories are told of them in this capacity. One Klephtic hero, the Captain Niko Isaras, is said on good authority to have cleared seven horses standing abreast. There is another anecdote on record of a man who leaped over three waggons loaded with stones to the height of seven or eight feet. Their feats in running were equally marvellous; not to say incredible. They tell of one man who literally ran so fast that “his heels touched his ears.” Fortunio’s servant Lightfoot was a fool to this. But there is no doubt that the Klepht was unrivalled in his power of making long marches. They were also capable of enduring extraordinary hunger. Combats of three days and nights, during which the Klephts neither ate, drank nor slept, were not unusual among them, according to M. Fauriel. The same endurance was known in bearing the torture which surely awaited them if taken alive. Having their limbs crushed by repeated blows from a blacksmith’s hammer was a common mode of execution; there were others, more rare, too horrible to be mentioned. No wonder that it became a favourite toast among the Klephts to wish each other “a sure hit from a bullet.”

  But what was most injurious to their sense of honour was the dread of having their heads, after death, exposed to all the insults which the Turks could devise. The entreaty of the wounded Klepht to his comrades was to cut off his head, and bear it far away to their mountain fastnesses far out of the reach of the Turks. Thus, in one of their songs, the Klepht says, “O my brother, cut off my head; let not the Turkish passers-by see my shame. My enemies will wag their heads and laugh; but my mother - my mother will die of grief.” All honour attended the death of him who was slain in battle. He was called a “victim,” and the survivors mourned him with pride; whereas he who died of illness on his bed was spoken of as the “corps crevé,” and he was looked upon with a kind of shame and repugnance. But the Klephts in the midst of their wild and barbarous life preserved many chivalrous and noble feelings. They might be simple - they were not vulgar; they might be fierce - they were never cruel. They were full of delicate honour in their treatment of their female captives; even when these were the wives or daughters of those who had most deeply injured and outraged relations of their own. A captain of a hand of Klephts who insulted a Turkish woman taken prisoner, was immediately killed by his own soldiers as unworthy to command brave men. Their songs are full of allusions to the respect with which their female prisoners are treated. Images of the Virgin hung up in some rocky cleft made their chapel, where they performed their devotions with the utmost piety. Some of the Klephts made pilgrimages to Jerusalem on foot; their rifles on their backs. No Klepht was ever known to be a renegade. Whatever horrors awaited him if he refused to become a Mussulman, he remained true to his faith. But, indeed, he pined away and died if he was forced to leave his wild rocks, and the mountain gorges which were his home. Up in these homes, women cooked the flesh of goats and kids, roasting them whole in the open air; and they had always secret friends in the fertile plains, who furnished them with wine in abundance to wash down their Homeric feasts. Mount Olympus was the especial hold of the Klephts, and although not so high as some of the Alps or the Pyrenees, it is uninhabitable in the winter on account of the snow. The poor Klephts were often obliged to descend. They first hid their arms and ammunition by wrapping them well up in waxen cloth, and covering them over with stones. Then they dispersed and sought some hospitable shelter among the Ionian islanders, under the protection of the Venetian government. But they never mixed themselves up with the Greek population that they had to pass through; they preserved their national dress, their proud and haughty bearing, their brilliant complexion, which made their great beauty yet more distinguished. The Greeks looked on them with admiration; these were the men who dared to defy the Turks; in each Greek cottage there hung a rude portrait of some Klephtic hero, and their fame was the staple subject of all the popular songs. It was the Klephts who contributed mainly to the establishment of the kingdom of Greece.

  The Greeks would shudder if they thought that they preserved any of the old Pagan superstitions; nevertheless, without their knowing it, much of the heathen belief is mingled with their traditional observances. They speak of their Hellenic forefathers as giants who once inhabited the country where they now dwell. These giants were as tall as the highest poplar trees; and, if they fell down, they died, not having power to get up again. The most terrible oath among these old Pagans, according to the modern Greek tradition, was “May I fall if it was not so.” Many of the superstitions derived from their ancestors are common to all nations, such as the necessity for blessing themselves if they sneezed, to prevent the entrance of an evil spirit at such times; the evil eye; the presage of death by the barking of dogs, &c. Every one knows how famous or infamous Thessaly was in ancient times for its magicians. Thessaly is still the head quarters of witches and wizards, who (so says popular report) can draw the moon out of the heavens to do their bidding (a remnant of the old invocations to Hecate), and to turn the moon into a cow, from which they draw milk that has irresistible power of enchantment. All over Greece they believe in sorcery. The Hamadryads, the Nymphs, the Nereids, &c., under which names the ancient Greeks personified the different objects of nature, are gone - their very names forgotten by their descendants, who, nevertheless, believe that every tree, and rock, and fountain, has its guardian genius, who takes any shape he likes, but most frequently that of a serpent or a dragon, and is always on the watch to defend the object which is put under his care, and with the existence of which his own is bound up.

  The plague is personified, as I think I have read is also the case in some of the country towns of Scotland. My idea is that Hugh Miller mentions it somewhere, as a blind woman, going from house to house, giving death to all whom she touches; but, as she can only grope along by the sides of the walls, those escape harmless who keep in the middle of the streets, or the centre of rooms. This is probably a modern superstition. But again, the plague is personified as the ancient fates, in many places. No longer a blind woman, but as a terrible Three, does it come to a doomed town. One awful woman holds a roll of paper, on which she writes the name of those appointed to die; another has the shears with which she snaps the thread of life, and the third carries the besom of destruction, with which to sweep the dead forth from their habitations. The Furies are no longer known; but every one remembers how the attempt was made to propitiate them by calling them the Eumenides; just as in Scotland the fairies, who stole children and performed all manner of small mischief, were called “the good people.” There is the same desire now shown to conciliate the small-pox, which is to this day a terrible scourge among Greek families. The small-pox is personified as a woman scowling on children, but who may be mollified by calling her, and invoking her under a Greek name which means “she who mercifully spares;” the small-pox indeed is univers
ally spoken of as Eulogia - the “well spoken-of,” she whom all are bound under pain of terrible penalties to name with respect.

  “Some of their superstitions are a confused blending together of several ancient beliefs. For instance, it is said that round the summit of Mount Scardamyla three beautiful maidens dance perpetually. They appear at first of unearthly beauty, but they have the legs and feet of goats. Whoever draws near to that enchanted spot is first compelled to kiss them, and then is torn to pieces, and thrown down from the rocks. This is evidently a mixture of three old beliefs: the Oreads, the Satyrs, and the Graces.

  Death is personified under the form of a stern old man, who comes to summon the living to leave the light of day. He is called Charon, although his office is more properly that of Mercury. He can transform himself into a bird or an animal; in fact take any shape under which he can best surprise those who do not think enough about him. He has no power over those who are constantly remembering his existence.

  Such are some of the national customs and superstitions of which M. Fauriel gives an account before introducing his songs to the reader’s notice. The translation of the ballads into French is literal; from it we may judge of the racy and individual flavour of the ballads themselves. Abrupt, wild and dramatic are they; not unlike, in vividness of painting and quick transition from one part to another, to some of Robert Browning’s smaller poems. They are full of colour, there is no description of feeling; the actions of the dramatis personae tell plainly enough how they felt. Reading any good ballad is like eating game; and almost every thing else seems poor and tasteless after it.

  (1854)

  MORTON HALL

  Chapter I

  Our old Hall is to be pulled down, and they are going to build streets on the site. I said to my sister, ‘Ethelinda! if they really pull down Morton Hall, it will be a worse piece of work than the Repeal of the Corn Laws.’ And, after some consideration, she replied, that if she must speak what was on her mind, she would own that she thought the Papists had something to do with it; that they had never forgiven the Morton who had been with Lord Monteagle when he discovered the Gunpowder Plot; for we knew that, somewhere in Rome, there was a book kept, and which had been kept for generations, giving an account of the secret private history of every English family of note, and registering the names of those to whom the Papists owed either grudges or gratitude.

  We were silent for some time; but I am sure the same thought was in both our minds; our ancestor, a Sidebotham, had been a follower of the Morton of that day; it had always been said in the family that he had been with his master when he went with the Lord Monteagle, and found Guy Fawkes and his dark lantern under the Parliament House; and the question flashed across our minds, were the Sidebothams marked with a black mark in that terrible mysterious book which was kept under lock and key by the Pope and the Cardinals in Rome? It was terrible, yet, somehow, rather pleasant to think of. So many of the misfortunes which had happened to us through life, and which we had called ‘mysterious dispensations,’ but which some of our neighbours had attributed to our want of prudence and foresight, were accounted for at once, if we were objects of the deadly hatred of such a powerful order as the Jesuits, of whom we had lived in dread ever since we had read the Female Jesuit. Whether this last idea suggested what my sister said next I can’t tell; we did know the female Jesuit’s second cousin, so might be said to have literary connections, and from that the startling thought might spring up in my sister’s mind, for, said she, ‘Biddy!’ (my name is Bridget, and no one but my sister calls me Biddy) ‘suppose you write some account of Morton Hall; we have known much in our time of the Mortons, and it will be a shame if they pass away completely from men’s memories while we can speak or write.’ I was pleased with the notion, I confess; but I felt ashamed to agree to it all at once, though even, as I objected for modesty’s sake, it came into my mind how much I had heard of the old place in its former days, and how it was, perhaps, all I could now do for the Mortons, under whom our ancestors had lived as tenants for more than three hundred years. So at last I agreed; and, for fear of mistakes, I showed it to Mr Swinton, our young curate, who has put it quite in order for me.

  Morton Hall is situated about five miles from the centre of Drumble. It stands on the outskirts of a village, which, when the Hall was built, was probably as large as Drumble in those days; and even I can remember when there was a long piece of rather lonely road, with high hedges on either side, between Morton village and Drumble. Now, it is all street, and Morton seems but a suburb of the great town near. Our farm stood where Liverpool Street runs now; and people used to come snipe-shooting just where the Baptist chapel is built. Our farm must have been older than the Hall, for we had a date of 1460 on one of the cross-beams. My father was rather proud of this advantage, for the Hall had no date older than 1554; and I remember his affronting Mrs Dawson, the house-keeper, by dwelling too much on this circumstance one evening when she came to drink tea with my mother, when Ethelinda and I were mere children. But my mother, seeing that Mrs Dawson would never allow that any house in the parish could be older than the Hall, and that she was getting very warm, and almost insinuating that the Sidebothams had forged the date to disparage the squire’s family, and set themselves up as having the older blood, asked Mrs Dawson to tell us the story of old Sir John Morton before we went to bed. I slily reminded my father that Jack, our man, was not always so careful as might be in housing the Alderney in good time in the autumn evenings. So he started up, and went off to see after Jack; and Mrs Dawson and we drew nearer the fire to hear the story about Sir John.

  Sir John Morton had lived some time about the Restoration. The Mortons had taken the right side; so when Oliver Cromwell came into power, he gave away their lands to one of his Puritan followers - a man who had been but a praying, canting, Scotch pedlar till the war broke out; and Sir John had to go and live with his royal master at Bruges. The upstart’s name was Carr, who came to live at Morton Hall; and, I’m proud to say, we - I mean our ancestors - led him a pretty life. He had hard work to get any rent at all from the tenantry, who knew their duty better than to pay it to a Roundhead. If he took the law to them, the law officers fared so badly, that they were shy of coming out to Morton - all along that lonely road I told you of - again. Strange noises were heard about the Hall, which got the credit of being haunted; but, as those noises were never heard before or since that Richard Carr lived there, I leave you to guess if the evil spirits did not know well over whom they had power - over schismatic rebels, and no one else. They durst not trouble the Mortons, who were true and loyal, and were faithful followers of King Charles in word and deed. At last, Old Oliver died; and folks did say that, on that wild and stormy night, his voice was heard high up in the air, where you hear the flocks of wild geese skirl, crying out for his true follower Richard Carr to accompany him in the terrible chase the fiends were giving him before carrying him down to hell. Anyway, Richard Carr died within a week - summoned by the dead or not, he went his way down to his master, and his master’s master.

  Then his daughter Alice came into possession. Her mother was somehow related to General Monk, who was beginning to come into power about that time. So when Charles the Second came back to his throne, and many of the sneaking Puritans had to quit their ill-gotten land, and turn to the right about, Alice Carr was still left at Morton Hall to queen it there. She was taller than most women, and a great beauty, I have heard. But, for all her beauty, she was a stern, hard woman. The tenants had known her to be hard in her father’s lifetime, but now that she was the owner, and had the power, she was worse than ever. She hated the Stuarts worse than ever her father had done; had calves’ head for dinner every thirtieth of January; and when the first twenty-ninth of May came round, and every mother’s son in the village gilded his oak-leaves, and wore them in his hat, she closed the windows of the great hall with her own hands, and sat throughout the day in darkness and mourning. People did not like to go against her by forc
e, because she was a young and beautiful woman. It was said the King got her cousin, the Duke of Albemarle, to ask her to court, just as courteously as if she had been the Queen of Sheba, and King Charles, Solomon, praying her to visit him in Jerusalem. But she would not go; not she! She lived a very lonely life, for now the King had got his own again, no servant but her nurse would stay with her in the Hall; and none of the tenants would pay her any money for all that her father had purchased the lands from the Parliament, and paid the price down in good red gold.

  All this time, Sir John was somewhere in the Virginian plantations; and the ships sailed from thence only twice a year: but his royal master had sent for him home; and home he came, that second summer after the restoration. No one knew if Mistress Alice had heard of his landing in England or not; all the villagers and tenantry knew, and were not surprised, and turned out in their best dresses, and with great branches of oak, to welcome him as he rode into the village one July morning, with many gay-looking gentlemen by his side, laughing, and talking, and making merry, and speaking gaily and pleasantly to the village people. They came in on the opposite side to the Drumble Road; indeed Drumble was nothing of a place then, as I have told you. Between the last cottage in the village and the gates to the old Hall, there was a shady part of the road, where the branches nearly met overhead, and made a green gloom. If you’ll notice, when many people are talking merrily out of doors in sunlight, they will stop talking for an instant, when they come into the cool green shade, and either be silent for some little time, or else speak graver, and slower, and softer. And so old people say those gay gentlemen did; for several people followed to see Alice Carr’s pride taken down. They used to tell how the cavaliers had to bow their plumed hats in passing under the unlopped and drooping boughs. I fancy Sir John expected that the lady would have rallied her friends, and got ready for a sort of battle to defend the entrance to the house; but she had no friends. She had no nearer relations than the Duke of Albemarle, and he was mad with her for having refused to come to court, and so save her estate, according to his advice.