Chapter 4

Sweetly along the Salem road Bloom of orchard and lilac showed. Little the wicked skipper knew Of the fields so green and the sky so blue. Riding there in his sorry trim, Like to Indian idol glum and grim, Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear Of voices shouting, far and near "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!"

"Hear me, neighbors!" at last he cried,-- "What to me is this noisy ride? What is the shame that clothes the skin To the nameless horror that lives within? Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck, And hear a cry from a reeling deck! Hate me and curse me,--I only dread The hand of God and the face of the dead!" Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead!

Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea Said, "God has touched him! why should we?" Said an old wife mourning her only son, "Cut the rogue's tether and let him run!" So with soft relentings and rude excuse, Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose, And gave him a cloak to hide him in, And left him alone with his shame and sin. Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! 1857.

THE SYCAMORES.

Hugh Tallant was the first Irish resident of Haverhill, Mass. He planted the button-wood trees on the bank of the river below the village in the early part of the seventeenth century. Unfortunately this noble avenue is now nearly destroyed.

IN the outskirts of the village, On the river's winding shores, Stand the Occidental plane-trees, Stand the ancient sycamores.

One long century hath been numbered, And another half-way told, Since the rustic Irish gleeman Broke for them the virgin mould.

Deftly set to Celtic music, At his violin's sound they grew, Through the moonlit eves of summer, Making Amphion's fable true.

Rise again, then poor Hugh Tallant Pass in jerkin green along, With thy eyes brimful of laughter, And thy mouth as full of song.

Pioneer of Erin's outcasts, With his fiddle and his pack; Little dreamed the village Saxons Of the myriads at his back.

How he wrought with spade and fiddle, Delved by day and sang by night, With a hand that never wearied, And a heart forever light,--

Still the gay tradition mingles With a record grave and drear, Like the rollic air of Cluny, With the solemn march of Mear.

When the box-tree, white with blossoms, Made the sweet May woodlands glad, And the Aronia by the river Lighted up the swarming shad,

And the bulging nets swept shoreward, With their silver-sided haul, Midst the shouts of dripping fishers, He was merriest of them all.

When, among the jovial huskers, Love stole in at Labor's side, With the lusty airs of England, Soft his Celtic measures vied.

Songs of love and wailing lyke--wake, And the merry fair's carouse; Of the wild Red Fox of Erin And the Woman of Three Cows,

By the blazing hearths of winter, Pleasant seemed his simple tales, Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends And the mountain myths of Wales.

How the souls in Purgatory Scrambled up from fate forlorn, On St. Eleven's sackcloth ladder, Slyly hitched to Satan's horn.

Of the fiddler who at Tara Played all night to ghosts of kings; Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies Dancing in their moorland rings.

Jolliest of our birds of singing, Best he loved the Bob-o-link. "Hush!" he 'd say, "the tipsy fairies Hear the little folks in drink!"

Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle, Singing through the ancient town, Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant, Hath Tradition handed down.

Not a stone his grave discloses; But if yet his spirit walks, 'T is beneath the trees he planted, And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks;

Green memorials of the gleeman I Linking still the river-shores, With their shadows cast by sunset, Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores!

When the Father of his Country Through the north-land riding came, And the roofs were starred with banners, And the steeples rang acclaim,--

When each war-scarred Continental, Leaving smithy, mill, and farm, Waved his rusted sword in welcome, And shot off his old king's arm,--

Slowly passed that August Presence Down the thronged and shouting street; Village girls as white as angels, Scattering flowers around his feet.

Midway, where the plane-tree's shadow Deepest fell, his rein he drew On his stately head, uncovered, Cool and soft the west-wind blew.

And he stood up in his stirrups, Looking up and looking down On the hills of Gold and Silver Rimming round the little town,--

On the river, full of sunshine, To the lap of greenest vales Winding down from wooded headlands, Willow-skirted, white with sails.

And he said, the landscape sweeping Slowly with his ungloved hand, "I have seen no prospect fairer In this goodly Eastern land."

Then the bugles of his escort Stirred to life the cavalcade And that head, so bare and stately, Vanished down the depths of shade.

Ever since, in town and farm-house, Life has had its ebb and flow; Thrice hath passed the human harvest To its garner green and low.

But the trees the gleeman planted, Through the changes, changeless stand; As the marble calm of Tadmor Mocks the desert's shifting sand.

Still the level moon at rising Silvers o'er each stately shaft; Still beneath them, half in shadow, Singing, glides the pleasure craft;

Still beneath them, arm-enfolded, Love and Youth together stray; While, as heart to heart beats faster, More and more their feet delay.

Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar, On the open hillside wrought, Singing, as he drew his stitches, Songs his German masters taught,

Singing, with his gray hair floating Round his rosy ample face,-- Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen Stitch and hammer in his place.

All the pastoral lanes so grassy Now are Traffic's dusty streets; From the village, grown a city, Fast the rural grace retreats.

But, still green, and tall, and stately, On the river's winding shores, Stand the Occidental plane-trees, Stand, Hugh Taliant's sycamores. 1857.

THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW.

An incident of the Sepoy mutiny.

PIPES of the misty moorlands, Voice of the glens and hills; The droning of the torrents, The treble of the rills! Not the braes of broom and heather, Nor the mountains dark with rain, Nor maiden bower, nor border tower, Have heard your sweetest strain!

Dear to the Lowland reaper, And plaided mountaineer,-- To the cottage and the castle The Scottish pipes are dear;-- Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch O'er mountain, loch, and glade; But the sweetest of all music The pipes at Lucknow played.

Day by day the Indian tiger Louder yelled, and nearer crept; Round and round the jungle-serpent Near and nearer circles swept. "Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,-- Pray to-day!" the soldier said; "To-morrow, death's between us And the wrong and shame we dread."

Oh, they listened, looked, and waited, Till their hope became despair; And the sobs of low bewailing Filled the pauses of their prayer. Then up spake a Scottish maiden, With her ear unto the ground "Dinna ye hear it?--dinna ye hear it? The pipes o' Havelock sound!"

Hushed the wounded man his groaning; Hushed the wife her little ones; Alone they heard the drum-roll And the roar of Sepoy guns. But to sounds of home and childhood The Highland ear was true;-- As her mother's cradle-crooning The mountain pipes she knew.

Like the march of soundless music Through the vision of the seer, More of feeling than of hearing, Of the heart than of the ear, She knew the droning pibroch, She knew the Campbell's call "Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's, The grandest o' them all!"

Oh, they listened, dumb and breathless, And they caught the sound at last; Faint and far beyond the Goomtee Rose and fell the piper's blast Then a burst of wild thanksgiving Mingled woman's voice and man's; "God be praised!--the march of Havelock! The piping of the clans!"

Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance, Sharp and shrill as swords at strife, Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call, Stinging all the air to life. But when the far-off dust-cloud To plaided legions grew, Full tenderly and blithesomely The pipes of rescue blew!

Round the silver domes of Lucknow, Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, Breathed the air to Britons dearest, The air of Auld Lang Syne. O'er the cruel roll of war-drums Rose that sweet and homelike strain; And the tartan clove the turban, As the Goomtee cleaves the plain.

Dear to the corn-land reaper And plaided mountaineer,-- To the cottage and the castle The piper's song is dear. Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch O'er mountain, glen, and glade; But the sweetest of all music The Pipes at Lucknow played! 1858.

TELLING THE BEES.

A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country, formerly prevailed in the rural districts of New England. On the death of a member of the family, the bees were at once informed of the event, and their hives dressed in mourning. This ceremonial was supposed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home.

HERE is the place; right over the hill Runs the path I took; You can see the gap in the old wall still, And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.

There is the house, with the gate red-barred, And the poplars tall; And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard, And the white horns tossing above the wall.

There are the beehives ranged in the sun; And down by the brink Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun, Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, Heavy and slow; And the same rose blooms, and the same sun glows, And the same brook sings of a year ago.

There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze; And the June sun warm Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.

I mind me how with a lover's care From my Sunday coat I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair, And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat.

Since we parted, a month had passed,-- To love, a year; Down through the beeches I looked at last On the little red gate and the well-sweep near.

I can see it all now,--the slantwise rain Of light through the leaves, The sundown's blaze on her window-pane, The bloom of her roses under the eaves.

Just the same as a month before,-- The house and the trees, The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,-- Nothing changed but the hives of bees.

Before them, under the garden wall, Forward and back, Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, Draping each hive with a shred of black.

Trembling, I listened: the summer sun Had the chill of snow; For I knew she was telling the bees of one Gone on the journey we all must go.

Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps For the dead to-day; Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps The fret and the pain of his age away."

But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill, With his cane to his chin, The old man sat; and the chore-girl still Sung to the bees stealing out and in.

And the song she was singing ever since In my ear sounds on:-- "Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence! Mistress Mary is dead and gone!" 1858.

THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY.

In Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts Bay front 1623 to 1636 may be found Anthony Thacher's Narrative of his Shipwreck. Thacher was Avery's companion and survived to tell the tale. Mather's Magnalia, III. 2, gives further Particulars of Parson Avery's End, and suggests the title of the poem.

WHEN the reaper's task was ended, and the summer wearing late, Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with his wife and children eight, Dropping down the river-harbor in the shallop "Watch and Wait."

Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mellow summer- morn, With the newly planted orchards dropping their fruits first-born, And the home-roofs like brown islands amid a sea of corn.

Broad meadows reached out 'seaward the tided creeks between, And hills rolled wave-like inland, with oaks and walnuts green;-- A fairer home, a--goodlier land, his eyes had never seen.

Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where duty led, And the voice of God seemed calling, to break the living bread To the souls of fishers starving on the rocks of Marblehead.

All day they sailed: at nightfall the pleasant land- breeze died, The blackening sky, at midnight, its starry lights denied, And far and low the thunder of tempest prophesied.

Blotted out were all the coast-lines, gone were rock, and wood, and sand; Grimly anxious stood the skipper with the rudder in his hand, And questioned of the darkness what was sea and what was land.

And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestled round him, weeping sore, "Never heed, my little children! Christ is walking on before; To the pleasant land of heaven, where the sea shall be no more."

All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtain drawn aside, To let down the torch of lightning on the terror far and wide; And the thunder and the whirlwind together smote the tide.

There was wailing in the shallop, woman's wail and man's despair, A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharp and bare, And, through it all, the murmur of Father Avery's prayer.

From his struggle in the darkness with the wild waves and the blast, On a rock, where every billow broke above him as it passed, Alone, of all his household, the man of God was cast.

There a comrade heard him praying, in the pause of wave and wind "All my own have gone before me, and I linger just behind; Not for life I ask, but only for the rest Thy ransomed find!

"In this night of death I challenge the promise of Thy word!-- Let me see the great salvation of which mine ears have heard!-- Let me pass from hence forgiven, through the grace of Christ, our Lord!

"In the baptism of these waters wash white my every sin, And let me follow up to Thee my household and my kin! Open the sea-gate of Thy heaven, and let me enter in!"

When the Christian sings his death-song, all the listening heavens draw near, And the angels, leaning over the walls of crystal, hear How the notes so faint and broken swell to music in God's ear.

The ear of God was open to His servant's last request; As the strong wave swept him downward the sweet hymn upward pressed, And the soul of Father Avery went, singing, to its rest.

There was wailing on the mainland, from the rocks of Marblehead; In the stricken church of Newbury the notes of prayer were read; And long, by board and hearthstone, the living mourned the dead.

And still the fishers outbound, or scudding from the squall, With grave and reverent faces, the ancient tale recall, When they see the white waves breaking on the Rock of Avery's Fall! 1808.

THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY.

"Concerning ye Amphisbaena, as soon as I received your commands, I made diligent inquiry: . . . he assures me yt it had really two heads, one at each end; two mouths, two stings or tongues."--REV. CHRISTOPHER TOPPAN to COTTON MATHER.

FAR away in the twilight time Of every people, in every clime, Dragons and griffins and monsters dire, Born of water, and air, and fire, Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud And ooze of the old Deucalion flood, Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, Through dusk tradition and ballad age. So from the childhood of Newbury town And its time of fable the tale comes down Of a terror which haunted bush and brake, The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake!

Thou who makest the tale thy mirth, Consider that strip of Christian earth On the desolate shore of a sailless sea, Full of terror and mystery, Half redeemed from the evil hold Of the wood so dreary, and dark, and old, Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew When Time was young, and the world was new, And wove its shadows with sun and moon, Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and hewn. Think of the sea's dread monotone, Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood blown, Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North, Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth, And the dismal tales the Indian told, Till the settler's heart at his hearth grew cold, And he shrank from the tawny wizard boasts, And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts, And above, below, and on every side, The fear of his creed seemed verified;-- And think, if his lot were now thine own, To grope with terrors nor named nor known, How laxer muscle and weaker nerve And a feebler faith thy need might serve; And own to thyself the wonder more That the snake had two heads, and not a score!

Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil's Den, Or swam in the wooded Artichoke, Or coiled by the Northman's Written Rock, Nothing on record is left to show; Only the fact that be lived, we know, And left the cast of a double head In the scaly mask which he yearly shed. For he carried a head where his tail should be, And the two, of course, could never agree, But wriggled about with main and might, Now to the left and now to the right; Pulling and twisting this way and that, Neither knew what the other was at.

A snake with two beads, lurking so near! Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear! Think what ancient gossips might say, Shaking their heads in their dreary way, Between the meetings on Sabbath-day! How urchins, searching at day's decline The Common Pasture for sheep or kine, The terrible double-ganger heard In leafy rustle or whir of bird! Think what a zest it gave to the sport, In berry-time, of the younger sort, As over pastures blackberry-twined, Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind, And closer and closer, for fear of harm, The maiden clung to her lover's arm; And how the spark, who was forced to stay, By his sweetheart's fears, till the break of day, Thanked the snake for the fond delay.

Far and wide the tale was told, Like a snowball growing while it rolled. The nurse hushed with it the baby's cry; And it served, in the worthy minister's eye, To paint the primitive serpent by. Cotton Mather came galloping down All the way to Newbury town, With his eyes agog and his ears set wide, And his marvellous inkhorn at his side; Stirring the while in the shallow pool Of his brains for the lore he learned at school, To garnish the story, with here a streak Of Latin, and there another of Greek And the tales he heard and the notes he took, Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book?

Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill. If the snake does not, the tale runs still In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill. And still, whenever husband and wife Publish the shame of their daily strife, And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strain At either end of the marriage-chain, The gossips say, with a knowing shake Of their gray heads, "Look at the Double Snake One in body and two in will, The Amphisbaena is living still!" 1859.