Part 8

Meanwhile, Hans waited anxiously the arrival of those French galleys, which at times, under the pennon of the Chevalier de Villaignon, made their appearance in the Scottish firth--for Scotland had then but six or eight ships for military purposes, under the pennons of David Wood, Sir Edmund Blackadder, Thomas Dixon, and Edward Robertson, who (though Buchanan styles them "pirates of known rapacity") were Scottish sea-officers, and vassals of the Lord High Admiral. These ships were then in the Western seas; thus, the pirate of Hull, which was the bane of Hans' existence, lay there unmolested, like a wolf waiting for his prey, and the fishers from the New haven daily brought terrible accounts of her crew; how they were plundering the coast about Crail--how they cruised with a man hanging at each yard-arm--how her poop lanterns were human skulls--and the skipper was said to be the devil himself; for he came ashore every night, not in his jolly-boat, like any other respectable shipman, but in his broad beaver inverted on the water, to attend the witches of Pittenweem, who held the meeting in the weem, or great cavern, below St. Mary's priory; and thus poor Hans was denied the hope of escaping even in the night, by creeping along the shore, under the brows of Kincraigie and Elie-ness on the north, or by the broad and beautiful bay of Preston on the south; and so the time wore on--the month of May was passing--and still the _Skottefruin_ of Bergen lay off the New haven, with her canvass bent, her brown sides and curved deck blistering in the summer sun.

At last there came tidings that the high admiral was about to put to sea, and that five Scottish frigates were anchored near his castle of Dunbar. Upon this, the pirate disappeared, and Hans Knuber rubbed his eyes again and again, one morning, to assure himself that the offing was clear. Then, impatient to bend his course homeward, he took immediate advantage of the gentle summer breeze that blew from the western hills, and spread his canvass on a beautiful morning in May--though a Friday, of all days in the week, by ancient superstition, the most unpropitious for putting to sea.

Then, with a heart that grew lighter as the Scottish mountains lessened in the distance, Konrad hailed the blue sky and the dark ocean; for he knew that, when land again was visible, it would be the pine-covered hills and thunder-riven cliffs of his native Norway.

*CHAPTER XV.*

*THE LEGEND OF ST. MUNGO.*

A famous sanct St. Mungo was, And ane cantye carle was he; He drank o ye Molendinar burne, Quhan he oouldna better prie! _Ballad._

"Mass!" said Hans Knuber to Konrad, as they walked to and fro one day on the lee side of his quarter-deck; "we have voyaged prosperously. I knew I should not implore the aid of good St. Mungo for nought; though, poor man! his work was like our anchorage in yonder firth--like to have no end."

"Thou seemest ever in a rare mood now, Hans;" replied Konrad; "but what made St. Mungo thy particular patron, and how came it that the work of so holy a man was never done?"

"Why, Master Konrad, 'tis a long story, which I heard from a certain old friar when my crayer was once discharging her cargo at the ancient Stockwell bridge of Glasgow. I care not if I tell it thee to wile away an hour or so; so here cometh like a rope out of the coil, with a wanion on it!--the story I mean, not the saint--the Lord forbid! It happened somewhere about the time that Erick Blodiaxe was among us here in Norway--the year 530--a long time ago, Master Konrad."

We here present the legend, not in the words of honest Hans, but as we find it in the MSS. of Magister Absalom, who has entitled it,

The Legend of St. Mungo.

In the days when Eugene III. was king of Scotland, and Lothus ruled the race of the Picts, there was a certain holy woman who dwelt in a cavern on the shore of the river Forth, above where the ruins of the Roman invaders overlooked the mouth of the Carron.

The place was then all desolate, and the land was covered with wood from the dark summit of the distant rock of Stirling, where there frowned the fragments of a Roman tower, to the yellow shore of the river, where the rippling waves rolled up in all their echoing loneliness.

The only traces of men near her dwelling were a circle of stones--large and upright; in the centre lay one whereon the Druids of other times, on the first day of every ninth year, had sacrificed to Odin a foeman taken in battle; and to that mysterious circle, there yet came more than one white-bearded believer in his wild pagan faith to adore the morning sun, as he arose from his bed in the shining eastern sea. Where a busy town now stands, a few squalid huts, built of turf, and mud, and bows freshly torn from the pine woods, straggled up the rough ascent; and among them grazed a herd of wild cattle, watched by wilder-looking men, half naked and half clad in skins and coats of jointed mail, armed with bows and clubs, long reedy spears, and shields of black bull's hide; while their hair, long, yellow, and uncombed, flowed like horse-manes from beneath their caps of steel.

These were Scottish warriors, who had come on a hunting expedition from their native wilds in the west of Braidalbyn, to drive the deer in the woods of the Pictish race; for Lothus the Just was then at peace with Eugene.

The Scottish prince had wearied of hunting; he had tarried many days among the vast forests that bordered on Bodoria, and more than a hundred noble stags, and a score of the snow-white bulls of Caledonia, had fallen beneath the spears of his huntsmen.

It chanced that on Beltane morning, a beautiful white deer, scared from the mountains by the beal-fires that were lit on their summits, passed the young king, as slowly, dreamily, and alone, he rode along the sandy shore of that broad river, whose glassy surface had been unploughed by a keel since the galleys of Rome had, a hundred years before, quitted, and for ever, their now desolate harbours at Alauna and Alterva. It bounded close by him, lightly and gracefully as a spirit, and disappeared into a gloomy weem or cavern, up to the mouth of which the white-edged waves were rolling.

He sprang from his horse, threw its bridle, which was massive with brazen ornaments, over the branch of a tree, and, grasping his short hunting-spear, advanced fearlessly into the cavern; but he had not gone ten paces before his steps were arrested, and, removing his steel cap, which was encircled by the rude representation of an ancient diadem, he knelt before St. Thena, the recluse of that desert, and as yet nameless, solitude.

No man knew from whence St. Thena came; she was the daughter of a distant race, and her beauty, which was very great, had doubtless made her seek the wilderness, that there, separated from the temptations of the world, she might dedicate her days to God. For years her food had been barley bread and a few wild-beans, to which, in times of great scarcity, she added a little milk, and now and then a small fish, when the receding waves left it on the shore near her cavern. Her prayer was continual, and her tears often flowed for the benighted and still Pagan state of many of her countrymen. She was good and gentle, and her face, which was seldom seen (for, like her form, it was enveloped in her long sackcloth garment), was said to be one of wondrous beauty. Many feared but more loved her; and the wild huntsmen, and wilder warriors, when they tracked either the foe or the red deer, through the vast woods or along the desert shores of that far-winding river, avoided to disturb the recluse, and blessed her peaceful life, after their own rude fashion.

The fame of her virtue spread abroad; and through all the land of King Lothus, from the waters of the Tay to those of the Abios, among the northern Saxons, she became known for the austerity of her fasts and other mortifications. Some averred she was the daughter of a king, and that, like the blessed St. Ebba, she had fled to avoid an evil marriage; others, that she was an angel, for the man who obtained even a glimpse of her figure, with its floating garments, never bent the bow nor threw the net in vain that day.

She stood with one arm around the neck of the deer, to protect it from the intruder; that arm was bare to the elbow, and its whiteness was not surpassed by the snowy coat of the fugitive. Her face was concealed by the overshadowing hood; a rosy little mouth and one long ringlet of golden hair were visible. The young king saw with pain, that her tender feet had no protection from the flinty floor of the cavern--that flinty floor whereon she knelt daily, before a rough wooden cross, which St. Serf of Lochleven had fashioned for her with his own holy hands.

Timidly she gazed on the young Scottish king, whose strong and graceful form was clad in a close-fitting hauberk of steel scales, and a tunic of bright-coloured breacan, that reached to his knees, which were bare; his sandals were covered with plates of polished brass, and were plaited saltirewise to within six inches of his tunic. A crimson mantle hung from his left shoulder, and on his right were his bow, fashioned of yew from the forest of Glenure, and his arrows, feathered from the wings of the swift eagles of Lochtreig.

"Warrior!" said the Recluse, "spare me this deer; it is the only living thing that clings to me, or to which my heart yearns in this wilderness."

"It is spared," replied the huntsman, lowering the bright point of his spear; "but whence is it, gentle voice, that so much beauty and goodness are hidden from the world; and that one so fair, so young, and so queen-like, is vowed to this life of austerity and seclusion."

"Because my heart told me it was my vocation; and now, warrior, I pray you to leave me, for I may not, and must not hold converse with men."

"Saint Thena, thou seest that I know thee," replied the young man gently; "I am Eugene, the King of the fierce Scottish tribes that dwell beyond the Grampians. Even there, among these distant mountains, we have heard of thy holiness and piety; and I will bless the hour that led me to thy cavern, for I have looked on a form that will never be forgotten."

"And, king, what seekest thou here among these woods?"

"The white bull with its eyes of fire, and the great stags and wild elks of this rich land of the Cruitnich; but say, gentle Thena, may I not come again to have thy blessing ere I return to the wilds and wars of my own dark mountains in the land of the west?"

The saint paused, and the young king saw that her bosom heaved. Another long golden tress fell from her dark hood, and he could perceive, when her lips unclosed, that her teeth were white as the pearls of his diadem; again he urged, for an unholy curiosity burned within him, and the poor Recluse replied,--

"Why should I shun thee? come, yes, and I shall bless thee; go, and I shall bless thee likewise. God's will be done! I am armed against temptation; but, O king! I am not above the tongue of reproach."

"Art thou not Thena, the saint, and the holy one?" replied the young king; and, fearful lest she should retract her promise, he withdrew, and, still more slowly and thoughtfully than before, pursued his way by the echoing strand to the camp, where his bare-kneed Dalriads were stretched on the grassy sward, with their bucklers cast aside and bows unstrung, wiling away the sunny hours with bowls of blaedium, while the harpers sang of the wars of Fingal of Selma, and Fergus the son of Erc.

But a spell had fallen upon the Recluse, and after the king was gone, his voice seemed to linger in her ear, and his stately form was still before her; with his shining hauberk, and his bright curling locks, that glittered in the sunlight.

The next day's eve was declining.

The sun was setting, like a circle of flame, behind the western hills; the waters of Bodoria rolled in light, and the bright green leaves of its pathless shores were glittering with the early dew, when the king, with a bugle in his baldrick, and a spear in his hand, again approached the cavern of Thena. He was alone and unattended, save by his favourite dog; one of those dark-eyed and deep-chested hounds of Albyn, rough, shaggy, and gigantic, like the Bran of other days.

He entered softly. The saint was at prayer, and she knelt on the bare step of her altar, which was a fragment of the living rock; a skull, thrown by the waves upon the shore, was placed thereon; and above it stood the cross of St. Serf. The white deer, which was asleep on the Recluse's bed of dry leaves, sprang up on the stranger's entrance, and cowered beside her.

Eugene paused till her orisons were over, and gazed the while with wonder. Her hood had fallen back, and her long flowing hair, which steel had never touched, fell in luxuriance to her knees. Reflected from the glassy waters of the river, a ray of the setting sun entered the cavern; her tresses shone in light, and she seemed something ethereal, for they glittered like a halo of glory around her. The young king was intoxicated; and a deep sigh escaped him.

It startled the Recluse, and as she turned, a glow of shame, perhaps of anger, overspread her beautiful countenance.

The king implored her forgiveness.

And the gentle St. Thena forgave him; and in token, gave him a ring which she had that morning found upon the shore; and the king vowed to offer up a prayer for the donor, whenever he looked upon it.

Again and again the young king came to visit the fair inmate of that lonely cavern. After a time she ceased to chide his visits; and though she wept and prayed after his departure, and vowed to fly from him into the wild-woods that covered the howe of the Lowland Ross, she still lingered; and thus, day by day, the spell closed around her, and, day by day, the king came to lay the unwished for, and unrequested, spoils of the chase at her feet, until St. Thena learned to welcome him with smiles, to wreathe her ringlets with her white fingers, to long for evening, and to watch the fading sunlight as it died on the distant sea--yea, to watch it with impatience, but not, as in other days, for the hour of evening prayer.

It was surely a snare of the evil one to throw a handsome and heedless young prince in the path of this poor recluse, who had neither the power of St. Dunstan, when the fell spirit came to him in his cell at Glastonbury, nor the virtue of St. Anthony, when he tempted him so sorely in the old sepulchre wherein he dwelt at Como. Nothing short of a blessed miracle could have saved her, and no miracle was wrought.

Her good angel covered his face with his wings, and St. Thena fell, as her mother Eve had fallen before her......

On his caparisoned horse, with all the bells of its bridle jangling, the wicked young king rode merrily along the sandy shore of the shining river; and the red eyes of his great hound sparkled when he hallooed to the dun deer, that on the distant ridges were seen against the western sky, for it was evening now. Thus merrily King Eugene sought the camp where his warrior huntsmen, impatient at his tarrying so long in the land of the wheat-eaters, muttered under their thick beards that waved in the rising wind, and pointed to the blue peak of the distant Benlomond, that looked down on the lake, with all its wooded isles--the lake where the fish swam without fins, the waves rolled without wind, and the fairies dwelt on a floating islet.

St. Thena was very sad.

A deep grief and a sore remorse fell upon her; she confessed her errors to good St. Serf, who dwelt on an isle of the lonely Leven, and the saint blessed and absolved her, because she had sinned and repented. Daily she prayed--yea, hourly--for the forgiveness of God; that the youth might return no more; and, though he had seduced her from her vows to heaven, that his presence might not be permitted to disturb her sincere repentance.

But he came not; war had broken out on the western hills of Caledonia, and, leaguing with Dovenald of Athole, Arthur, the son of Uther Pendragon, was coming with his white-mantled Britons against the bare-knee'd Dalreudini; and hastening to his home, where the seven towers of Josina look down on the mountains of Appin, King Eugene returned to St. Thena no more. Her remorse was bitter; but time, which cureth all things, brought no relief to her, for she found that she had become a mother; and there, unseen in that lonely cavern, gave birth to a boy--the son of a Scottish king; and when she laid him on her bed of soft leaves and dried grass, she thought of the little child Jesus, as he lay in the manger at Bethlehem, and thought herself happy, vowing the child to the service of God as an atonement for her own sin.

And, lo! it seemed to her as if, for a time, that the same star which shone above Bethlehem sparkled on the pure forehead of the sinless babe, and from that moment the heart of St. Thena rejoiced. All the mother gushed upon her troubled soul, and she would have worshipped the infant, for it was a miracle of beauty--and its feet and hands, they were so tiny and so rosy, she was never tired of kissing them, and bedewing them with her tears.

That night she felt happy, as, nestling beside her tame deer, the poor recluse hushed her babe to sleep, and covered its little form with her only garment, that it might not hear the wind mourning in those vast forests that overshadowed the shore, where the waves of the eternal sea were breaking in their loneliness.

I have said that Lothus was king of the land: he dwelt on the opposite shore, which he called Lothian, from himself. Now it chanced that a daughter of this king, attended by a train of maormars and ladies on horseback, came to visit St. Thena, the fame of whose holiness had spread from the rising to the setting sun. This princess, who was soon to be espoused by Eugene king of the Scots, was a proud and a wicked woman. St. Serf had recently converted her from Paganrie to the blessed faith; but her secret love yet lingered after the false gods of her fathers, and she still (as in her childhood) worshipped the crystal waters of a fountain that flowed at her father's palace gate; for her mother was of the tribe of the Lavernani, who dwelt on the banks of the Gryfe.

Dismounting with softness and fear near the cavern, the princess paused a moment to have her attire adjusted, that she might over-awe the poor recluse by the splendour of its aspect. According to the fashion of the Pictish virgins, her flaxen hair flowed over her shoulders; her tunic was of scarlet cloth, and reached to her sandals; her mantle was of the yellow linen then woven by the distant Gauls, and it was fastened on her right shoulder by a shining beryl--an amulet of great virtue, which had been given to her mother by the last arch-druid of the Lavernani, and, filled with the vain thought of these things, she sought the presence of St. Thena. She was sleeping.

Softly the princess drew near, and, lo! she saw the babe that slept in the bosom of the recluse, and uttered a cry of spite and anger. St. Thena awoke, and, while her face reddened with modest shame, she raised one hand to shield the child, and the other in supplication.

"Hypocrite that thou art!" exclaimed the half Pagan princess, "is it for _this_ that thou dwellest in caverns and lonely places, like the good druids of our forefathers! Truly it was wise of thee; for thy deeds require the cloak of darkness and obscurity. Ha!" she continued scornfully, seeing that the saint wept, "dost thou weep in contrition for thine abominable hypocrisy, or in terror of the punishment it so justly merits, and which I may mete out to thee? And is it to visit such as thee that I have endured so much in journeying through wild places, by pathless woods and rocky rivers? Ha! if such as thou art a priestess of the Christians' triple God, I say, welcome again be those of Him who rideth on the north wind, and whose dwelling-place is in yonder glorious sun, which we now see rising from his bed in the waters."

This imperious lady, as a mark of disgrace, then ordered the beautiful hair of St. Thena to be entirely cut off, and committed to the winds, that the birds might line their nests with it; and she further commanded her Pagan followers to place the poor recluse and her infant in a crazy little currach, or boat of wickerwork and deerskin, and commit them to the waters of the great river, that they might be borne to the distant sea.

The boat was old and decayed; it had been used in war, and flint arrows and spears had pierced its sides of skin. A human head and shoulders dried in the wind, and tanned with the bark of the oak-tree, ornamented its prow. Long ringlets of fair Saxon hair waved about its shrunken ears, and two clam-shells filled its hollow eyelids; it was a horrible and ghastly companion, and, when night came on, seemed like a demon of the sea, leading the fallen saint to destruction.

Endlong and sidelong, the sport of the waves and the current, the boat drifted down the broad Bodoria; the sun set behind the hills of the west, and its last rays faded away from the mountain peaks that look down on the valley of Dolour, and the waters of Sorrow and Care. The sky grew dark, and the shores grew darker; there were no stars, but the red sheet lightning gleamed afar off, revealing the rocky isles of the widening estuary. Still the boat floated on, darkly and silently; and, resigned to her fate, and pouring all her soul in prayer--but prayer only for the poor infant that nestled in her bosom--St. Thena, overcome with weariness, after a time sank to sleep; and then, more than ever, did her good angel watch over her.

When she awoke, the sun had risen again; there was no motion; the little bark was still. Thena looked around her. The currach was fast, high and dry, upon a sandy beach; on one side, the broad and glassy river was flowing past; on the other, were the green and waving woods of Rosse.[*] An old man, with long flowing garments, and a beard of snow that floated in the passing wind, approached; and in his bent form, and the cross-staff on which he leant, she recognised St. Serf of the Isle, and hurried to meet him, and implore his blessing on her babe. Then the good man blessed it, and taking a little water from a limpid fountain that poured over a neighbouring rock, he marked its little forehead with the cross, and called the babe _Mungo_--a name which, he prophesied, would become famous in future times.

[*] Fife, so called as it lay between the Tay and Forth; hence _Kinross_ and _Culross_, the head and back of Rosse.

And there, in that lonely place, where the fountain ran, the mother built a cell, where she dwelt in holiness, rearing her boy for the service of God; there she died in the odour of sanctity, and there she was interred; and above her grave her son built an oratory, which is called, even unto this day, by the burghers of Culross, the chapel of St. Mungo.

His mother's feast is the 18th of July, in the Scottish calendar.

Reared by St. Serf, and trained up in the way he was to pursue, the little boy, who imitated that man of God in all things, became, as he waxed older, a pattern of Christian humility and piety; and those hours which were not spent in labouring with his hands, that he might have food and raiment to bestow on the sick, the aged, and the poor, (for he called the poor the children of God,) he spent in prayer for the sins of men; and long after the blessed Serf had passed to the company of the saints, who are in heaven, the young man had waxed tall and strong, stately in figure and beautiful in face; but the fame of his goodness and sanctity exceeded even those of his pastor, until the simple people of the land, who knew not he was the son of their king, began to assert that his birth had been miraculous.