CHAPTER LII.

THE HERMIT OF LORETTO.

"'Tis your belief the world was made for man; Kings do but reason on the self-same plan. Maintaining yours, you cannot theirs condemn, Who think, or seem to think, man made for them."--_COWPER._

Among all the places esteemed for sanctity, at a time when a singular mixture of high religious veneration and a strong faith amounting to adoration and sublimity, united to gross superstition,--existed in the land, there was none in Scotland so famous as the chapel and hermitage of Our Lady of Loretto, which stood a little way without the eastern gate of Musselburgh.

It belonged to the abbots of Dunfermline, and had been built in an age anterior to all written record; so now, we know not when it was founded or by whom. The obscurity in which its early history was enveloped left fancy free, and thus the fane enjoyed a celebrity for holiness second only to the Cottage of the Nativity, like which, it became famous for effecting supernatural cures and conversions on visitors and devotees.

The nuns of St. Catharine of Sienna patronised the cell and sought the prayers of the ascetic who dwelt in the hermitage. In August, 1530, before visiting France, James V. made a pilgrimage of more than forty miles on foot, to Loretto. Ladies about to be delivered sent there their childbed linen, to obtain the "odour of sanctity." If they recovered, the hermit attributed it to the powers of the shrine; if they died, to their own evil and sin. There, it was affirmed that sight had been restored to the blind, and strength to the lame; but under the coarse and pungent satires of Sir David Lindesay of the Mount, and one in particular by John Knox, beginning--

"I, Thomas the Hermit, in Loreitte, Sanct Francies Order do heartillie greet,"

the shrine ultimately lost all reputation and honour; it was demolished, and its materials form the present Tolbooth of the town--little more being left of Loretto than the name and a vault under a wooded mound.

By the decline of the Church, and the general decay of religious sentiment, before the Reformation, the pilgrimages to Loretto became mere scenes of debauchery and an excuse for licentiousness.

In the days of James III. the shrine enjoyed its ancient fame--pure and undefiled; and Father Fairlie, the Franciscan who then occupied the hermitage, afterwards attained a great age, for he was the immediate predecessor of the Father Thomas referred to in the pasquil of Knox. Though a pious enthusiast in some respects, he was not at all one of those who thought

"To merit heaven by making earth a hell."

He had been a soldier in his youth, and fought in the Douglas wars; so he said his office daily and never omitted his prayers, or withheld kind advice from those who sought his shrine; and yet withal, he enjoyed the various good things of this life that came his way. Thus, though he went abroad barefooted and wore the grey woollen gown and cowl, with the knotted girdle prescribed by his patron St. Francis of Assisi, he was one of the most sleek and well fed of the brotherhood in Scotland.

It was towards the afternoon of that stormy day described in a recent chapter. From the Firth a cool wind blew over the sandy knolls and broomy hollows of Musselburgh Links; the old woods of Pinkey and the venerable oaks around the Chapel of Loretto moaned in the rising wind, and their damp foliage whistled drearily. The sky wore a dingy grey hue to the eastward, darkening as it approached the horizon, which served as a background, and against which the white curling waves of the Firth rose and fell, while the bitter surf boomed far along the echoing shore.

No less than three substantial burgess-wives of the "honest town" had been at the shrine on this morning, craving the prayers of the hermit; one for the recovery of her spouse, who was a leper on Inchkeith; a second that her child might be cured of the croup; and a third that her husband might escape from the Turks, who had taken him prisoner in the Levant, all of which Father Fairlie promised should be done "without delay, if they had _faith_;"--however, each had what was of more importance to him, a basket of viands, ready cooked, which they deposited and departed.

The hermit, after a long and sorrowful contemplation of a daintily roasted duck and side of lamb, was compelled (the day being Friday) to content himself with a couple of pounds of kippered salmon, five or six buttered eggs, and a quart of Rhenish wine for dinner; after which he stroked his paunch, made a sign of the cross three times, and blessed the three burgess-wives in his heart. He then drew his grey cowl over his face, and walked forth upon the beach for the double purpose of gaining an appetite for supper and saying "his office," or daily set of prescribed prayers in Latin; though some persons who were envious of the popularity enjoyed by Friar Fairlie among the maids, wives, and widows of the honest town--for so was Musselburgh named, _par excellence_, by the Regent Randolph in 1333--averred that he knew no more of Latinity than a few scraps, with which he incessantly interlarded his conversation; and as the said scraps sounded very mysterious and holy, they were not without having a due and potent effect upon the simple-minded folks who heard them. Some were rash enough to assert that at vespers he had been heard in his hermitage singing, "Jollie Martin," and that old ditty which became so famous in the time of James V.--

"Bill wilt thou come by a lute And belt thee in Sanct Francis cord;"

but all this we verily believe to have been mere scandal, raised by the chaplains of other oratories in the burgh, who belonged to rival orders, and were envious of the fame enjoyed by the poor Franciscan hermit and his shrine at Loretto, without the gate.

The attention of our new friend the recluse was divided between his daily office, which he repeated drowsily and mechanically, and in watching the lowering of the sky and sea, on which a boat with her large lug-sail squared was running straight for the beach which bordered the links.

She cut through the water, riding over, or cleaving asunder the waves with her sharp prow, and throwing on each side a continual shower of spray; the helmsman steered her straight for the shore, and being aware that the tide was ebbing, beached her firmly into the soft sand, while at the same moment two companions whom he had on board reduced the sail, hauled down the yard, and struck the mast. They then threw over the anchor, to keep her fast when the tide floated her again; and stepping into the surf in their long boots which came above the knee, they crossed the links (or downs, as they would be called in England) and approached the observant friar.

The latter was glad to perceive that one of the trio carried an ample basket on one arm and had a small keg under the other; and these--as there were no smugglers in those primitive times--he fondly believed were dutiful offerings for himself.

The three men, who came straight towards him, wore the coarse grey doublet, cloak, and short trews then worn by the Scottish seaman, with long fisher boots; but under this plain attire, the quick eye of the hermit detected in each the upper rim of a gorget of fine steel, and other indications which led him to suspect that two of them at least, were gentlemen, who under their humble garments had each a good coat of mail; and such was really the case, for the three mysterious boat voyagers were none else than Robert Barton, Sir David Falconer, and Willie Wad, who had boldly run across that morning from Largo in a fisherboat, all undeterred by the threatening aspect of the sky and weather, and still less by terror of the insurgents--for each had with him his sword, dagger, and handgun.

"Good-morrow, father," said Barton, with a profound salutation; "we presume you are the Franciscan Father of Loretto."

"Dominus vobiscum--gude-morrow, my bairns," said the Hermit, waving a blessing to them with his fat fingers; "come ye here to pray?" he added, eyeing with affection the basket and barrel.

"We have run in here and anchored, good father, for the double purpose of avoiding the black squall now coming on, and if offering up a small orison at the shrine of Loretto, where--much as I have heard of it--I never, to my shame, have been before," said Robert Barton.

"Come ye here, sirs, to pray alone?" asked the hermit inquisitively.

"Alone"--reiterated Falconer, puzzled by the question; "dost see there are three of us?"

"Benedictus dominus Deus," said the friar, shrugging his shoulders, over which his grey cowl hung, for by past experience, he had a shrewd guess that ladies would soon arrive.

"This is the way to my hermitage--enter, and the blessings of the day be on ye, for every day is blessed."

"The eleventh of this month, for example?" said Falconer.

"Nay, in all his wickedness, man cannot curse it; but our poor king--are there yet no tidings of him?"

"None; and awful rumours are abroad anent his fate."

"Our pilgrimage here is dark and devious," sighed Father Fairlie, eyeing the basket again; "yea, it is full of pitfalls, crooks, and thorns--Benedictus dom----but take care, friend, that barrel will slip and the ale be spilled."

"Wha tauld ye it was ale, friar?" asked the gunner, with a smirk; "maybe it's only bilge?"

"What?" asked the Franciscan.

"Peace, Willie," said Sir David Falconer; "by my faith, priest, it is the best of French brandy."

"Well, as I was saying, our path here in this valley of sorrow, is indeed full of dangers and doubt. The poor king--(brandy indeed!--Causa nostræ lætitiæ!)--the king of the commons, alake!" and the friar beat his breast, through which a glow had spread on hearing with what the keg was filled.

They now approached the chapel, which was surrounded by a high stone wall, and stood amid a grove of venerable oak trees, the branches of which were widely spread and entwined together. One of these bore the name of the Weirdwoman's Aik, from what circumstance it is now impossible to ascertain, but innumerable tales of terror were connected with it. There the souls of those who had committed acts of sacrilege during their lifetime had been heard to moan, and were seen to hover near the precincts of the holy place; there the Druids had performed their impious rites in the days of their awful rule; and there the gentle fairies yet danced in the bright moonlight, on the festival of St. John, as every hermit of Loretto had averred since the chapel was founded.

Moreover, more than one fugitive, who, unable to reach the sanctuary of the chapel, or, mistrusting its security, had clambered up the oak and taken shelter there, _had never more come down_; thus it was with something of the superstitious awe incident to their time and profession that Barton, Falconer and the gunner gazed up at the dark, dense foliage of the weirdwoman's aik, and approached the chapel.

This venerable fane, which had been built by the _Kuldei_ (corrupted gaelic for "the servants of God") at a time when sculpture was merely an adjunct to masonry, was massive and plain; for though erected for the simple form of worship those early priests performed within its walls, it exhibited the engrafted decorations of later times. Built of dark grey stone, it was a simple parallelogram, destitute of transept and of aisle. Its door and windows were arched, and the latter were small and placed high in the wall, having been for ages unglazed,--the _Kuldee_ architect had wished to screen the half-savage worshippers from the cold east wind that usually blows from the Forth, and from the sandy links; yet much of the solemnity and mystery peculiar to catholic edifices were imparted to it, by a gilded figure of the Saviour on his cross, which stood above the altar; and before it, were daily offerings of flowers.

Above this image shone the letters I.N.R.I.; below was a niche covered by a grotesquely sculptured canopy of stone: here were the elements, within a gilded door, around which were the following words in old gothic letters, cut in the stone, and flourished in blue and gold.

Hic. Est. Servatum Corpos. ex. vergine. natum.

While the three visitors, after dipping their right hands in the font at the chapel door, proceeded, like good catholics, to say a prayer or two on their knees before the carved stone rail which enclosed the altar, the hermit peeped into the basket which the gunner had left without (giving him a wink and nod as he did so); and the reverend father enumerated the contents with great satisfaction, muttering between many a scrap of pious Latinity,--

"A goose, roasted--daintily, too--mater purissima!--and stuffed with cloves and spices, doubtless; a pout pasty; three choppin flasks of Rochelle, as I live! good;--and a mutchkin of canary; a bag of maccaroons, with ten crowns, and five lyons--Dominus vobiscum. Master gunner, you are a worthy soul; and your masters are generous!"

The brevity of their prayers convinced the hermit that they had not come for religious purposes alone, and scrutinizing them he said,--

"My gude sirs, your mariners' garb fails to conceal from me that you have iron harness below these gaberdines of frieze."

"True, father," said Barton, smiling; "we are shelled over like partans. But what of that? In these desperate times men are not wont to go abroad unarmed."

"Then who may ye be?"

"We may be a couple of rascals," said Falconer, laughing, in that free manner acquired by soldiering; "and would be traitors, most likely, if our blood was noble; but being of humble birth, or only the sons of our own deserts, we are the king's liege men, and true Scotsmen."

"Benedictus dominus," mumbled the hermit.

"This is Robert Barton, captain of the yellow caravel; this is Master Wad, our gunner wight, and I am David Falconer; knight, and a captain of the king's arquebusses."

The fat and full-faced hermit threw back his cowl, and taking each by the hand with warmth, said,--

"God and St. Mary bless ye, sirs; for though your fathers were but humble men, you are the sons of gallant deeds, and have stood nobly by our hapless king. Welcome to my poor cell, sirs, and to share the gude cheer ye have brought me. But hark--here are horses!" he added, as the sound of hoofs was heard without.