Ballads

“Valley of mid-day shadows, valley of silent falls,”
Rua sang, and his voice went hollow about the walls,
“Valley of shadow and rock, a doleful prison to me,
What is the life you can give to a child of the sun and the sea?”

Now over all the isle terror was breathed abroad
Of shadowy hands from the trees and shadowy snares in the sod;
And before the nostrils of night, the shuddering hunter of men
Hurried, with beard on shoulder, back to his lighted den.
“Taheia, here to my side!”—“Rua, my Rua, you!”
And cold from the clutch of terror, cold with the damp of the dew,
Taheia, heavy of hair, leaped through the dark to his arms;
Taheia leaped to his clasp, and was folded in from alarms.

Again to the giddy cornice Rua lifted his eyes,
And again beheld men passing in the armpit of the skies.
“Foes of my race!” cried Rua, “the mouth of Rua is true:
Never a shark in the deep is nobler of soul than you.
There was never a nobler foray, never a bolder plan;
Never a dizzier path was trod by the children of man;
And Rua, your evil-dealer through all the days of his years,

And they tell that when next the sun had climbed to the noonday skies,
It shone on the smoke of feasting in the country of the Vais.

In this ballad, I have strung together some of the more striking particularities of the Marquesas.  It rests upon no authority; it is in no sense, like “Rahéro,” a native story; but a patchwork of details of manners and the impressions of a traveller.  It may seem strange, when the scene is laid upon these profligate islands, to make the story hinge on love.  But love is not less known in the Marquesas than elsewhere; nor is there any cause of suicide more common in the islands.

This is the tale of the man
   Who heard a word in the night
In the land of the heathery hills,
   In the days of the feud and the fight.
By the sides of the rainy sea,
   Where never a stranger came,
On the awful lips of the dead,
   He heard the outlandish name.
It sang in his sleeping ears,
   It hummed in his waking head:
The name—Ticonderoga,
   The utterance of the dead.

But this was a man of counsel,
   This was a man of a score,
There dwelt no pawkier Stewart
   In Appin or Mamore.
He looked on the blowing mist,
   He looked on the awful dead,
And there came a smile on his face
   And there slipped a thought in his head.

“I have slain a man to my danger,
   I have slain a man to my death.
I put my soul in your hands,”
   The panting Stewart saith.
“I lay it bare in your hands,
   For I know your hands are leal;
And be you my targe and bulwark
   From the bullet and the steel.”

“My blood is on the heather,
   My bones are on the hill;
There is joy in the home of ravens
   That the young shall eat their fill.
My blood is poured in the dust,
   My soul is spilled in the air;
And the man that has undone me
   Sleeps in my brother’s care.”

“I’m wae for your death, my brother,
   But if all of my house were dead,
I couldnae withdraw the plighted hand,
   Nor break the word once said.”

“It’s neither fear nor duty,
   It’s neither quick nor dead
Shall gar me withdraw the plighted hand,
   Or break the word once said.”

“Thrice have you seen me, brother,
   But now shall see me no more,
Till you meet your angry fathers
   Upon the farther shore.
Thrice have I spoken, and now,
   Before the cock be heard,
I take my leave for ever
   With the naming of a word.
It shall sing in your sleeping ears,
   It shall hum in your waking head,
The name—Ticonderoga,
   And the warning of the dead.”

There fell a war in a woody place,
   Lay far across the sea,
A war of the march in the mirk midnight
   And the shot from behind the tree,
The shaven head and the painted face,
   The silent foot in the wood,
In a land of a strange, outlandish tongue
   That was hard to be understood.

Introduction.—I first heard this legend of my own country from that friend of men of letters, Mr. Alfred Nutt, “there in roaring London’s central stream,” and since the ballad first saw the light of day in Scribner’s Magazine, Mr. Nutt and Lord Archibald Campbell have been in public controversy on the facts.  Two clans, the Camerons and the Campbells, lay claim to this bracing story; and they do well: the man who preferred his plighted troth to the commands and menaces of the dead is an ancestor worth disputing.  But the Campbells must rest content: they have the broad lands and the broad page of history; this appanage must be denied them; for between the name of Cameron and that of Campbell, the muse will never hesitate.

From the bonny bells of heather
   They brewed a drink long-syne,
Was sweeter far than honey,
   Was stronger far than wine.
They brewed it and they drank it,
   And lay in a blessed swound
For days and days together
   In their dwellings underground.

Summer came in the country,
   Red was the heather bell;
But the manner of the brewing
   Was none alive to tell.
In graves that were like children’s
   On many a mountain head,
The Brewsters of the Heather
   Lay numbered with the dead.

It fortuned that his vassals,
   Riding free on the heath,
Came on a stone that was fallen
   And vermin hid beneath.
Rudely plucked from their hiding,
   Never a word they spoke:
A son and his aged father—
   Last of the dwarfish folk.

The king sat high on his charger,
   He looked on the little men;
And the dwarfish and swarthy couple
   Looked at the king again.
Down by the shore he had them;
   And there on the giddy brink—
“I will give you life, ye vermin,
   For the secret of the drink.”

“Life is dear to the aged,
   And honour a little thing;
I would gladly sell the secret,”
   Quoth the Pict to the King.
His voice was small as a sparrow’s,
   And shrill and wonderful clear:
“I would gladly sell my secret,
   Only my son I fear.

They took the son and bound him,
   Neck and heels in a thong,
And a lad took him and swung him,
   And flung him far and strong,
And the sea swallowed his body,
   Like that of a child of ten;—
And there on the cliff stood the father,
   Last of the dwarfish men.

Among the curiosities of human nature, this legend claims a high place.  It is needless to remind the reader that the Picts were never exterminated, and form to this day a large proportion of the folk of Scotland: occupying the eastern and the central parts, from the Firth of Forth, or perhaps the Lammermoors, upon the south, to the Ord of Caithness on the north.  That the blundering guess of a dull chronicler should have inspired men with imaginary loathing for their own ancestors is already strange: that it should have begotten this wild legend seems incredible.  Is it possible the chronicler’s error was merely nominal? that what he told, and what the people proved themselves so ready to receive, about the Picts, was true or partly true of some anterior and perhaps Lappish savages, small of stature, black of hue, dwelling underground—possibly also the distillers of some forgotten spirit?  See Mr. Campbell’s Tales of the West Highlands.

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor’wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But ’twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops’l, and stood by to go about.

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:
So’s we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,
And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer;
For it’s just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)
This day of our adversity was blessèd Christmas morn,
And the house above the coastguard’s was the house where I was born.

O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother’s silver spectacles, my father’s silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves.

They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
“All hands to loose topgallant sails,” I heard the captain call.
“By the Lord, she’ll never stand it,” our first mate, Jackson, cried.
. . . “It’s the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson,” he replied.

She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood.
As the winter’s day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.

THE END

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.