Maid Marian

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The casements began to rattle in the wind, and the rain to beat upon
the windows. The wind swelled to a hurricane, and the rain dashed
like a flood against the glass. The boy retired to his little bed,
the wife trimmed the lamp, the husband heaped logs upon the fire:
Robin broached another flask; and Marian filled the baron's cup,
and sweetened Robin's by touching its edge with her lips.

"Well," said the baron, "give me a roof over my head, be it never so humble.
Your greenwood canopy is pretty and pleasant in sunshine; but if I were doomed
to live under it, I should wish it were water-tight."

"But," said Robin, "we have tents and caves for foul weather,
good store of wine and venison, and fuel in abundance."

"Ay, but," said the baron, "I like to pull off my boots of a night, which you
foresters seldom do, and to ensconce myself thereafter in a comfortable bed.
Your beech-root is over-hard for a couch, and your mossy stump is somewhat
rough for a bolster."

"Had you not dry leaves," said Robin, "with a bishop's surplice over them?
What would you have softer? And had you not an abbot's travelling cloak
for a coverlet? What would you have warmer?"

"Very true," said the baron, "but that was an indulgence to a guest, and I
dreamed all night of the sheriff of Nottingham. I like to feel myself safe,"
he added, stretching out his legs to the fire, and throwing himself
back in his chair with the air of a man determined to be comfortable.
"I like to feel myself safe," said the baron.

At that moment the woman caught her husband's arm, and all the party
following the direction of her eyes, looked simultaneously to the window,
where they had just time to catch a glimpse of an apparition of an armed head,
with its plumage tossing in the storm, on which the light shone from within,
and which disappeared immediately.

CHAPTER XV

O knight, thou lack'st a cup of canary. When did I see thee
so put down?--Twelfth Night.

Several knocks, as from the knuckles of an iron glove, were given
to the door of the cottage, and a voice was heard entreating
shelter from the storm for a traveller who had lost his way.
Robin arose and went to the door.

"What are you?" said Robin.

"A soldier," replied the voice: "an unfortunate adherent of Longchamp,
flying the vengeance of Prince John."

"Are you alone?" said Robin.

"Yes," said the voice: "it is a dreadful night. Hospitable cottagers,
pray give me admittance. I would not have asked it but for the storm.
I would have kept my watch in the woods."

"That I believe," said Robin. "You did not reckon on the storm when you
turned into this pass. Do you know there are rogues this way?"

"I do," said the voice.

"So do I," said Robin.

A pause ensued, during which Robin listening attentively caught
a faint sound of whispering.

"You are not alone," said Robin. "Who are your companions?"

"None but the wind and the water," said the voice, "and I would
I had them not."

"The wind and the water have many voices," said Robin, "but I
never before heard them say, What shall we do?"

Another pause ensued: after which,

"Look ye, master cottager," said the voice, in an altered tone,
"if you do not let us in willingly, we will break down the door."

"Ho! ho!" roared the baron, "you are become plural are you, rascals? How many
are there of you, thieves? What, I warrant, you thought to rob and murder
a poor harmless cottager and his wife, and did not dream of a garrison?
You looked for no weapon of opposition but spit, poker, and basting ladle,
wielded by unskilful hands: but, rascals, here is short sword and long cudgel
in hands well tried in war, wherewith you shall be drilled into cullenders
and beaten into mummy."

No reply was made, but furious strokes from without resounded
upon the door. Robin, Marian, and the baron threw by their
pilgrim's attire, and stood in arms on the defensive.
They were provided with swords, and the cottager gave them
bucklers and helmets, for all Robin's haunts were furnished
with secret armouries. But they kept their swords sheathed,
and the baron wielded a ponderous spear, which he pointed towards
the door ready to run through the first that should enter,
and Robin and Marian each held a bow with the arrow drawn to its
head and pointed in the same direction. The cottager flourished
a strong cudgel (a weapon in the use of which he prided himself
on being particularly expert), and the wife seized the spit from
the fireplace, and held it as she saw the baron hold his spear.
The storm of wind and rain continued to beat on the roof and
the casement, and the storm of blows to resound upon the door,
which at length gave way with a violent crash, and a cluster
of armed men appeared without, seemingly not less than twelve.
Behind them rolled the stream now changed from a gentle and shallow
river to a mighty and impetuous torrent, roaring in waves of
yellow foam, partially reddened by the light that streamed through
the open door, and turning up its convulsed surface in flashes
of shifting radiance from restless masses of half-visible shadow.
The stepping-stones, by which the intruders must have crossed,
were buried under the waters. On the opposite bank the light
fell on the stems and boughs of the rock-rooted oak and ash
tossing and swaying in the blast, and sweeping the flashing
spray with their leaves.

The instant the door broke, Robin and Marian loosed their arrows.
Robin's arrow struck one of the assailants in the juncture of the shoulder,
and disabled his right arm: Marian's struck a second in the juncture
of the knee, and rendered him unserviceable; for the night.
The baron's long spear struck on the mailed breastplate of a third,
and being stretched to its full extent by the long-armed hero,
drove him to the edge of the torrent, and plunged him into its eddies,
along which he was whirled down the darkness of the descending stream,
calling vainly on his comrades for aid, till his voice was lost
in the mingled roar of the waters and the wind. A fourth springing
through the door was laid prostrate by the cottager's cudgel:
but the wife being less dexterous than her company, though an Amazon
in strength, missed her pass at a fifth, and drove the point of the spit
several inches into the right hand door-post as she stood close to
the left, and thus made a new barrier which the invaders could not pass
without dipping under it and submitting their necks to the sword:
but one of the assailants seizing it with gigantic rage, shook it at
once from the grasp of its holder and from its lodgment in the post,
and at the same time made good the irruption of the rest of his party
into the cottage.

Now raged an unequal combat, for the assailants fell two to one
on Robin, Marian, the baron, and the cottager; while the wife,
being deprived of her spit, converted every thing that was
at hand to a missile, and rained pots, pans, and pipkins on
the armed heads of the enemy. The baron raged like a tiger,
and the cottager laid about him like a thresher. One of the soldiers
struck Robin's sword from his hand and brought him on his knee,
when the boy, who had been roused by the tumult and had been
peeping through the inner door, leaped forward in his shirt,
picked up the sword and replaced it in Robin's hand, who instantly
springing up, disarmed and wounded one of his antagonists,
while the other was laid prostrate under the dint of a brass
cauldron launched by the Amazonian dame. Robin now turned
to the aid of Marian, who was parrying most dexterously the cuts
and slashes of her two assailants, of whom Robin delivered
her from one, while a well-applied blow of her sword struck off
the helmet of the other, who fell on his knees to beg a boon,
and she recognised Sir Ralph Montfaucon. The men who were engaged
with the baron and the peasant, seeing their leader subdued,
immediately laid down their arms and cried for quarter.
The wife brought some strong rope, and the baron tied their
arms behind them.

"Now, Sir Ralph," said Marian, "once more you are at my mercy."

"That I always am, cruel beauty," said the discomfited lover.

"Odso! courteous knight," said the baron, "is this the return you
make for my beef and canary, when you kissed my daughter's hand
in token of contrition for your intermeddling at her wedding?
Heart, I am glad to see she has given you a bloody coxcomb.
Slice him down, Mawd! slice him down, and fling him into the river."

"Confess," said Marian, "what brought you here, and how did you
trace our steps?"

"I will confess nothing," said the knight.

"Then confess you, rascal," said the baron, holding his sword
to the throat of the captive squire.

"Take away the sword," said the squire, "it is too near
my mouth, and my voice will not come out for fear:
take away the sword, and I will confess all."
The baron dropped his sword, and the squire proceeded;
"Sir Ralph met you, as you quitted Lady Falkland's castle,
and by representing to her who you were, borrowed from her such
a number of her retainers as he deemed must ensure your capture,
seeing that your familiar the friar was not at your elbow.
We set forth without delay, and traced you first by means
of a peasant who saw you turn into this valley, and afterwards
by the light from the casement of this solitary dwelling.
Our design was to have laid an ambush for you in the morning,
but the storm and your observation of my unlucky face through
the casement made us change our purpose; and what followed you
can tell better than I can, being indeed masters of the subject."

"You are a merry knave," said the baron, "and here is a cup
of wine for you."

"Gramercy," said the squire, "and better late than never:
but I lacked a cup of this before. Had I been pot-valiant, I
had held you play."

"Sir knight," said Marian, "this is the third time you have sought
the life of my lord and of me, for mine is interwoven with his.
And do you think me so spiritless as to believe that I can be yours
by compulsion? Tempt me not again, for the next time shall be the last,
and the fish of the nearest river shall commute the flesh of a
recreant knight into the fast-day dinner of an uncarnivorous friar.
I spare you now, not in pity but in scorn. Yet shall you swear
to a convention never more to pursue or molest my lord or me,
and on this condition you shall live."

The knight had no alternative but to comply, and swore,
on the honour of knighthood, to keep the convention inviolate.
How well he kept his oath we shall have no opportunity of narrating:
Di lui la nostra istoria piu non parla.

CHAPTER XVI

Carry me over the water, thou fine fellowe. Old Ballad.

The pilgrims, without experiencing further molestation, arrived at
the retreat of Sir Guy of Gamwell. They found the old knight
a cup too low; partly from being cut off from the scenes of his
old hospitality and the shouts of his Nottinghamshire vassals,
who were wont to make the rafters of his ancient hall re-echo
to their revelry; but principally from being parted from his son,
who had long been the better half of his flask and pasty.
The arrival of our visitors cheered him up; and finding that
the baron was to remain with him, he testified his delight
and the cordiality of his welcome by pegging him in the ribs
till he made him roar.

Robin and Marian took an affectionate leave of the baron and the old knight;
and before they quitted the vicinity of Barnsdale, deeming it prudent
to return in a different disguise, they laid aside their pilgrim's attire,
and assumed the habits and appurtenances of wandering minstrels.

They travelled in this character safely and pleasantly, till one
evening at a late hour they arrived by the side of a river,
where Robin looking out for a mode of passage perceived
a ferry-boat safely moored in a nook on the opposite bank;
near which a chimney sending up a wreath of smoke through
the thick-set willows, was the only symptom of human habitation;
and Robin naturally conceiving the said chimney and wreath of smoke
to be the outward signs of the inward ferryman, shouted "Over!"
with much strength and clearness; but no voice replied,
and no ferryman appeared. Robin raised his voice, and shouted
with redoubled energy, "Over, Over, O-o-o-over!" A faint echo
alone responded "Over!" and again died away into deep silence:
but after a brief interval a voice from among the willows,
in a strange kind of mingled intonation that was half a shout
and half a song, answered:

Over, over, over, jolly, jolly rover,
Would you then come over? Over, over, over?
Jolly, jolly rover, here's one lives in clover:
Who finds the clover? The jolly, jolly rover.
He finds the clover, let him then come over,
The jolly, jolly rover, over, over, over,

"I much doubt," said Marian, "if this ferryman do not mean by clover
something more than the toll of his ferry-boat."

"I doubt not," answered Robin, "he is a levier of toll and tithe,
which I shall put him upon proof of his right to receive,
by making trial of his might to enforce."

The ferryman emerged from the willows and stepped into his boat.
"As I live," exclaimed Robin, "the ferryman is a friar."

"With a sword," said Marian, "stuck in his rope girdle."

The friar pushed his boat off manfully, and was presently half
over the river.

"It is friar Tuck," said Marian.

"He will scarcely know us," said Robin; "and if he do not,
I will break a staff with him for sport."

The friar came singing across the water: the boat touched the land:
Robin and Marian stepped on board: the friar pushed off again.

"Silken doublets, silken doublets," said the friar:
"slenderly lined, I bow: your wandering minstrel is always
poor toll: your sweet angels of voices pass current for a bed
and a supper at the house of every lord that likes to hear
the fame of his valour without the trouble of fighting for it.
What need you of purse or pouch? You may sing before thieves.
Pedlars, pedlars: wandering from door to door with the small
ware of lies and cajolery: exploits for carpet-knights;
honesty for courtiers; truth for monks, and chastity for nuns:
a good saleable stock that costs the vender nothing, defies wear
and tear, and when it has served a hundred customers is as plentiful
and as marketable as ever. But, sirrahs, I'll none of your balderdash.
You pass not hence without clink of brass, or I'll knock your
musical noddles together till they ring like a pair of cymbals.
That will be a new tune for your minstrelships."

This friendly speech of the friar ended as they stepped on the opposite bank.
Robin had noticed as they passed that the summer stream was low.

"Why, thou brawling mongrel," said Robin, "that whether thou be thief, friar,
or ferryman, or an ill-mixed compound of all three, passes conjecture,
though I judge thee to be simple thief, what barkest thou at thus?
Villain, there is clink of brass for thee. Dost thou see this coin?
Dost thou hear this music? Look and listen: for touch thou shalt not:
my minstrelship defies thee. Thou shalt carry me on thy back over the water,
and receive nothing but a cracked sconce for thy trouble."

"A bargain," said the friar: "for the water is low, the labour is light,
and the reward is alluring." And he stooped down for Robin, who mounted
his back, and the friar waded with him over the river.

"Now, fine fellow," said the friar, "thou shalt carry me back over the water,
and thou shalt have a cracked sconce for thy trouble."

Robin took the friar on his back, and waded with him into the middle
of the river, when by a dexterous jerk he suddenly flung him off
and plunged him horizontally over head and ears in the water.
Robin waded to shore, and the friar, half swimming and
half scrambling, followed.

"Fine fellow, fine fellow," said the friar, "now will I pay thee
thy cracked sconce."

"Not so," said Robin, "I have not earned it: but thou hast earned it,
and shalt have it."

It was not, even in those good old times, a sight of every day
to see a troubadour and a friar playing at single-stick by the side
of a river, each aiming with fell intent at the other's coxcomb.
The parties were both so skilled in attack and defence, that their
mutual efforts for a long time expended themselves in quick
and loud rappings on each other's oaken staves. At length Robin
by a dexterous feint contrived to score one on the friar's crown:
but in the careless moment of triumph a splendid sweep of the friar's
staff struck Robin's out of his hand into the middle of the river,
and repaid his crack on the head with a degree of vigour that might
have passed the bounds of a jest if Marian had not retarded its
descent by catching the friar's arm.

"How now, recreant friar," said Marian; "what have you
to say why you should not suffer instant execution,
being detected in open rebellion against your liege lord?
Therefore kneel down, traitor, and submit your neck to the sword
of the offended law."

"Benefit of clergy," said the friar: "I plead my clergy.
And is it you indeed, ye scapegraces? Ye are well disguised:
I knew ye not, by my flask. Robin, jolly Robin, he buys
a jest dearly that pays for it with a bloody coxcomb.
But here is balm for all bruises, outward and inward.
(The friar produced a flask of canary.) Wash thy wound twice
and thy throat thrice with this solar concoction, and thou shalt
marvel where was thy hurt. But what moved ye to this frolic?
Knew ye not that ye could not appear in a mask more fashioned
to move my bile than in that of these gilders and lackerers of
the smooth surface of worthlessness, that bring the gold of true
valour into disrepute, by stamping the baser metal with the fairer
im-pression? I marvelled to find any such given to fighting
(for they have an old instinct of self-preservation): but I
rejoiced thereat, that I might discuss to them poetical justice:
and therefore have I cracked thy sconce: for which, let this
be thy medicine."

"But wherefore," said Marian, "do we find you here, when we left
you joint lord warden of Sherwood?"

"I do but retire to my devotions," replied the friar.
"This is my hermitage, in which I first took refuge when I
escaped from my beloved brethren of Rubygill; and to which I
still retreat at times from the vanities of the world,
which else might cling to me too closely, since I have been
promoted to be peer-spiritual of your forest-court. For,
indeed, I do find in myself certain indications and admonitions
that my day has past its noon; and none more cogent than this:
that daily of bad wine I grow more intolerant, and of good wine
have a keener and more fastidious relish. There is no surer
symptom of receding years. The ferryman is my faithful varlet.
I send him on some pious errand, that I may meditate in ghostly
privacy, when my presence in the forest can best be spared:
and when can it be better spared than now, seeing that the
neighbourhood of Prince John, and his incessant perquisitions
for Marian, have made the forest too hot to hold more of us
than are needful to keep up a quorum, and preserve unbroken
the continuity of our forest-dominion? For, in truth, without your
greenwood majesties, we have hardly the wit to live in a body,
and at the same time to keep our necks out of jeopardy,
while that arch-rebel and traitor John infests the precincts
of our territory."

The friar now conducted them to his peaceful cell, where he spread
his frugal board with fish, venison, wild-fowl, fruit, and canary.
Under the compound operation of this materia medica Robin's wounds
healed apace, and the friar, who hated minstrelsy, began as usual
chirping in his cups. Robin and Marian chimed in with his tuneful
humour till the midnight moon peeped in upon their revelry.

It was now the very witching time of night, when they heard
a voice shouting, "Over!" They paused to listen, and the voice
repeated "Over!" in accents clear and loud, but which at
the same time either were in themselves, or seemed to be,
from the place and the hour, singularly plaintive and dreary.
The friar fidgetted about in his seat: fell into a deep musing:
shook himself, and looked about him: first at Marian, then at Robin,
then at Marian again; filled and tossed off a cup of canary,
and relapsed into his reverie.

"Will you not bring your passenger over?" said Robin. The friar
shook his head and looked mysterious.

"That passenger," said the friar, "will never come over.
Every full moon, at midnight, that voice calls, 'Over!' I and my
varlet have more than once obeyed the summons, and we have sometimes
had a glimpse of a white figure under the opposite trees:
but when the boat has touched the bank, nothing has been to be seen;
and the voice has been heard no more till the midnight of the
next full moon."

"It is very strange," said Robin.

"Wondrous strange," said the friar, looking solemn.

The voice again called "Over!" in a long plaintive musical cry.

"I must go to it," said the friar, "or it will give us no peace.
I would all my customers were of this world. I begin to think
that I am Charon, and that this river is Styx."

"I will go with you, friar," said Robin.

"By my flask," said the friar, "but you shall not."

"Then I will," said Marian.

"Still less," said the friar, hurrying out of the cell.
Robin and Marian followed: but the friar outstepped them,
and pushed off his boat.

A white figure was visible under the shade of the opposite trees.
The boat approached the shore, and the figure glided away.
The friar returned.

They re-entered the cottage, and sat some time conversing
on the phenomenon they had seen. The friar sipped his wine,
and after a time, said:

"There is a tradition of a damsel who was drowned here some years ago.
The tradition is----"

But the friar could not narrate a plain tale: he therefore cleared
his throat, and sang with due solemnity, in a ghostly voice:

A damsel came in midnight rain,
And called across the ferry:
The weary wight she called in vain,
Whose senses sleep did bury.
At evening, from her father's door
She turned to meet her lover:
At midnight, on the lonely shore,
She shouted "Over, over!"

She had not met him by the tree
Of their accustomed meeting,
And sad and sick at heart was she,
Her heart all wildly beating.
In chill suspense the hours went by,
The wild storm burst above her:
She turned her to the river nigh,
And shouted, "Over, over!"

A dim, discoloured, doubtful light
The moon's dark veil permitted,
And thick before her troubled sight
Fantastic shadows flitted.
Her lover's form appeared to glide,
And beckon o'er the water:
Alas! his blood that morn had dyed
Her brother's sword with slaughter.

Upon a little rock she stood,
To make her invocation:
She marked not that the rain-swoll'n flood
Was islanding her station.
The tempest mocked her feeble cry:
No saint his aid would give her:
The flood swelled high and yet more high,
And swept her down the river.

Yet oft beneath the pale moonlight,
When hollow winds are blowing,
The shadow of that maiden bright
Glides by the dark stream's flowing.
And when the storms of midnight rave,
While clouds the broad moon cover,
The wild gusts waft across the wave
The cry of, "Over, over!"

While the friar was singing, Marian was meditating:
and when he had ended she said, "Honest friar, you have misplaced
your tradition, which belongs to the aestuary of a nobler river,
where the damsel was swept away by the rising of the tide,
for which your land-flood is an indifferent substitute.
But the true tradition of this stream I think I myself possess,
and I will narrate it in your own way:

It was a friar of orders free,
A friar of Rubygill:
At the greenwood-tree a vow made he,
But he kept it very ill:
A vow made he of chastity,
But he kept it very ill.
He kept it, perchance, in the conscious shade
Of the bounds of the forest wherein it was made:
But he roamed where he listed, as free as the wind,
And he left his good vow in the forest behind:
For its woods out of sight were his vow out of mind,
With the friar of Rubygill.

In lonely hut himself he shut,
The friar of Rubygill;
Where the ghostly elf absolved himself,
To follow his own good will:
And he had no lack of canary sack,
To keep his conscience still.
And a damsel well knew, when at lonely midnight
It gleamed on the waters, his signal-lamp-light:
"Over! over!" she warbled with nightingale throat,
And the friar sprung forth at the magical note,
And she crossed the dark stream in his trim ferryboat,
With the friar of Rubygill.

"Look you now," said Robin, "if the friar does not blush.
Many strange sights have I seen in my day, but never till this
moment did I see a blushing friar."

"I think," said the friar, "you never saw one that blushed not,
or you saw good canary thrown away. But you are welcome to laugh
if it so please you. None shall laugh in my company, though it
be at my expense, but I will have my share of the merriment.
The world is a stage, and life is a farce, and he that laughs
most has most profit of the performance. The worst thing is good
enough to be laughed at, though it be good for nothing else;
and the best thing, though it be good for something else,
is good for nothing better."

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