INTERCHAPTER XVII.
A POPULAR LAY NOTICED, WITH SUNDRY REMARKS PERTINENT THERETO, SUGGESTED THEREBY, OR DEDUCED THEREFROM.
Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit: by and by it will strike.
TEMPEST.
There was a female personage of whom I will venture to say that every one of my English readers, (Quakers perhaps excepted) has heard tell; and a great many of my Scotch, Welsh, Irish, and Transatlantic ones also—I venture to say this because her remarkable story has been transmitted to us in a Lay, a species of composition the full value of which has never been understood till the present age. Niebuhr and his learned followers assure us that the whole early history of Rome is founded upon no other authority than that of Lays, which have long since perished. And very possibly there may be German professors of Divinity who in like manner trace the Jewish history before Samuel to the Lays of Samson, Jephthah, Gideon, and other heroes of the Kritarchy, of Joshua, and of Moses, and so of the Patriarchs upwards.
To be sure it might startle us somewhat if these Lays were called by the old fashioned name of Ballads, or old songs; and had either of those appellations been used we might hesitate a little before we gave implicit credit to so great a discovery.
Returning however to the personage of the Lay to which I have alluded, and which has been handed down from mother and nurse to child by immemorial tradition, and not stopping to enquire whether the tale itself is an historical matter of fact, or what is now called a mythos, and whether the personage is a mythological personage, the Lay of the Little Woman when reduced to history, or prose narration, says that she went to market to sell her eggs;—in historifying the fact from this metrical document, I must take care to avoid any such collocation of words as might lead me into the worst of all possible styles, that of poetical prose. Numerous prose indeed not only carries with it a charm to the ear but affords such facility to the utterance, that the difference between reading aloud from a book so composed, or from one which has been written without any feeling of numerousness on the writer's part, is as great and perceptible as the difference between travelling upon an old road, or a macadamized one. Twenty pages of the one will exhaust the reader more than threescore of the other, just as there was more fatigue in a journey of fifty miles, fifty years ago, than there is in thrice the distance now. The fact is certain, and may no doubt be physically explained. But numerous prose and poetical prose, are things as different as gracefulness and affectation.
All who remember the story will recollect that the Little Woman fell asleep by the way side; and probably they will agree with me in supposing, that this must have happened on her return from market, after she had sold her eggs, and was tired with the business and excitement of the day. A different conclusion would perhaps be drawn from the Lay itself, were it not that in historical Lays many connecting circumstances are past over because they were so well known at the time the Lay was composed that it was deemed unnecessary to touch upon them; moreover it should be observed that in Lays which have been orally transmitted for many generations before they were committed to writing, the less important parts are liable to be dropt. Of this there is evidently an example in the present case. Most countrywomen who keep the market go on horseback, and it is not mentioned in the Lay that the Little Woman went on foot; yet that she did so is certain; for nothing could be more likely than that being tired with walking she should sit down to rest herself by the way side, and nothing more unlikely than that if she had been on horseback, she should have alighted for that purpose.
And here it is proper in this glose, commentary or exposition, to obviate an injurious suspicion which might arise concerning the character of the Little Woman, namely, that she must have been in liquor. Had it been a Lay of present times, this it must be admitted would have been very probable, the British Parliament having thought fit to pass an Act, by virtue, or by vice of which, in addition to the public houses previously established, which were so numerous that they have long been a curse to the country,—in addition I say to these, 39,654 beer shops, as appears by a Parliamentary paper, were licensed in the year 1835. This Utilitarian law ought to have been entitled an Act for the increase of Drunkenness, and the promotion of sedition, brutality, wretchedness, and pauperism. But the Little Woman lived when there were not more public houses than were required for the convenience of travellers; perhaps before there were any, when strangers were entertained in monasteries, or went to the parsonage, as was the custom within the present century in some parts of Switzerland. In Iceland they are lodged in the Church at this time; but this seems never to have been the case in England.
It was a hot day, probably at the latter end of summer, or perhaps in autumn; this must be inferred from the circumstances of the story; and if the Little Woman called at a gossip's house, and was offered some refreshment, it is very possible that being thirsty she may have drank a peg lower in the cup than she generally allowed herself to do; and that being somewhat exhausted, the ale, beer, cyder, or metheglin may have had more effect upon her than it would have had at another time, and that consequently she may have felt drowsy as soon as she sate down. This may be admitted without impeaching her reputation on the score of temperance; and beyond this it is certain, as will presently be made appear, that her head could not have been affected.
Sleep however
weigh'd her eye-lids down
And steep'd her senses in forgetfulness.
It will sometimes press heavily on the lids, even when the mind is wakeful, and feverishly, or miserably employed; but it will seldom steep the senses unless it be of that sound kind which denotes a healthy body and a heart at ease. They who sleep soundly must be free from care. In the south of Europe men of the lower classes lie down in the sun or shade according to the season, and fall asleep like dogs at any time. The less they are raised above animal life, the sounder the sleep is, and the more it seems to be an act of volition with them; when they close their eyes there is nothing within to keep them waking.
Well, our Little Woman was sleeping on a bank beside the way, when a Pedlar happened to come by. Not such a Pedlar as the one in Mr. Wordsworth's Excursion, who was what Randolph's Pedlar describes himself to be, “a noble, generous, understanding, royal, magnificent, religious, heroical, and thrice illustrious Pedlar;” if Randolph had been a Highlander this description might have been adduced as a proof of the prophetic faculty,—a second-sight of that glorious poem, the well established fame of which and the effect which it has produced and is producing upon the present generation both of authors and readers must be so peculiarly gratifying to Lord Jeffrey. No; he was such a Pedlar as Autolycus, and if the Little Woman lived in the days of King Leontes, it may possibly have been Autolycus himself; for he had “a quick eye and a nimble hand,” and was one who “held Honesty for a fool and Trust, his brother, for a very simple gentleman.” The distance between Bohemia and England makes no difficulty in this supposition. Gypsies used to be called Bohemians; and more over as Uncle Toby would have told Trim, Bohemia might have been a maritime country in those days; and when he found it convenient to return thither, the readiest way was to get on board ship.
It is said however in the Lay that the Pedlar's name was Stout. It may have been so; and yet I am disposed to think that this is a corrupt passage, and that stout in this place is more probably an epithet, than a name. The verse may probably have run thus,
There came by a Pedlar, a losell stout,
a stout thief being formerly as common a designation as a sturdy beggar. This rogue seeing her asleep by the way-side, cut her petticoats all round about up to the knee; whence it appears not only how soundly she must have been sleeping, and how expert he was in this branch of his trade, but also that her pockets were in her petticoats and not a separate article of her dress.
At the marriage of Sir Philip Herbert with the Lady Susan Vere, which was performed at the Court of Whitehall, in the year 1604, with all the honour that could be done to a great favourite, many great Ladies were made shorter by the skirts, like the Little Woman; and Sir Dudley Carleton says “they were well enough served that they could keep cut no better.” If the reader asks what is keeping cut? he asks a question I cannot answer.
I have already observed that the weather was warm, and the proof is twofold, first in the Little Woman's sitting down by the way, which in cold weather she would not have done; and secondly, because when she awoke and discovered the condition in which this cut-purse had left her, she began to quiver and quake, for these words are plainly intended to denote at the same time a sense of chilliness, and an emotion of fear. She quivered perhaps for cold having been deprived of so great a part of her lower garments; but she quaked for fear, considering as well the danger she had been in, as the injury which she had actually sustained. The confusion of mind produced by these mingled emotions was so remarkable that Mr. Coleridge might have thought it not unworthy of his psychological and transcendental investigations; and Mr. Wordsworth might make it the subject of a modern Lay to be classed either among his poems of the Fancy, or of the Imagination as might to him seem fit. For the Lay says that the Little Woman instead of doubting for a while whether she were asleep or awake, that is to say whether she were in a dream because of the strange, and indecorous, and uncomfortable and unaccountable condition in which she found herself, doubted her own identity, and asked herself whether she were herself, or not? So little was she able to answer so subtle a question satisfactorily that she determined upon referring it to the decision of a little dog which she had left at home, and whose fidelity and instinctive sagacity could not, she thought, be deceived. “If it be I,” said she, “as I hope it be, he will wag his little tail for joy at my return; if it be not I, he will bark at me for a stranger.” Homeward therefore the Little Woman went, and confused as she was, she found her way there instinctively like Dr. Southey's Ladurlad, and almost in as forlorn a state. Before she arrived, night had closed, and it became dark. She had reckoned rightly upon her dog's fidelity, but counted too much upon his sagacious instinct. He did not recognise his mistress at that unusual hour, and in a curtailed dress wherein he had never seen her before, and instead of wagging his tail, and fawning, and whining, to bid her welcome as she had hoped, he began to bark angrily, with faithful but unfortunate vigilance, mistaking her for a stranger who could have no good reason for coming about the premises at that time of night. And the Lay concludes with the Little Woman's miserable conclusion that as the dog disowned her she was not the dog's Mistress, not the person who dwelt in that house, and whom she had supposed herself to be, in fact not herself, but somebody else, she did not know who.
