The Pirate Part 71

While these sheets were pa.s.sing through the press, I received a letter from an honourable and learned friend, containing the following pa.s.sage, relating to a discovery in Zetland:--"Within a few weeks, the workmen taking up the foundation of an old wall, came on a hearth-stone, under which they found a horn, surrounded with ma.s.sive silver rings, like bracelets, and filled with coins of the Heptarchy, in perfect preservation. The place of finding is within a very short distance of the [supposed] residence of Norna of the Fitful-head."--Thus one of the very improbable fictions of the tale is verified by a singular coincidence.

Note V., p. 197.--CHARACTER OF NORNA.

The character of Norna is meant to be an instance of that singular kind of insanity, during which the patient, while she or he retains much subtlety and address for the power of imposing upon others, is still more ingenious in endeavouring to impose upon themselves. Indeed, maniacs of this kind may be often observed to possess a sort of double character, in one of which they are the being whom their distempered imagination shapes out, and in the other, their own natural self, as seen to exist by other people. This species of double consciousness makes wild work with the patient's imagination, and, judiciously used, is perhaps a frequent means of restoring sanity of intellect. Exterior circ.u.mstances striking the senses, often have a powerful effect in undermining or battering the airy castles which the disorder has excited.

A late medical gentleman, my particular friend, told me the case of a lunatic patient confined in the Edinburgh Infirmary. He was so far happy that his mental alienation was of a gay and pleasant character, giving a kind of joyous explanation to all that came in contact with him. He considered the large house, numerous servants, &c., of the hospital, as all matters of state and consequence belonging to his own personal establishment, and had no doubt of his own wealth and grandeur. One thing alone puzzled this man of wealth. Although he was provided with a first-rate cook and proper a.s.sistants, although his table was regularly supplied with every delicacy of the season, yet he confessed to my friend, that by some uncommon depravity of the palate, every thing which he ate _tasted of porridge_. This peculiarity, of course, arose from the poor man being fed upon nothing else, and because his stomach was not so easily deceived as his other senses.

Note VI., p. 199.--BIRDS OF PREY.

So favourable a retreat does the island of Hoy afford for birds of prey, that instances of their ravages, which seldom occur in other parts of the country, are not unusual there. An individual was living in Orkney not long since, whom, while a child in its swaddling clothes, an eagle actually transported to its nest in the hill of Hoy. Happily the eyry being known, and the bird instantly pursued, the child was found uninjured, playing with the young eagles. A story of a more ludicrous transportation was told me by the reverend clergyman who is minister of the island. Hearing one day a strange grunting, he suspected his servants had permitted a sow and pigs, which were tenants of his farm-yard, to get among his barley crop. Having in vain looked for the transgressors upon solid earth, he at length cast his eyes upward, when he discovered one of the litter in the talons of a large eagle, which was soaring away with the unfortunate pig (squeaking all the while with terror) towards her nest in the crest of Hoy.

Note VII., p. 280.--THE STANDING STONES OF STENNIS.

The Standing Stones of Stennis, as by a little pleonasm this remarkable monument is termed, furnishes an irresistible refutation of the opinion of such antiquaries as hold that the circles usually called Druidical, were peculiar to that race of priests. There is every reason to believe, that the custom was as prevalent in Scandinavia as in Gaul or Britain, and as common to the mythology of Odin as to Druidical superst.i.tion.

There is even reason to think, that the Druids never occupied any part of the Orkneys, and tradition, as well as history, ascribes the Stones of Stennis to the Scandinavians. Two large sheets of water, communicating with the sea, are connected by a causeway, with openings permitting the tide to rise and recede, which is called the Bridge of Broisgar. Upon the eastern tongue of land appear the Standing Stones, arranged in the form of a half circle, or rather a horse-shoe, the height of the pillars being fifteen feet and upwards. Within this circle lies a stone, probably sacrificial. One of the pillars, a little to the westward, is perforated with a circular hole, through which loving couples are wont to join hands when they take the _Promise of Odin_, as has been repeatedly mentioned in the text. The enclosure is surrounded by barrows, and on the opposite isthmus, advancing towards the Bridge of Broisgar, there is another monument, of Standing Stones, which, in this case, is completely circular. They are less in size than those on the eastern side of the lake, their height running only from ten or twelve to fourteen feet. This western circle is surrounded by a deep trench drawn on the outside of the pillars; and I remarked four tumuli, or mounds of earth, regularly disposed around it. Stonehenge excels this Orcadian monument; but that of Stennis is, I conceive, the only one in Britain which can be said to approach it in consequence. All the northern nations marked by those huge enclosures the places of popular meeting, either for religious wors.h.i.+p or the transaction of public business of a temporal nature. The _Northern Popular Antiquities_ contain, in an abstract of the Eyrbiggia Saga, a particular account of the manner in which the Helga Fels, or Holy Rock, was set apart by the Pontiff Thorolf for solemn occasions.

I need only add, that, different from the monument on Salisbury Plain, the stones which were used in the Orcadian circle seem to have been raised from a quarry upon the spot, of which the marks are visible.

FOOTNOTES:

[42] We may suppose the beads to have been of the potent adderstone, to which so many virtues were ascribed.

[43] Like those anciently borne by porters at the gates of distinguished persons, as a badge of office.

[44] See the Eyrbiggia Saga.

[45] See Torfaei Orcadus, p. 131.

EDITOR'S NOTES.

(_a_) p. 17. Norna's soothsaying. The pa.s.sage quoted by Scott from the Saga of Eric the Red may be read in its context in "Vinland the Good,"

edited by Mr. Reeves, and published by the Clarendon Press. Eric was the discoverer of Greenland, and father of Leif the Lucky, who found Vinland (New England, or Nova Scotia?) about the year 1002. Leif has a statue in Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts.

(_b_) p. 35. Islands "supposed to be haunted." In De Quincey's autobiographical essay his sailor brother, Pink, describes the terrors of those isles. One of them, the noise of a Midnight Axe, is also found in Ceylon, in Mexico, and elsewhere. The Editor may be permitted to refer to the legends collected in his "Custom and Myth."

(_c_) p. 47. Cleveland's song. Lockhart says that Scott, in his later years, heard this song sung, and said, "'Capital words! Whose are they?

Byron's, I suppose, but I don't remember them.' He was astonished when I told him that they were his own in 'The Pirate.' He seemed pleased at the moment, but said next minute, 'You have distressed me--if memory goes all is up with me, for that was always my strong point.'" This was in 1828. Mrs. Arkwright was the daughter of Stephen Kemble. She set "Hohenlinden."

(_d_) p. 86. "Auld Robin Gray." In the Abbotsford MSS. is a long correspondence between Lady Ann Lindsay and Scott. She had known him as a child. There was a project of editing all her poems, but perhaps her own modesty, perhaps the quality of the work, caused this to be dropped, and Scott only edited the ballad, with a letter of the lady's. This small quarto sells for some 5 when it comes into the market. It has a frontispiece by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, and is apparently the only book of Scott's which is valued as a rarity by bibliomaniacs.

(_e_) p. 255. "John was a Jacobite." In the library of a country house in the south of England is a copy of Dryden's Miscellany Poems, with a laudatory autograph envoy to Judge Jeffreys, a sufficiently thoroughgoing King's man.

ANDREW LANG.

_August 1893._