"Slow o'er the midnight wave it swung, Northumbrian rocks in answer rung; To Warkworth cell the echoes roll'd, His beads the wakeful hermit told. The Bamborough peasant raised his head, But slept ere half a prayer he said; So far was heard the mighty knell, The stag sprung up on Cheviot Fell, Spread his broad nostril to the wind, Listed before, aside, behind, Then couch'd him down beside the hind, And quaked among the mountain fern, To hear that sound so dull and stern."
Than the whole of the trial and doom of poor Constance, who "loved not wisely but too well," in the second canto of Marmion, even Scott never wrote anything more solemn or terrible.
Harvest--Scythe and Sickle v. Reaping Machines--Potatoes--Garibaldi and Potatoes at Caprera--Fishing--Platessa Gemmatus, or Diamond Plaice--Mushrooms--The Poetry of Fairy Rings--Harvest-Home.
With such fine weather as we enjoy at present, September [1871] is one of the pleasantest months of the year. Harvest operations are now in full swing, and the redbreast--having moulted, and proudly conscious of the splendour of his scarlet vest--has already begun his autumnal song--more delectable now and more appreciated, because now, with the exception of an occasional voluntary from the wren, he only sings, whereas his vernal strains are lost in their amalgamation with the full chorus of a thousand performers. It is pleasant now, as you saunter or ride along, to listen to the merry laughter of the reapers afield, and to their song, as, morê majorum, it floats in chorus on the gale: pleasant, too, to us at least, and far from unmusical, the frequent sound of the whetting of scythe and sickle in every direction--the bloodless weapons--as they are deftly handled in the process, glancing brightly in the sunlight! Reaping "machines" and "steam" ploughs may be very good things in their way, but we are not ashamed to confess that we are glad that, as yet at least, we know nothing of them in the West Highlands. The utilitarian must be content if we admit all their value and importance from his point of view, while at the same time we yet assert that wherever they appear all the poetry of agriculture incontinently becomes plain prose--Sic transit gloria Cereris. Very excellent, at all events, are our crops this season, and very excellently are they being harvested. A good deal has already been secured in barn and stackyard, and in such condition, too, as is but rarely possible under the weeping skies of the west coast. The weather is still so favourable that our people are working with a will, and making every exertion to have their harvesting concluded while it lasts. Potatoes still continue sound and untainted, although an occasional spottiness of the leaf in some fields shows that our old enemy the "blight" has not yet forgot the time of his coming. The crop is now, however, about ripe, and may be considered very much out of danger for the season. In our last, we had a good deal to say about this invaluable root, and how it should be brought to table; and to show that such a subject-matter is not quite so infra dig. as some of our readers might suppose, listen to what the Times says of Garibaldi's doings at Caprera. After recounting the General's failures in connection with his orchard, the acclimation of the silk-worm, &c., the Times proceeds:--"Garibaldi, however, points with exultation to his potato fields. No species of the favourite root is neglected, and there is no treat he so heartily enjoys as a dish of his own potatoes, baked with his own hand under embers, in the open air--a treat which calls up reminiscences of his camp life on the Tonale or the Stelvis, or of his pioneer's experience in the backwoods of the Mississippi or the Plate." We wonder if this "hero in an unheroic age," who yet disdains not to exult in his potato fields, or to cook his delicious "earth apples," as the French so happily term them, in the embers with his own hand--we wonder if he eats his fish with his fingers? We could lay a wager that he does; that in eating his ember-roasted potatoes in the open air, with some broiled tunny, let us suppose, as a fitting accompaniment--(the Thynnus vulgaris, in highest esteem with the ancients as with the moderns, abundant about Caprera and all the shores of Provençe, Sardinia, and Sicily, and than which, indeed, there is hardly any better fish)--we could lay a wager, we say, that in eating his potatoes and fish al fresco he discards the use of knife and fork utterly, eating his fish with his fingers, and using the running brook beside him as a convenient finger-glass.