her to the stake, which she so richly deserves; but neither will I believe that the tales of witches which they din into our ears are aught but knavery, cozenage, and old women's fables." "In the name of heaven, what is she then," said the page, "that you make such a stir about her ?" "She is one of those cursed old women," replied the Doctor, "who take currently and impudently upon themselves to act as advisers and curers of the sick, on the strength of some trash of herbs, some rhyme of spells, some julap or diet, drink or cordial." 66 Nay, go no farther," said the page; "if they brew cordials, evil be their lot and all their partakers!"" "You say well, young man," said Doctor Lundin ; "for mine own part, I know no such pests to the commonwealth as these old incarnate devils, who haunt the chambers of the brain-sick patients, that are mad enough to suffer them to interfere with, disturb, and let, the regular progress of a learned and artificial cure, with their syrups, and their julaps, and diascordium,and mithridate, and my lady what-shall-call'ums powder, and worthy Dame Trashem's pill; and thus make widows and orphans, and cheat the regular and well-studied physician, in order to get the name of wise women and skeely neighbours, and so forth. But no more on't-Mother Nicneven and I will meet one day, and she shall know there is danger in dealing with the doctor." "It is a true word, and many have found it," said the page; but, under your favour, I would fain walk abroadfor a little, and see these sports." "It is well moved," said the Doctor; "and I too should be showing myself abroad. Moreover, the play waits us, young man-to-day, totus mundus agit histrionem." And they sallied forth accordingly into the mirthful scene. CHAPTER VII. See on yon verdant lawn, the gathering crowd Rural Sports-Somerville. THE reappearance of the dignified chamberlain on the street of the village was eagerly hailed by the revellers, as a pledge that the play, or dramatic representation, which had been postponed owing to his absence, was now full surely to commence. Anything like an approach to this most interesting of all amusements, was of recent origin in Scotland, and engaged public attention in proportion. All other sports were discontinued. The dance around the May-pole was arrested-the ring broken up and dispersed, while the dancers, each leading his partner by the hand, tripped off to the Sylvan theatre. A truce was in like manner achieved betwixt a huge brown bear and certain mastiffs, who were tugging and pulling at his shaggy coat, under the mediation of the bear-ward and half a dozen butchers and yeomen, who, by dint of staving and tailing, as it was technically termed, separated the unfortunate animals, whose fury had for an hour past been their chief amusement. The itinerant minstrel found himself deserted by the audience he had collected, even in the most interesting passage of the romance which he recited, and just as he was sending about his boy, with bonnet in hand, to collect their oblations. He indignantly stopped short in the midst of Rosewal and Lilian, and, replacing his three-stringed fiddle, or rebeck, in its leathern case, followed the crowd, with no good-will, to the exhibition which had superseded his own. The juggler had ceased his exertions of emit ting flame and smoke, and was content to respire in the manner of ordinary mortals, rather than to play gratuitously the part of a fiery dragon. In short, all other sports were suspended, so eagerly did the revellers throng towards the place of representation. They would err greatly, who should regulate their ideas of this dramatic exhibition upon those derived from a modern theatre; for the rude shows of Thespis were far less different from those exhibited by Euripides on the stage of Athens, with all its magnificent decorations and pomp of dresses and of scenery. In the present case, there were no scenes, no stage, no machinery, no pit, box, and gallery, no box-lobby; and, what might in poor Scotland be some consolation for other negations, there was no taking of money at the door. As in the devices of the magnanimous Bottom, the actors had a green-sward plot for a stage, and a hawthorn bush for a green-room and tyring-house: the spectators being accommodated with seats on the artificial bank which had been raised around three-fourths of the play-ground, the remainder being left open for the entrance and exit of the performers. Here sat the uncritical audience, the chamberlain in the centre, as the person highest in office; all alive to enjoyment and admiration, and all, therefore, dead to criticism. The characters which appeared and disappeared before the amused and interested audience, were those which fill the earlier stage in all nations-old men, cheated by their wives and daughters, pillaged by their sons, and imposed on by their domestics, a braggadocio captain, a knavish pardoner or quæstionary, a country bumpkin, and a wanton city-dame. Amid all these, and more acceptable than almost the whole put together, was the all-licensed fool, the Gracioso of the Spanish drama, who, with his cap fashioned into the resemblance of a coxcoinb, and his bauble, a truncheon terminated by a carved figure, wearing a fool's-cap in his hand, went, came, and returned, mingling in every scene of the piece, and interrupting the business, without having any share himself in the action, and ever and anon transferring his gibes from the actors on the stage to the audience who sat around, prompt to applaud the whole. The wit of the piece, which was not of the most polished kind, was chiefly directed against the superstitious practices of the Catholic religion; and the stage artillery had on this occasion been levelled by no less a person than Doctor Lundin, who had not only commanded the manager of the entertainment to select one of the numerous satires which had been written against the papists, (several of which were cast in a dramatic form,) but had even, like the Prince of Denmark, caused them to insert, or, according to his own phrase, to infuse, here and there, a few pleasantries of his own penning, on the same inexhaustible subject, hoping thereby to mollify the rigour of the Lady of Lochleven towards pastimes of this description. He failed not to jog Roland's elbow, who was sitting in state behind him, and recommend to his particular attention those favourite passages. As for the page, to whom the very idea of such an exhibition, simple as it was, was entirely new, he beheld it with the undiminished and ecstatic delight with which men of all ranks look for the first time on dramatic representation, and laughed, shouted, and clapped his hands as the performance proceeded. An incident at length took place which effectually broke off his interest in the business of the scene. One of the principal personages in the comic part of the drama was, as we have already said, a quæstionary or pardoner, one of those itinerants who hawked about from place to place reliques, real or pretended, with which he excited the devotion at once, and the charity of the populace, and generally deceived both the one and the other. The hypocrisy, impudence, and profligacy of these clerical wanderers, had made them the subject of satire from the time of Chaucer down to that of Heywood. Their present representative failed not to follow the same line of humour, exhibiting pig's bones 8* VOL. II. for reliques, and boasting the virtues of small tin crosses, which had been shaken in the holy porringer at Loretto, and of cockle-shells, which had been brought from the shrine of Saint James of Compostella, all which he disposed of to the devout Catholics at nearly as high a price as antiquaries are now willing to pay for baubles of similar intrinsic value. At length the pardoner pulled from his scrip a small phial of clear water, of which he vaunted the quality in the following verses : Listneth, gode people, everiche one, For in the londe of Babylone, And is the first londe the sonne espieth, In this ilk londe, as thinketh me, Right as holie legendes tell, And falleth into ane bath of ston, Wher chast Susanne in times long gon, Was wont to wash her bodie and lim- Through nightes cold and dayes hote, Hath a wife made slip or slide, Or a maiden stepp'd aside; Putteth this water under her nese, Wold she nold she, she shall snese. The jest, as the reader skilful in the antique language of the drama must at once perceive, turned on the same pivot as in the old minstrel tales of the Drinking Horn of King Arthur, and the Mantle made Amiss. But the au dience were neither learned nor critical enough to challenge its want of originality. The potent relique was, after such grimace and buffoonery as befitted the subject, presented successively to each of the female personages of the drama, not one of whom sustained the supposed test of discretion; but, to the infinite delight of the audience sneezed much louder and longer than perhaps |