Ballads

IV. THE RAID

It chanced that as Rua sat in the valley of silent falls,He heard a calling of doves from high on the cliffy walls.Fire had fashioned of yore, and time had broken, the rocks;There were rooting crannies for trees and nesting-places for flocks;And he saw on the top of the cliffs, looking up from the pit of the shade,A flicker of wings and sunshine, and trees that swung in the trade.“The trees swing in the trade,” quoth Rua, doubtful of words,“And the sun stares from the sky, but what should trouble the birds?”Up from the shade he gazed, where high the parapet shone,And he was aware of a ledge and of things that moved thereon.“What manner of things are these?  Are they spirits abroad by day?Or the foes of my clan that are come, bringing death by a perilous way?”The valley was gouged like a vessel, and round like the vessel’s lip,With a cape of the side of the hill thrust forth like the bows of a ship.On the top of the face of the cape a volley of sun struck fair,And the cape overhung like a chin a gulph of sunless air.“Silence, heart!  What is that? – that, that flickered and shone,Into the sun for an instant, and in an instant gone?Was it a warrior’s plume, a warrior’s girdle of hair?Swung in the loop of a rope, is he making a bridge of the air?”Once and again Rua saw, in the trenchant edge of the sky,The giddy conjuring done.  And then, in the blink of an eye,A scream caught in with the breath, a whirling packet of limbs,A lump that dived in the gulph, more swift than a dolphin swims;And there was the lump at his feet, and eyes were alive in the lump.Sick was the soul of Rua, ambushed close in a clump;Sick of soul he drew near, making his courage stout;And he looked in the face of the thing, and the life of the thing went out.And he gazed on the tattooed limbs, and, behold, he knew the man:Hoka, a chief of the Vais, the truculent foe of his clan:Hoka a moment since that stepped in the loop of the rope,Filled with the lust of war, and alive with courage and hope.Again to the giddy cornice Rua lifted his eyes,And again beheld men passing in the armpit of the skies.“Foes of my race!” cried Rua, “the mouth of Rua is true:Never a shark in the deep is nobler of soul than you.There was never a nobler foray, never a bolder plan;Never a dizzier path was trod by the children of man;And Rua, your evil-dealer through all the days of his years,“Counts it honour to hate you, honour to fall by your spears.”And Rua straightened his back.  “O Vais, a scheme for a scheme!”Cried Rua and turned and descended the turbulent stair of the stream,Leaping from rock to rock as the water-wagtail at homeFlits through resonant valleys and skims by boulder and foam.And Rua burst from the glen and leaped on the shore of the brook,And straight for the roofs of the clan his vigorous way he took.Swift were the heels of his flight, and loud behind as he wentRattled the leaping stones on the line of his long descent.And ever he thought as he ran, and caught at his gasping breath,“O the fool of a Rua, Rua that runs to his death!But the right is the right,” thought Rua, and ran like the wind on the foam,“The right is the right for ever, and home for ever home.For what though the oven smoke?  And what though I die ere morn?There was I nourished and tended, and there was Taheia born.”Noon was high on the High-place, the second noon of the feast;And heat and shameful slumber weighed on people and priest;And the heart drudged slow in bodies heavy with monstrous meals;And the senseless limbs were scattered abroad like spokes of wheels;And crapulous women sat and stared at the stones anighWith a bestial droop of the lip and a swinish rheum in the eye.As about the dome of the bees in the time for the drones to fall,The dead and the maimed are scattered, and lie, and stagger, and crawl;So on the grades of the terrace, in the ardent eye of the day,The half-awake and the sleepers clustered and crawled and lay;And loud as the dome of the bees, in the time of a swarming horde,A horror of many insects hung in the air and roared.Rua looked and wondered; he said to himself in his heart:“Poor are the pleasures of life, and death is the better part.”But lo! on the higher benches a cluster of tranquil folkSat by themselves, nor raised their serious eyes, nor spoke:Women with robes unruffled and garlands duly arranged,Gazing far from the feast with faces of people estranged;And quiet amongst the quiet, and fairer than all the fair,Taheia, the well-descended, Taheia, heavy of hair.And the soul of Rua awoke, courage enlightened his eyes,And he uttered a summoning shout and called on the clan to rise.Over against him at once, in the spotted shade of the trees,Owlish and blinking creatures scrambled to hands and knees;On the grades of the sacred terrace, the driveller woke to fear,And the hand of the ham-drooped warrior brandished a wavering spear.And Rua folded his arms, and scorn discovered his teeth;Above the war-crowd gibbered, and Rua stood smiling beneath.Thick, like leaves in the autumn, faint, like April sleet,Missiles from tremulous hands quivered around his feet;And Taheia leaped from her place; and the priest, the ruby-eyed,Ran to the front of the terrace, and brandished his arms, and cried:“Hold, O fools, he brings tidings!” and “Hold, ’tis the love of my heart!”Till lo! in front of the terrace, Rua pierced with a dart.Taheia cherished his head, and the aged priest stood by,And gazed with eyes of ruby at Rua’s darkening eye.“Taheia, here is the end, I die a death for a man.I have given the life of my soul to save an unsavable clan.See them, the drooping of hams! behold me the blinking crew:Fifty spears they cast, and one of fifty true!And you, O priest, the foreteller, foretell for yourself if you can,Foretell the hour of the day when the Vais shall burst on your clan!By the head of the tapu cleft, with death and fire in their hand,Thick and silent like ants, the warriors swarm in the land.”And they tell that when next the sun had climbed to the noonday skies,It shone on the smoke of feasting in the country of the Vais.

NOTES TO THE FEAST OF FAMINE

In this ballad, I have strung together some of the more striking particularities of the Marquesas. It rests upon no authority; it is in no sense, like “Rahéro,” a native story; but a patchwork of details of manners and the impressions of a traveller. It may seem strange, when the scene is laid upon these profligate islands, to make the story hinge on love. But love is not less known in the Marquesas than elsewhere; nor is there any cause of suicide more common in the islands.

TICONDEROGA

A LEGEND OF THE WEST HIGHLANDS

TICONDEROGA

This is the tale of the man   Who heard a word in the nightIn the land of the heathery hills,   In the days of the feud and the fight.By the sides of the rainy sea,   Where never a stranger came,On the awful lips of the dead,   He heard the outlandish name.It sang in his sleeping ears,   It hummed in his waking head:The name – Ticonderoga,   The utterance of the dead.

I. THE SAYING OF THE NAME

On the loch-sides of Appin,   When the mist blew from the sea,A Stewart stood with a Cameron:   An angry man was he.The blood beat in his ears,   The blood ran hot to his head,The mist blew from the sea,   And there was the Cameron dead.“O, what have I done to my friend,   O, what have I done to mysel’,That he should be cold and dead,   And I in the danger of all?Nothing but danger about me,   Danger behind and before,Death at wait in the heather   In Appin and Mamore,Hate at all of the ferries   And death at each of the fords,Camerons priming gunlocks   And Camerons sharpening swords.”But this was a man of counsel,   This was a man of a score,There dwelt no pawkier Stewart   In Appin or Mamore.He looked on the blowing mist,   He looked on the awful dead,And there came a smile on his face   And there slipped a thought in his head.Out over cairn and moss,   Out over scrog and scaur,He ran as runs the clansman   That bears the cross of war.His heart beat in his body,   His hair clove to his face,When he came at last in the gloaming   To the dead man’s brother’s place.The east was white with the moon,   The west with the sun was red,And there, in the house-doorway,   Stood the brother of the dead.“I have slain a man to my danger,   I have slain a man to my death.I put my soul in your hands,”   The panting Stewart saith.“I lay it bare in your hands,   For I know your hands are leal;And be you my targe and bulwark   From the bullet and the steel.”Then up and spoke the Cameron,   And gave him his hand again:“There shall never a man in Scotland   Set faith in me in vain;And whatever man you have slaughtered,   Of whatever name or line,By my sword and yonder mountain,   I make your quarrel mine. 25I bid you in to my fireside,   I share with you house and hall;It stands upon my honour   To see you safe from all.”It fell in the time of midnight,   When the fox barked in the denAnd the plaids were over the faces   In all the houses of men,That as the living Cameron   Lay sleepless on his bed,Out of the night and the other world,   Came in to him the dead.“My blood is on the heather,   My bones are on the hill;There is joy in the home of ravens   That the young shall eat their fill.My blood is poured in the dust,   My soul is spilled in the air;And the man that has undone me   Sleeps in my brother’s care.”“I’m wae for your death, my brother,   But if all of my house were dead,I couldnae withdraw the plighted hand,   Nor break the word once said.”“O, what shall I say to our father,   In the place to which I fare?O, what shall I say to our mother,   Who greets to see me there?And to all the kindly Camerons   That have lived and died long-syne —Is this the word you send them,   Fause-hearted brother mine?”“It’s neither fear nor duty,   It’s neither quick nor deadShall gar me withdraw the plighted hand,   Or break the word once said.”Thrice in the time of midnight,   When the fox barked in the den,And the plaids were over the faces   In all the houses of men,Thrice as the living Cameron   Lay sleepless on his bed,Out of the night and the other world   Came in to him the dead,And cried to him for vengeance   On the man that laid him low;And thrice the living Cameron   Told the dead Cameron, no.“Thrice have you seen me, brother,   But now shall see me no more,Till you meet your angry fathers   Upon the farther shore.Thrice have I spoken, and now,   Before the cock be heard,I take my leave for ever   With the naming of a word.It shall sing in your sleeping ears,   It shall hum in your waking head,The name – Ticonderoga,   And the warning of the dead.”Now when the night was over   And the time of people’s fears,The Cameron walked abroad,   And the word was in his ears.“Many a name I know,   But never a name like this;O, where shall I find a skilly man   Shall tell me what it is?”With many a man he counselled   Of high and low degree,With the herdsmen on the mountains   And the fishers of the sea.And he came and went unweary,   And read the books of yore,And the runes that were written of old   On stones upon the moor.And many a name he was told,   But never the name of his fears —Never, in east or west,   The name that rang in his ears:Names of men and of clans;   Names for the grass and the tree,For the smallest tarn in the mountains,   The smallest reef in the sea:Names for the high and low,   The names of the craig and the flat;But in all the land of Scotland,   Never a name like that.

II. THE SEEKING OF THE NAME

And now there was speech in the south,   And a man of the south that was wise,A periwig’d lord of London, 26   Called on the clans to rise.And the riders rode, and the summons   Came to the western shore,To the land of the sea and the heather,   To Appin and Mamore.It called on all to gather   From every scrog and scaur,That loved their fathers’ tartan   And the ancient game of war.And down the watery valley   And up the windy hill,Once more, as in the olden,   The pipes were sounding shrill;Again in highland sunshine   The naked steel was bright;And the lads, once more in tartan   Went forth again to fight.“O, why should I dwell here   With a weird upon my life,When the clansmen shout for battle   And the war-swords clash in strife?I cannae joy at feast,   I cannae sleep in bed,For the wonder of the word   And the warning of the dead.It sings in my sleeping ears,   It hums in my waking head,The name – Ticonderoga,   The utterance of the dead.Then up, and with the fighting men   To march away from here,Till the cry of the great war-pipe   Shall drown it in my ear!”Where flew King George’s ensign   The plaided soldiers went:They drew the sword in Germany,   In Flanders pitched the tent.The bells of foreign cities   Rang far across the plain:They passed the happy Rhine,   They drank the rapid Main.Through Asiatic jungles   The Tartans filed their way,And the neighing of the war-pipes   Struck terror in Cathay. 27“Many a name have I heard,” he thought,   “In all the tongues of men,Full many a name both here and there.   Full many both now and then.When I was at home in my father’s house   In the land of the naked knee,Between the eagles that fly in the lift   And the herrings that swim in the sea,And now that I am a captain-man   With a braw cockade in my hat —Many a name have I heard,” he thought,   “But never a name like that.”

III. THE PLACE OF THE NAME

There fell a war in a woody place,   Lay far across the sea,A war of the march in the mirk midnight   And the shot from behind the tree,The shaven head and the painted face,   The silent foot in the wood,In a land of a strange, outlandish tongue   That was hard to be understood.It fell about the gloaming   The general stood with his staff,He stood and he looked east and west   With little mind to laugh.“Far have I been and much have I seen,   And kent both gain and loss,But here we have woods on every hand   And a kittle water to cross.Far have I been and much have I seen,   But never the beat of this;And there’s one must go down to that waterside   To see how deep it is.”It fell in the dusk of the night   When unco things betide,The skilly captain, the Cameron,   Went down to that waterside.Canny and soft the captain went;   And a man of the woody land,With the shaven head and the painted face,   Went down at his right hand.It fell in the quiet night,   There was never a sound to ken;But all of the woods to the right and the left   Lay filled with the painted men.“Far have I been and much have I seen,   Both as a man and boy,But never have I set forth a foot   On so perilous an employ.”It fell in the dusk of the night   When unco things betide,That he was aware of a captain-man   Drew near to the waterside.He was aware of his coming   Down in the gloaming alone;And he looked in the face of the man   And lo! the face was his own.“This is my weird,” he said,   “And now I ken the worst;For many shall fall the morn,   But I shall fall with the first.O, you of the outland tongue,   You of the painted face,This is the place of my death;   Can you tell me the name of the place?”“Since the Frenchmen have been here   They have called it Sault-Marie;But that is a name for priests,   And not for you and me.It went by another word,”   Quoth he of the shaven head:“It was called Ticonderoga   In the days of the great dead.”And it fell on the morrow’s morning,   In the fiercest of the fight,That the Cameron bit the dust   As he foretold at night;And far from the hills of heather   Far from the isles of the sea,He sleeps in the place of the name   As it was doomed to be.

NOTES TO TICONDEROGA

Introduction. – I first heard this legend of my own country from that friend of men of letters, Mr. Alfred Nutt, “there in roaring London’s central stream,” and since the ballad first saw the light of day in Scribner’s Magazine, Mr. Nutt and Lord Archibald Campbell have been in public controversy on the facts. Two clans, the Camerons and the Campbells, lay claim to this bracing story; and they do well: the man who preferred his plighted troth to the commands and menaces of the dead is an ancestor worth disputing. But the Campbells must rest content: they have the broad lands and the broad page of history; this appanage must be denied them; for between the name of Cameron and that of Campbell, the muse will never hesitate.

HEATHER ALE

A GALLOWAY LEGEND

HEATHER ALE

From the bonny bells of heather   They brewed a drink long-syne,Was sweeter far than honey,   Was stronger far than wine.They brewed it and they drank it,   And lay in a blessed swoundFor days and days together   In their dwellings underground.There rose a king in Scotland,   A fell man to his foes,He smote the Picts in battle,   He hunted them like roes.Over miles of the red mountain   He hunted as they fled,And strewed the dwarfish bodies   Of the dying and the dead.Summer came in the country,   Red was the heather bell;But the manner of the brewing   Was none alive to tell.In graves that were like children’s   On many a mountain head,The Brewsters of the Heather   Lay numbered with the dead.The king in the red moorland   Rode on a summer’s day;And the bees hummed, and the curlews   Cried beside the way.The king rode, and was angry,   Black was his brow and pale,To rule in a land of heather   And lack the Heather Ale.It fortuned that his vassals,   Riding free on the heath,Came on a stone that was fallen   And vermin hid beneath.Rudely plucked from their hiding,   Never a word they spoke:A son and his aged father —   Last of the dwarfish folk.The king sat high on his charger,   He looked on the little men;And the dwarfish and swarthy couple   Looked at the king again.Down by the shore he had them;   And there on the giddy brink —“I will give you life, ye vermin,   For the secret of the drink.”There stood the son and father   And they looked high and low;The heather was red around them,   The sea rumbled below.And up and spoke the father,   Shrill was his voice to hear:“I have a word in private,   A word for the royal ear.“Life is dear to the aged,   And honour a little thing;I would gladly sell the secret,”   Quoth the Pict to the King.His voice was small as a sparrow’s,   And shrill and wonderful clear:“I would gladly sell my secret,   Only my son I fear.“For life is a little matter,   And death is nought to the young;And I dare not sell my honour   Under the eye of my son.Take him, O king, and bind him,   And cast him far in the deep;And it’s I will tell the secret   That I have sworn to keep.”They took the son and bound him,   Neck and heels in a thong,And a lad took him and swung him,   And flung him far and strong,And the sea swallowed his body,   Like that of a child of ten; —And there on the cliff stood the father,   Last of the dwarfish men.“True was the word I told you:   Only my son I feared;For I doubt the sapling courage   That goes without the beard.But now in vain is the torture,   Fire shall never avail:Here dies in my bosom   The secret of Heather Ale.”

NOTE TO HEATHER ALE

Among the curiosities of human nature, this legend claims a high place. It is needless to remind the reader that the Picts were never exterminated, and form to this day a large proportion of the folk of Scotland: occupying the eastern and the central parts, from the Firth of Forth, or perhaps the Lammermoors, upon the south, to the Ord of Caithness on the north. That the blundering guess of a dull chronicler should have inspired men with imaginary loathing for their own ancestors is already strange: that it should have begotten this wild legend seems incredible. Is it possible the chronicler’s error was merely nominal? that what he told, and what the people proved themselves so ready to receive, about the Picts, was true or partly true of some anterior and perhaps Lappish savages, small of stature, black of hue, dwelling underground – possibly also the distillers of some forgotten spirit? See Mr. Campbell’s Tales of the West Highlands.

CHRISTMAS AT SEA

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand;The wind was a nor’wester, blowing squally off the sea;And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;But ’twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,And we gave her the maintops’l, and stood by to go about.All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared;But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:So’s we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;The good red fires were burning bright in every ’longshore home;The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out;And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer;For it’s just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)This day of our adversity was blessèd Christmas morn,And the house above the coastguard’s was the house where I was born.O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,My mother’s silver spectacles, my father’s silver hair;And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves.And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessèd Christmas Day.They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.“All hands to loose topgallant sails,” I heard the captain call.“By the Lord, she’ll never stand it,” our first mate, Jackson, cried... “It’s the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson,” he replied.She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood.As the winter’s day was ending, in the entry of the night,We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.THE END

1

Note 1, page 5. “The aito,” quasi champion, or brave. One skilled in the use of some weapon, who wandered the country challenging distinguished rivals and taking part in local quarrels. It was in the natural course of his advancement to be at last employed by a chief, or king; and it would then be a part of his duties to purvey the victim for sacrifice. One of the doomed families was indicated; the aito took his weapon and went forth alone; a little behind him bearers followed with the sacrificial basket. Sometimes the victim showed fight, sometimes prevailed; more often, without doubt, he fell. But whatever body was found, the bearers indifferently took up.

2

Note 2, page 7. “Pai,” “Honoura,” and “Ahupu.” Legendary persons of Tahiti, all natives of Taiárapu. Of the first two, I have collected singular although imperfect legends, which I hope soon to lay before the public in another place. Of Ahupu, except in snatches of song, little memory appears to linger. She dwelt at least about Tepari, – “the sea-cliffs,” – the eastern fastness of the isle; walked by paths known only to herself upon the mountains; was courted by dangerous suitors who came swimming from adjacent islands, and defended and rescued (as I gather) by the loyalty of native fish. My anxiety to learn more of “Ahupu Vehine” became (during my stay in Taiárapu) a cause of some diversion to that mirthful people, the inhabitants.

3

Note 3, page 10. “Covered an oven.” The cooking fire is made in a hole in the ground, and is then buried.

4

Note 4, page 10. “Flies.” This is perhaps an anachronism. Even speaking of to-day in Tahiti, the phrase would have to be understood as referring mainly to mosquitoes, and these only in watered valleys with close woods, such as I suppose to form the surroundings of Rahéro’s homestead. Quarter of a mile away, where the air moves freely, you shall look in vain for one.