as if a little realm of romance was suddenly opened before me.
After breakfast I accordingly set oft for the Abbey with my little friend Charles, whom I found a most sprightly and entertaining companion. He had an ample stock of anecdote about the neighborhood, which he had learned from his father, and many quaint remarks and sly jokes, evidently derived from the same source, all which were uttered with a Scottish accent and a mixture of Scottish phraseology, that gave them additional flavor.
On our way to the Abbey he gave me some anecdotes of Johnny Bower to whom his father had alluded; he was sexton of the parish and custodian of the ruin, employed to keep it in order and show it to strangers;—a worthy little man, not without ambition in his humble sphere. The death of his predecessor had been mentioned in the newspapers, so that his name had appeared in print throughout the land. When Johnny succeeded to the guardianship of the ruin, he stipulated that, on his death, his name should receive like honorable blazon; with this addition, that it should be from, the pen of Scott. The latter gravely pledged himself to pay this tribute to his memory, and Johnny now lived in the proud anticipation of a poetic immortality.
I found Johnny Bower a decent-looking little old man, in blue coat and red waistcoat. He received us with much greeting, and seemed delighted to see my young companion, who was full of merriment and waggery, drawing out his peculiarities for my amusement. The old man was one of the most authentic and particular of cicerones; he pointed out everything in the Abbey that had been described by Scott in his “Lay of the Last Minstrel:” and would repeat, with broad Scottish accent, the passage which celebrated it.
Thus, in passing through the cloisters, he made me remark the beautiful carvings of leaves and flowers wrought in stone with the most exquisite delicacy, and, notwithstanding the lapse of centuries, retaining their sharpness as if fresh from the chisel; rivalling, as Scott has said, the real objects of which they were imitations:
“Nor herb nor flowret glistened there
But was carved in the cloister arches as fair.”
He pointed out, also, among the carved work a nun’s head of much beauty, which he said Scott always stopped to admire—“for the shirra had a wonderful eye for all sic matters.”
I would observe that Scott seemed to derive more consequence in the neighborhood from being sheriff of the county than from being poet.
In the interior of the Abbey Johnny Bower conducted me to the identical stone on which Stout “William of Deloraine” and the monk took their seat on that memorable night when the wizard’s book was to be rescued from the grave. Nay, Johnny had even gone beyond Scott in the minuteness of his antiquarian research, for he had discovered the very tomb of the wizard, the position of which had been left in doubt by the poet. This he boasted to have ascertained by the position of the oriel window, and the direction in which the moonbeams fell at night, through the stained glass, casting the shadow to the red cross on the spot; as had all been specified in the poem. “I pointed out the whole to the shirra,” said he, “and he could na’ gainsay but it was varra clear.” I found afterward that Scott used to amuse himself with the simplicity of the old man, and his zeal in verifying every passage of the poem, as though it had authentic history, and that he always acquiesced in his deductions. I subjoin the description of the wizard’s grave, which called forth the antiquarian research of Johnny Bower.
“Lo warrior! now the cross of red,
Points to the grave of the mighty dead;
Slow moved the monk to the broad flag-stone,
Which the bloody cross was traced upon:
He pointed to a sacred nook:
An iron bar the warrior took;
And the monk made a sign with his withered hand,
The grave’s huge portal to expand.
“It was by dint of passing strength,
That he moved the massy stone at length.
I would you had been there to see,
How the light broke forth so gloriously,
Streamed upward to the chancel roof,
And through the galleries far aloof!
And, issuing from the tomb,
Showed the monk’s cowl and visage pale,
Danced on the dark brown warrior’s mail,
And kissed his waving plume.
“Before their eyes the wizard lay,
As if he had not been dead a day:
His hoary beard in silver rolled,
He seemed some seventy winters old;
A palmer’s amice wrapped him round;
With a wrought Spanish baldrie bound,
Like a pilgrim from beyond the sea;
His left hand held his book of might;
A silver cross was in his right:
The lamp was placed beside his knee.”
The fictions of Scott had become facts with honest Johnny Bower. From constantly living among the ruins of Melrose Abbey, and pointing out the scenes of the poem, the “Lay of the Last Minstrel” had, in a manner, become interwoven with his whole existence, and I doubt whether he did not now and then mix up his own identity with the personages of some of its cantos.
He could not bear that any other production of the poet should be preferred to the “Lay of the Last Minstrel.” “Faith,” said he to me, “it’s just e’en as gude a thing as Mr. Scott has written—an’ if he were stannin’ there I’d tell him so—an’ then he’d lauff.”
He was loud in his praises of the affability of Scott. “He’ll come here sometimes,” said he, “with great folks in his company, an’ the first I know of it is his voice, calling out ‘Johnny!—Johnny Bower!’—and when I go out, I am sure to be greeted with a joke or a pleasant word. Hell stand and crack and lauff wi’ me, just like an auld wife—and to think that of a man who has such an awfu’ knowledge o’ history!”
One of the ingenious devices on which the worthy little man prided himself, was to place a visitor opposite to the Abbey, with his back to it, and bid him bend down and look at it between his legs. This, he said, gave an entire different aspect to the ruin. Folks admired the plan amazingly, but as to the “leddies,” they were dainty on the matter, and contented themselves with looking from under their arms. As Johnny Bower piqued himself upon showing everything laid down in the poem, there was one passage that perplexed him sadly. It was the opening of one of the cantos:
“If thou would’st view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight:
For the gay beams of lightsome day,
Gild but to flout the ruins gray.” etc.
In consequence of this admonition, many of the most devout pilgrims to the ruin could not be contented with a daylight inspection, and insisted it could
