Thomas Cooper

“ To Romara's walls are come.
"We come not as foes," the herald saith,—
"But we bring Plantagenet's shriven faith
That thou, Romara, in thine arms
Shall soon enfold thy true love's charms:
Let no delay thy joy betide!—
Thy Agnes soon shall be thy bride!"
The raven croaks as Torksey's lord
Attends that bannered host;
But the lover is deaf to the omen-bird—
The fatal moat is crossed!
"Ride, ride;" saith the baron,—"thy ladye fain
And the priest—by the altar wait!"—
And the spearmen seize his bridle-rein,
And hurry him to his fate.
"A marriage by torchlight!" the baron said ”

“ They hold their merriment;—
And, till the chimes tell noon at night,
Their joy shall be unspent!
"Come haste ye to bold Thorold's hall,
And crowd his kitchen wide;
For there, he saith, both free and thrall
Shall sport this good Yule-tide!
"Come hasten, gossips!" the mummers cry,
Throughout old Torksey town;
"We'll hasten!" they answer, joyfully,
The gossip and the clown. ”

“ Right beautiful is Torksey's hall, [1]
Adown by meadowed Trent;
Right beautiful that mouldering wall,
And remnant of a turret tall,
Shorn of its battlement.
For, while the children of the Spring
Blush into life, and die;
And Summer's joy-birds take light wing
When Autumn mists are nigh ”

“ Grist's cottage of clay
Never, now, doth the Prior of Roche visit:—
[Pg 57]
But, the sly beggar-lad,
Be he hungry or sad,
A remedy finds for each evil
In the Miller's good cheer,
Any day of the year;—
And though Joan looketh shy—she is civil!
————
The tale was rude, but pleased rude men;
And clamorous many a clown grew, when
The rebeck ceased to thrill:
Ploughboy and neatherd, shepherd swain,
Gosherd and swineherd,—all were fain
To prove their tuneful skill. ”

“ Yet clown and maid
Give eager aid,—
And all, as they rattle the huge block along,
Seem to court the joke
Of Dick's wain-whip stroke,—
Be it ever so smart, none thinks he hath wrong;—
Till with mirthsome glee,
The old ash tree
Hath come to the threshold of Torksey hall,—
Where its brave old heart
A glow shall impart
To the heart of each guest at the festival.
And through the porch, a jocund crowd,
They rush, with heart-born laughter loud ”

“ Sir Raymond and the False Palmer. THE STRANGER MINSTREL'S SECOND TALE.
Sir Raymond de Clifford, a gallant band
Hath gathered to fight in the Holy Land;
And his lady's heart is sinking in sorrow,—
For the knight and his lances depart on the morrow!
"Oh, wherefore, noble Raymond, tell,"—
His lovely ladye weeping said,—
"With lonely sorrow must I dwell,
When but three bridal moons have fled?" ”

“ All in the forest blythe.
————
"Well done, well done!" bold Thorold cried,
When the woodman ceased to sing;
"By'r Lady! it warms the Saxon tide
In our veins to hear thee bring
These English thoughts so freely out!
Thy health, good Snell!"—and a merry shout
For honest boldness, truth, and worth,
The baron's grateful guests sent forth.
Silence like grave-yard air, again,
Pervades the festive space:
All list for another minstrel strain;
And the youth, with merrier face,
[Pg 38] But tender notes, thus half-divulged
The passion which his heart indulged:—
The Minstrel's Song. ”

“ Said, "Hand me the key,
And our luck we will see—
A faint heart no fortune inherits."
But,—Gramercy!—his looks—
When he opened the box,
And at what he saw in it stood wondering!
How his sturdy arm shook,
While the wine-jug he took,
And feared he would break it with blundering!
Faith and troth! at the last,
On the table Grist placed
The wine and the ducks—hot and smoking!
Yet he felt grievous shy
His stomach to try
With cates of a wizard's own cooking!
But, with hunger grown fell,
The lad sped so well,
That Grist was soon tempted to join in ”

“ Mowbrays, Percys, De Burghs, and other high names of the feudal era are in the list of its possessors, as lords of the manor. None, however, of its former tenants calls up such stirring associations as 'Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster,' who, with his earldom of Lincoln, held this castle and enlarged and beautified it. Tradition confidently affirms that his daughter was starved to death by him, in one of the rooms of the old tower,—in consequence of her perverse attachment to her father's foe,—the knight of Torksey. ”

“ Remigius, the Norman bishop, is placed on the pinnacle of one buttress that terminates the splendid façade, or west front of Lincoln Cathedral, and the Swineherd of Stow, with his horn in his hand, on the other. The tradition is in the mouth of every Lincolner, that this effigied honour was conferred on the generous rudester because he gave his horn filled with silver pennies towards the rebuilding or beautifying of the Minster. ”

“ The tide, at the equinoxes especially, presents a magnificent spectacle on the Trent. It comes up even to Gainsborough, which is seventy miles from the sea, in one overwhelming wave, spreading across the wide river-channel, and frequently putting the sailors into some alarm for the safety of their vessels, which are dashed to and fro, while "all hands" are [Pg 117] engaged in holding the cables and slackening them, so as to relieve the ships. ”

“ If Stukeley be correct in his supposition that the "Foss-dyke," or canal which connects the Trent here with the Witham at Lincoln, be the work of the Romans,—and I know no reason for doubting it,—Torksey, standing at the junction of the artificial river with the Trent, must have been an important station even before the Saxon times. These are Stukeley's words relative to the commercial use of the Foss-Dyke: "By this means the corn of Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, and Lincolnshire, came in;—from the Trent, that of Nottinghamshire ”

“ Betham, and other writers of his class, enumerate Thorolds, sheriffs of Lincolnshire, in the reigns of Philip and Mary, Elizabeth, James I. and Charles I.; and Sir George Thorold of Harm [Pg 114] ston was sheriff of London and Middlesex, in 1710,—and afterwards Lord Mayor.
Sir John Thorold of Syston is now the chief representative of this Saxon family; but report says that he delights to live abroad—rather than in the midst of his tenantry and dependants, to gladden the hearts of the poor, and receive happiness from diffusing it among others, after the good example of his ancestors. ”

“ There be 2 smaul paroche chirches in new Torkesey and the Priory of S. Leonard standith on theste [the East] side of it. The ripe [bank] that Torkesey standith on is sumwhat higher ground than is by the west ripe of Trent. Trent there devidith, and a good deale upward, Lincolnshire from Nottinghamshire." (Itinerary: Oxon, 1745: vol. i. page 33.)
II. Thorold.
The high character for generousness and hospitality assigned to this most ancient of Lincolnshire families, by history and tradition, was my only reason for giving its name to an imaginary lord of Torksey. ”

“ To be in a boat, under the guardianship of a sailor, and to hear the shouts on every hand of "'Ware Heygre!"—as the grand wave is beheld coming on,—and then to be tossed up and down in the boat, as the wave is met,—form no slight excitements for a boy living by the side of Trent.
I find no key to the derivation of the word Heygre in the Etymologists. The Keltic verb, Éigh, signifying, to cry, shout, sound, proclaim ”

“ Nothing can be more stupid. Door-sill is as common as grunsel, for threshold, in Staffordshire, as well as Lincolnshire; and, in both counties, "window-sill" is frequent. I remember, too, in my boyhood, having heard the part of the plough to which the share is fitted—the frame of the harrows—and the frame of a grindstone, each called "sill" by the farmers of Lindsey. ”

“ The World shall be a happy world!—
It shall be filled with brother-men,—
And merry Yule oft come again!
[Pg 107]
[Pg 108]
NOTES.
[Pg 109]
NOTES. I. Torksey's Hall.
The remains of this ancient erection (of which a representation is given in the accompanying vignette) form an interesting antiquarian object beside the Trent, twelve miles from Lincoln, and seven from Gainsborough. The entire absence of any authentic record, as to the date of the foundation, or its former possessors, leaves the imagination at full liberty to clothe it with poetic legend. ”

“ Oh, pray for the peace of Sir Raymond's soul!
[Pg 79]
THE BARON'S YULE FEAST. A Christmas Rhyme.
Canto IV.
What power can stay the burst of song
When throats with ale are mellow?
What wight with nieve so stout and strong
Dares lift it, jolly freres among,
And cry, "Knaves, cease to bellow?"
"'Twas doleful drear,"—the gossips vowed,—
To hear the minstrel's piteous tale!
But, when the swineherd tuned his crowd, [14]
And the gosherd began to grumble loud,
The gossips smiled, and sipped their ale!
[Pg 80]
"A boon, bold Thorold!" boldly cried
The gosherd from Croyland fen ”

“ Lest 'craven' be added to Raymond's name!
[Pg 73] To Palestine hastens my mortal foe,—
And I with our Lion's Heart will go!
"Nay, Gertrude, repeat not thy sorrowing tale!
Behold in my casque the scallop-shell,—
And see on my shoulder the Holy Rood—
The pledge of my emprize—bedyed in blood!
"Thou wouldst not, love, I should be forsworn,
Nor the stain on my honour be tamely borne:
Do thou to the saints, each passing day,
For Raymond and royal Richard pray,—
"While they rush to the rescue, for God's dear Son ”

“ In this instance I have also used a name associated with the ancient history of Lincolnshire as an imaginary Norman lord of Torksey. "William de Romara, lord of Bolingbroke, in Lincolnshire, was the first earl of that county after the Conquest. He was the son of Roger, son of Gerold de Romara; which Roger married Lucia, daughter of Algar, earl of Chester, and sister and heir to Morcar, the Saxon earl of Northumberland and Lincoln. In 1142 he founded the Abbey of Revesby, in com. Linc., bearing then the title of Earl of Lincoln."—Bankes' Extinct and Dormant Peerage. ”

“ How natural, that the Keltic or Kymric tribes should behold, in the Trent pastures, the resemblance of the plains on the banks of the Jordan, the Nile, the Tigris, and Euphrates— (for the term נַן-יְהֹוָה garden of Jehovah most probably denotes Mesopotamia, in the very ancient fragments collected by Moses to form the book of Genesis) —and should denote them by the same name!
ض ار, khawār, also signifies "low or sloping ground," in Richardson's Arabic and Persian Dictionary; and "Carr, a bog, a fen, or morass," occurs in Armstrong's Gaelic Dictionary. ”

“ The word is applied, in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, to the low lands, or wide marsh pastures that border the Trent; and I feel little doubt that, like the word heygre, and many others that might be collected, it has been in use ever since it was given to these localities, by the primeval tribes, the Kelts, when they first saw these beautiful tracts, so much subject to inundation, like the flat borders of their own rivers in the East. כַּר (car) a pasture, is found in Isaiah, xxx. ”

“ Roche Abbey, according to the "Monasticon Anglicanum," was founded by Richard de Builli and Richard Fitz-Turgis, in 1147. "The architecture bespeaks the time of Edward II. or III." (Edit. 1825: vol. v. p. 502.)
XIII. Scrogg and Carr.
Johnson says, "Scrog. A stunted shrub, bush, or branch; yet used in some parts of the north." In Lincolnshire, however, the word is used to designate wild ground on which "stunted shrub, bush, or branch" grows, and not as a synonyme with shrub or bush.
Carr I have looked for in vain among the etymologists. ”

“ Another, avers that in the Saxon building believed to have stood on the same spot, as the residence of the earls of Mercia, the glorious Alfred's wedding-feast was held. Speed gives some little aid to the imagination in its credent regard for the story: "Elswith, the wife of king Ælfred, was the daughter of Ethelfred, surnamed Muchel, that is, the Great, an Earle of the Mercians, who inhabited about Gainesborough, in Lincolnshire: her mother was Edburg, a lady borne of the Bloud roiall of Mercia." ”

“ I offer but one apology for the production of a metrical essay, composed chiefly of imperfect and immature pieces:—the ambition to contribute towards the fund of Christmas entertainment, in which agreeable labour I see many popular names engaged,—and among them, one, the most deservedly popular in the literature of the day. ”

“ The passage in Bede leaves every thing to conjecture: he simply relates that a truth-speaking presbyter and abbot of Pearteneu, (most likely, Partney, near Horncastle, in Lincolnshire,) named Deda, said that an old man had told him, that he, with a great multitude, was baptized by Paulinus, in the presence of King Edwin, "in fluvio Treenta juxta civitatem quæ lingua Anglorum Tiovulfingacaestir vocatur"—in the river Trent, near the city which in the language of the Angles is called Tiovulfingacaestir (Smith's Bede: Cambr. 1722, page 97.) ”

“ The word I conceive is thus clearly traced to its Keltic or Eastern origin.
XIV. Crowd.
Sir John Hawkins, in his highly curious "History of Music" (vol. ii. page 274) says "The Cruth or Crowth" was [Pg 122] an instrument "formerly in common use in the principality of Wales," and is the "prototype of the whole fidicinal species of musical instruments." "It has six strings, supported by a bridge, and is played on by a bow." "The word Cruth is pronounced in English Crowth, and corruptly Crowd." "LÞuð is the Saxon appellation given by Leland, for the instrument (Collectanea: vol. v.) " ”

“ The generosity of the female Thorold, Godiva, is matter of notoriety in the traditionary history of Coventry; and her name, and that of her husband, are found in connection with the history of the very ancient town of Stow, in Lincolnshire, as benefactors to its church. "Leofricus, comes Merciæ, et Godiva ejus uxor ecclesiam de S. Marie Stow, quam Eadnotus, episcopus Lincolniæ, construxit, pluribus ornamentis ditavit"—Leofric, earl of Mercia, and Godiva his wife, enriched with many adornments the church of St. ”