Marauding

“ Am I not trudging on and on through life, dragging the horror of it behind me through the mud, except when the horror drags me? To whom am I to turn—to other beasts like him?—sitting patiently around, grinning and slavering, awaiting their turn when the horror of it crushes me to the mud? ”

“ THE Maruts of resistless might who love the rain, resplendent, terrible like wild beasts in their strength, Glowing like flames of fire, impetuous in career, blowing the wandering raincloud, have disclosed the kine. ”

“ A fiery strength inspires their lives,
An essence that from heaven derives,
Though clogged in part by limbs of clay,
And the dull 'vesture of decay.'
Hence wild desires and grovelling fears,
And human laughter, human tears:
Immured in dungeon-seeming night,
They look abroad, yet see no light. ”

“ All these innocent and most lovely creatures had cruel foes; cruellest foe of all the pitiless snarer or sportsman who had no better aim in his own miserable life than to slaughter these lives that were so much lovelier than his own.
But the moors are vast, and vast the meadows virgin of the scythe, and vast the labyrinths of forests and of undergrowth stretching at the mountain's foot. There was many a lagoon, where never other voices than the birds' were heard ”

“ Twice the formidable marauder landed with victims which he left uneaten on the bank where he laid them, for lust of slaughter, not hunger or love of pursuit, possessed him, and he was moved by a restlessness greater than he had ever shown. ”

“ In this wretched country, where every one lives on from day to day without quitting his little inclosure, without even hearing an echo from afar, four bearded marauders like ourselves, avoiding the beaten road, and marching rapidly across stubble and thicket, presented no ordinary rencontre. ”

“ That calms, at will, or sets the soul on fire;
Whose changeful notes through ev'ry mode can stray,
From deep-toned horror to the sprighliest lay.
In Fancy's wilds with you I love to roam,
Where all things strange and monstrous make their home. ”

“ There is in us all an instinctive admiration for the adventurous spirit of the fairy tale which challenges the might that is cruel and devastating, and for the good offices of the fairies which help to vindicate the cause of the noble in its conflict with the ignoble, right with wrong. ”

“ Wilder and wilder still his death-song rings,
Fiercer and fiercer thro' the forest bounds
His voice that leaps to Happier Hunting Grounds.
One savage yell—
Then loyal to his race,
He bends to death—but never to disgrace. ”

“ They bring the seeds of magic so that flowers, The flowers of new happiness and mirth, May bloom, once more, in sweet enchanted bowers, Above the heart-ache of a tortured earth. Now that the angry powder smoke has vanished, The fairy folk are coming as of yore, The fairy folk that hate and war had banished... ”

“ Tales that have ceased to frighten the nursery, that we listen to with a smile or at most with a pleasant stirring of the blood and titillation of the nerves, once on a time were the terror of grown men. ”

“ We escaped the thrashing next morning, for father never felt like thrashing us in cold blood on the calm holy Sabbath. But no punishment, however sure and severe, was of any avail against the attraction of the fields and woods. It had other uses, developing memory, etc., but in keeping us at home it was of no use at all. Wildness was ever sounding in our ears, and Nature saw to it that besides school lessons and church lessons some of her own lessons should be learned, perhaps with a view to the time when we should be called to wander in wildness to our heart's content. ”

“ Others shut up these poor mutilated creatures in a cool place, almost without air, during the summer, in order that when in autumn they are brought to the window, and breathe the fresh air, they may express their joy by their lively and repeated song. What can we think of the heart and morals of people who for a slight amusement thus enjoy the sufferings of a sensitive being that is unfortunately in their power? ”

“ But man proposes, God disposes, for many an ominous growl of pain distinctly told that the old marauder was not in a frame of mind or body to enjoy the feast. The night was so intensely dark that it would have been utter madness to have risked my life or any of my people's to drive the lions from their prey, so we satisfied ourselves by piling on fresh fuel and firing an occasional shot in the direction in which we knew the feast was taking place. ”

“ Fear took the place of that exaltation which had sustained her sinking limbs so far: the nameless fear which comes on all free forest things when they are driven to approach a city.
She, like them, was bold so long as the width of the green grasslands, of the heath-grown moors, was around her; as long as she possessed the lovely light of the unobscured skies, the wholesome wine of the strong wind, the fresh fragrance of the dewy soil. ”

“ In my own mind I am quite certain that the moor is haunted by a—well, for the want of a more definite name, let us call it a monster, which, though not necessarily supernatural in the general meaning of the word, is certainly unknown to science. ”

“ And we are like the person in the fairy-tale to whom a sorceress, on his uttering the wish, makes appear with supernatural clearness his grandmother or his betrothed in the act of turning over a book, of shedding tears, of gathering flowers, quite close to the spectator and yet ever so remote, in the place in which she actually is at the moment. ”

“ As for the girl, seeing the swift-running lad, she watched in surprise for a little, then followed, and coming to the hole in the ground shuddered with fear, believing that under the earth she trod lived thousands of such creatures that, perchance, roamed in the daytime and did evil. ”

“ Is fairies' night when they receive
All their friends and all their slaves,
The goblins, witches, trollish knaves.
And if the olden tales be true,
All men and maids have cause to rue,
Who on this night dare go abroad
And touch a foot to fairy sod;
For naught will save them but to jump
Right o'er a fire or blazing stump.
But if you're brave and do not fear
That for your rashness you'll pay dear,
Then stand beneath an elder tree
And King of Fairies you may see. ”

“ For we, O Maruts, have sacrificed at many harvests, through the mercies of the storm-gods. May that mortal be blessed, O chasing Maruts, whose offerings you carry off. You take notice either of the sweat of him who praises you, ye men of true strength, or of the desire of the suppliant. O ye of true strength, make this manifest with might! strike the fiend with your lightning! Hide the hideous darkness, destroy every tusky fiend. Make the light which we long for! ”

“ But, leaving you to your sport, I must follow the little marauder, as he makes toward the nearest shore, where he alights and devours his prey, and then, with unsatiated appetite, and bent on foul deeds, returns to the scene of action. ”

“ Those who have grown up on earth, or in the wide sky, or in the realm of the rivers, or in the abode of the great heaven, praise that host of the Maruts, endowed with true strength and boldness, whether those rushing heroes have by themselves harnessed their horses for triumph, or whether these brilliant Maruts have in the speckled cloud clothed themselves in wool, or whether by their strength they cut the mountain asunder with the tire of their chariot ”

“ Madness is quickening deadness into birth."
And then, as in the spring when first men hear,
Beyond the black-twigged hedge, the lambling's cry
Coming across the snow, a note of cheer
Before the storm-cock tells that spring is nigh,
[Pg 60] Before the first green bramble pushes shy,
And all the blood leaps at the lambling's notes,
The piping brought men's hearts into their throats. ”

“ THEY who are glancing forth, like women, on their way, doers of mighty deeds, swift racers, Rudra's Sons, The Maruts have made heaven and earth increase and grow: in sacrifices they delight, the strong and wild. 2. Grown to their perfect strength greatness have they attained ”

“ It is amazing with what profound knowledge of the human heart he not only portrays the passion of jealousy,—first slumbering, then gradually awaking, and ending in madness; but with what wondrous accuracy he catches the Southern nature of the Moor,—the peculiar characteristics of the race, and never for a moment loses sight of them. ”

“ The moor was ever most to my liking. I was born on the edge of it, and once its majesty has sunk into a human soul, that soul is forever after attuned to it. How little we have the making of ourselves. And how much greater the need that we should make of that little the most. All my days I have been preaching against heredity as the arch-enemy of hope and effort, and here is mine, holding me fast. When I see, rising out of the dark moor, the lonely cairn that sheltered the bones of my fathers before the White Christ preached peace to their land, a great yearning comes over me. ”

“ N the seventh morning there came across the moors the shadows of a man and of a mule. Standing, looking with tearless, aching eyes along those sunburnt levels over which he had gone, her heart gave a leap of rapture and her face grew warm with blood as she saw a human figure through the haze of heat. ”

“ I will give you the dangerous black night to stretch your wings in, and poisonous berries to feed on, and a nest of bones and thorns, perched high up in danger where no one can climb to it.' That's why we become witches: to show our scorn of pretending life's a safe business, to satisfy our passion for adventure. ”

“ These Maruts bring the swift man to a stand-still, and strength with mightier strength they break and humble These guard the singer from the man who hates him and lay their sore displeasure on the wicked. ”

“ All nature, which used to smile kindly upon him, became a threatening monster, and her voice, which used to greet him sweetly in the murmuring of the evening breeze, in the bubbling of the brook, in the rustling of the leaves, now told him of nothing but perdition. ”

“ Something of the ghostly terrors of the nursery haunt us through life, and the tyrant of early days maintains a strange and unavowed ascendancy over the imagination, long after his real power to inflict pain or privation has quite come to an end. ”

“ Overhead the branches overflowed into a canopy of crimson, which shut out the great real world and opened into a fairy world wherein only the untried feet of youth may tread and the fragile flowers of child-dreams bloom. ”

“ What were to be the first-fruits of that cataclysmic revulsion of feeling in a nature so habitually frozen from all tenderness? If no more than a shy snowdrop or two of reason, mercy, justice, pushing their way up through a savage soil, the result would be marvel enough. ”

“ Savage philosophy mingles them together in one phantasmagoria of grotesquery and horror. The line which separates fairies and ogres from the souls of men has gradually grown up through ages of Christian teaching ”

“ Extraordinary, how these creatures are made to torment us with their intolerable comeliness! Against the background of dusky bindings her head shone with a soft haze of gold. Her face, that had an air of naïve and provoking independence, made him angry with its unnecessary surplus of enchantment. ”

“ Many tore off their garments, both youths and maidens, and in the terror and the torment of death, united in the wild embraces of a sombre ecstasy, and wrung from their doomed lives an ultimate sting of delight. ”

“ The grand feature of night-mare, then, is impediment: but how can I record all its varieties of miserable struggles; of attacks and manglings from wild monsters: of the rolling of mountains on the heart: or the unhallowed embraces of a witch? ”

“ And my wings are nearly furled.
I have caused a scene so dreary,
I am glad to quit the world.
While with bitterness I'm thinking
On the evil I have done,
To my caverns deep I'm sinking
From the coming of the sun.
Oh! the heart of man will sicken
In that pure and holy light,
When he feels the hopes I've stricken
With an everlasting blight! ”

“ Here is a message of cheer and hope for us all. We have all tried, and tried, and tried, over and over again, to purge and mend these poor characters of ours. How long the toil, how miserable and poor the results! A million candles will not light the night; but when God's mercy of sunrise comes above the hills, beasts of prey slink to their dens and birds begin to sing, and flowers open, and growth resumes again. ”

“ But how can one tie oneself down, Madame? Each minute should bring its own joy,—and a different one.’
“This combination of intelligence and the greed of a young animal in one and the same being seemed so strange to me that I listened without interrupting him. Yes, I was certainly fascinated: cheaply enough, in all conscience, but I was. I remember the trampling of hooves, the tinkling of bells, the wild cries of the shepherds which announced the approach of a herd of cattle. ”

“ The birds are very, very busy, and they take no thought of the grim time coming, when the iron ground will be swept by chill winds and the sad trees will quiver mournfully in the biting air. A riot of life is in progress, and it seems as if the sense of pure joy banished the very thought of pain and foreboding from all living things. ”

“ With a rush that made my hot temples throb there came vividly to my mind recollections of the head-hunters—those grim, flinty, relentless little men, never seen, but chilling the warmest noonday by the subtle terror of their concealed presence... From time to time, as vanity or ennui or love or jealousy or ambition may move him, one creeps forth with his snickersnee and takes up the silent trail... ”