and in every one of which the coroners suffered, either by "flaybottomry" or a sound drubbing. In fact he became so celebrated a corpse, and withal so dangerous, that on the occasion of two or three subsequent deaths occurring, after the three inquests alluded to, no coroner would sit upon him, inasmuch as they did so at the evident risk and hazard of their lives. Our readers will of course be anxious to know what disease or accident it was that occasioned Barney's temporary death. Ah ha!-There we have VOL. III. STANZAS. "Tis strange how people talk of love, And others find it such a pest! A wayward, sad, tormenting sprite, Mid sunny days and starry nights, Anon, some luckless wight shall tell How o'er his fresh and happy years Love rang a sad, funereal knell, And left him nought but sighs and tears. 'Tis puzzling now to think of this, When love shall come to be our doom, That either it is perfect bliss, Or else, an all-pervading gloom. And how to gain that dazzling height, Where love sits throned in cloudless day, Or how avoid that dismal night, Where love shuts out each cheering ray. A safer course there seems to be, Not soaring up to ecstacy, Nor sinking down to depths below. A cloud may sometimes cross its way, Dispels the cloud, and dries the showers. (As fall in love we surely will,) 2 B FRAGMENTS FROM THE HISTORY OF GRANA WEAL. CHAPTER I. Of Grana's christening, and how discreetly she passed her teens. There has been a great dispute whether it was Lord Peter or a Prior Martin who christened this young gentlewoman, whose history I have taken in hand. I will quarrel with no man for holding whatever side, in that dispute, he pleases, but only say that, in my poor judgment, it was a pity her baptism should have been so long delayed; for, to tell the truth, she was a bouncing girl, fit to be married the day they admitted her. But at the same time it must be confessed, that this was the whim of the day, and that neither John Bull, her neighbour, nor the Baboons, had much the start of her on that score; and that for the Porkers, Fieryskulls, and other northern families, they acted like perfect Anabaptists in comparison, some waiting for their wise teeth, some dipping bald-pate and grey hairs in the font, and some never getting christened at all. My granting the start (were it but an inch) to John and Jacko will be considered unfair by some, who maintain, that Grana was christened in Julius Cæsar's time, and that Father Patrick only confirmed her. As I said before, I quarrel with no man for his opinion, only state my own. Be it as it may, 'tis certain Grana grew in a short time to be the best communicant the bishop had, and always got the catechising of the rest; nay, opened a school at her own expense, whither the neighbours' children used to come, for miles round; so that all over her estate you might see students of humanity, and poor scholars in shoals, some expounding Plato and Aristotle, some thumbing their hornbooks, some working problems in geometry, some cyphering on slates and sand-boards, all as civil as so many sizars, and scores of chaplains, professors, pedagogues, and ushers superintending. Grana's estate was one of the completest things, of its size, you ever saw: wood and water in abundance; turbary at her kitchen door, no such grazing round all the country side as on her holm, and some of the finest pieces of corn land in the north, higher up by the grange. Then, lots of game in her preserves, and two or three clear trouting streams, forming as many capital mill sites, running right through the middle of the demesne from end to end; with famous fishing in the herring pond, and no want of snug coves for a hooker to lie in through the winter. To be sure she did not make the most of the land, for she had no care to cut down the timber: it had been there, she said, from the first, and while she could get malt and meal enough out of the grange, she wanted no more red ridges on her estate. She was fond of a run with the hounds too; and loved better to tramp through the dew of a morning with a hawk on her wrist, than to follow the plough-tail; all very allowable in a lady of her ancient blood, but a bad example to the tenants. These were a roaring crew of jolly dogs, up to anything, born devils for courting and fighting, that went about hunting and fowling, like qualified esquires; and if you'd ask one of the sporting blackguards to put his hand to a spade or shovel, 'tis odds but he'd fetch you a slap in the chops for your pains. Then, Grana's mode of adminstering justice was anything but what it ought to be; she held her own petty sessions but once a twelvemonth, and had no regular constable or settled bailiff on the land, so that when the tenants would quarrel about their marches, as they were were for ever doing, they were always sure of plenty of time to take the law into their own hands, and have a set-to before Grana heard of the row. this account you'd hardly meet a fellow, for the length of a day, on the roads about, that would'nt have his head bound up, or his arm in a sling; but On Grana did not mind it so much, provided none of the neighbours' people were concerned, for she rather liked, she said, to see her boys enjoying themselves; that as for boxing and cudgel-play, they were manly exercises and kept the chaps in wind, and that a black eye was a handsomer mark on a man's face any day than any sign of a white liver. So you may suppose there was no want of bloody noses at their fairs and patterns, much as at the present day, with this difference only, that if a fellow should happen to whip his knife into another's puddings, there was no bother with judges or jury; he had only to put his hand in his pocket like a gentleman, and the coroner was satisfied. As for the friends of the deceased, it was their look out to have a good poke at him in return, and he had no more to do than raise his cousins and fight for it; or, if he did not like that, shift himself to another town-land, (for there was no act in force on Grana's estate against vagrants,) or else stow himself away in the nearest church, where he might laugh in their faces out of the vestry-room window. Yet with all, Grana's life was a warm and merry one. She never saw such a thing as a baker's or butcher's bill as to groceries, she never tasted, so didn't miss them: her wine and silk merchant was the only dealer she ever troubled, and he was the civilest fellow in the world-beef or butter, tallow or hides, all was the same to him; and he stocked her cellar, and kept her back decent, on terms so reasonable, that you'd never have missed his payment out of the larder. Her own wenches spun her shifts and table cloths, and her own lads wove them; so it was, too, with her flannel petticoats, blankets, carpets, &c. As for her table, she had curdy salmon, and haunch of venison three times a week, with sirloins of beef, saddles of mutton, fowl and ham, woodcocks, pheasants, partridges, and wild ducks without end; strong ale, neat wines, and a hall that swarmed like a bee-hive at dinner time. After supper she kept it up singing and dancing till cock crow: none of the neighbours had such a taste for music, and there was always a warm corner by the fire for whatever strolling piper, fiddler, or harper, might want a tuck out and a night's lodging. A fellow with a tolerable voice was sure to be well entertained; nay, though he had no voice at all, would get the run of the house for charity, for Grana was the most generous and hospitable creature breathing. She was not slack neither holding her own among the neighbours, of which I'll give you an instance. There were a set of fellows on the north of John's estate over the pond, as untamed savages as could well be imagined. They could not be called tenants, for they paid neither rent nor taxes, but they had been there since before the memory of man, and would let neither John or John's master meddle with their vagabond concerns. Now Grana having suffered from their troublesome vicinity, determined to take the rogues in hand, and so served an ejectment without more ado on the first she could get at. She sent over a stout fellow, one of her bailiffs, called Longpaw, who completed the process execution in a trice, and then began to cast about among her people for a proper occupant for the vacant premises. There was one among her wenches called Peg, a rawboned, hard-working creature, but full of fun and spirit, the best in the house at a reel, which she would dance, playing the pipes all the time, and no bad hand neither with her whittle in a row. Her elbows were red with the constant exposure to the cold, and she valued a wetting or a snow-balling no more than a crack of her fingers. Such a hardy quean was just the sort of person fitted for the out-farm; so she was put at the head of a complete establishment, and shipped forthwith accross the pond to her new quarters. Here she kept up the old housekeeping famously, and soon gathered a set of jolly boys to her platters that would have gone through fire and water for her. But, I am sorry to say, she proved but an ungrateful jade after all; for she not only turned on Grana in course of time, as shall be seen hereafter, but has even had the impudence to deny that she ever received so much as a petticoat at her hands: if you ask her, at this day, whom she's come of "Oh," says she, "I'm descended frae the same stock wi' John an' the Baboons: Grana Weal has the honor, man, o' being my illegeetimate halfcousin." And where got ye the kilt, Peg?" Oh, fra Julius Cæsar an' the Picks." "And the Mac to your name, Peg?" "Oh man, can ye ax siccin a question? I got it frae the hielan's to be sure." "And where did the highlanders get it, Peg?" "Fra Julius Cæsar an' the Picks, I tell ye," and so on, defiling her old nest to the best of her abilities. But with all, Peg is a good soul if you knew her, and did her business like a Trojan now. She bustled about among the marchers, pushed this one into the gripe, and doubled that one over the ditch, slit a third's windpipe, and smoked a fourth out of his house like a badger from his hole, then clapded down the boys upon the holdings, and set them to raise barley and kail on the poor rogues, leek gardens and bits of grazing. It was astonishing how well she throve, for though she could never get fat, she soon grew so tall and wiry that John (who by the by, was at this time a poor creature enough,) was no sort of match for her even with all the help he could beg or borrow. Grana in the mean time was getting on as usual, and gradually finding money gather on her hands. She was anything but covetous, nay blameably extravagant in some things, yet she found she could not get rid of all her income without some smarter expenses; so she began to melt down her broad pieces into cups and candlesticks for Peter, and sent all over the country, hiring the best stone masons, carvers, gilders, and upholsterers to build and furnish a new glebe house for him when it was furnished, the neighbours all declared they had never seen the like. Then she gave gold in hand-fulls to scholars and masters of arts, and threw about her money among fiddlers and story tellers till all the tenants went mad for learning and music. : It would have done your heart good to have seen her hall of a Christmas night or Hallow Eve; such singing to the harp, such dancing to the bagpipes, such drinking of healths, and shaking of hands, and kissing and coaxing, laughing, blushing, and gallanting was never heard of in the country side before. Peter's lass, you may be certain, had the best of what was going; there was no one in the north to say black was the white of Peter's eye then; so they 66 My Lord Peter's man complains that he lies cold o' nights." "Let him come and take as many blankets as he pleases out of my storeroom; and, hark ye, tell the good father he can have what else he wants to keep his back warm, and welcome;" and so on, till they grew so fat they could hardly wag. As to the management of Grana's household and lands, I have already hinted that it was none of the most systematic. She'd sometimes have but one steward, sometimes four or five; and whenever this happened, the fellows, puffed up with the vain glory of their authority, were sure to go by the ears. Then it not unfrequently occurred that one of the remoter tenants, falling into arrears, would swear he had a commission, and set up as bailiff on his own account, distraining his neighbours' goods and pounding their cattle, till they'd come down with smart replevies, and then, when complaint would be made to the head steward, the rascal would have eaten the cattle, pawned the goods, or drunk the proceeds, and absconded. But the quarrels of the stewards themselves were the worst of all: these rogues would let drive at one another with the ledgers and day books, break the lignum vitæ rules over each other's heads, and turn the whole office topsy turvy. Butler, cook, and chambermaid would strike on for their favourites, and all the servants' hall was sure to follow skillets and porringers, potsticks and ladles would fly about like fun; and Grana herself would have to retreat to her own closet till the tumult might be appeased by some one getting the upper hand. On the whole, however, her household was even then better managed than that of any of the neighbours, not excepting either the baboons, bulls, or porkers. She could show a larger list of regular stewards : and upper servants than any other housekeeper for twenty miles round; and if she was a little vain of her ac counts, it is no more than others would have been, had they possessed any to be vain of. CHAP. II. Of Redhead Fieryskull's vehement courtship of Grana Weal, and how she clapperclawed him, At some distance from Grana's estate, but still in her neighbourhood, lived two hot headed squires of the family of the Fieryskulls. They were cousinsgerman, and no man could have said for a week at a time whether they had been on good terms, for they fought and made it up again a hundred times a day. The elder one, Redhead, was a famous hand in the Northern Yacht Club. Squire Frank, the younger, sailed a crack boat too, but on the whole preferred field sports. None of Grana's boys, with all their devilment, led such a bang-up life as these cocks of the north. They scorned hunting and fishing for anything but sport; and had you asked either of them to drive out the cows or to muck the byre, as Grana's lads were always willing to do, egad you'd have had your head in your hand in a twinkling. Redhead's plan was to lift what he could get on a summer cruise, and live on that during the winter like a gentleman, at home, feasting on fat collops, and swilling ale from the skull of a Thames waterman he had once beaten to death with his own boat hook. Frank simply planted himself in the warmest corner he could find, not mattering much to whom it might belong, and basted the first fellows he could lay his hands on till they were fain to fetch him whatever he called for. 66 "What a goose you are, cousin Redhead," he would say, roughing it through all weathers in that craft of yours, when you might follow my example and billet yourself on some warm housekeeper, eating of the fat and drinking of the strong, instead of going shivering home to the old log-house, to keep company with rein deer and bears all winter, with a wreath of snow at your door-cheek, like a house, and a blast through every cranny that would skin an otter." "Mind your own affairs and be cursed," says the other, laying his shoulder to the large boat and shoving her down from the beach, then"Bear a hand my hearties, jump aboard; stand by the peck and throat halliards; up with your jib and away we go-boatswain!" Aye, aye, Sir," says the boatswain, a bandy legged villain called Turgy, an atrocious, bloodyminded, truculent, down looking dog as you ever heard tell of. “Lie sou' and by west, Sir," says Redhead, "for look ye, I mean to make a trip to the herring pond this cruise." sooner did his tarry rascals hear whither they were bound, than up they tossed their heads and gave an huzza. No "Ah, my lads", says he, "is that the sort of course you like to lie?" "Aye, aye, Sir," sung out all the damned villains with one consent. "Who knows the navigation of the pond?" says he : then half a dozen began telling him all the inns and outs of it, for the base, bloody, and brutal renegades had been bred and born on its banks. So down they came with a snoring breeze and made the entrance of the pond next tide, ran in at high water, and were beating up between Grana Weal's and John's estates before sunset. Standing off and on, and looking out for a safe landing place, they could not help admiring the beauty and convenience of Grana's country. 66 "Rare good grazing by that riverside," says one; "thundering fine fall for a corn mill there," says another; snug spot that to build a box on," says a third; but, Lord love ye, had you heard them when they doubled the point that was betwen them and Grana's house, and saw all her servant maids on the holm alongside, some milking the cows, some bucking linen by the river, and some singing songs as they plied their distaffs by the door. "My eyes," says one, fat heifers!" "Confound my buttons," says another, "what tight wenches !" So into the long boat they jumped, like "what |