E. My father's murderers. O. Ill-fated lady! how I pity thee! E. Thou art the only man that pities me. O. For I alone feel a true sympathy In thy misfortunes. E. Art thou of my kindred? Q. (Pointing to the Chorus.) If these were friendly, I should tell thee all. E. Fear not them, for they are ever faithful. Q. Lay down the casket. Thou shalt hear the truth. E. Stranger, ask not that, I supplicate thee, By all thy hopes, oh! roh me not of that. O. Restore the casket! E. Brother of my soul !! How miserable were I, if bereft Of this possession! O. Lady, cease to mourn. E. Shall I not mourn a brother's death? O. Mourn not. Cly. I am murdered! E. Again! Repeat the blow, And strike with the unerring force of ven E. Oh! had Egysthus fallen By the same stroke ! SHAKSPEARE CLUB OF ALLOA. MR EDITOR, YOUR readers must have remarked in the newspapers, for some years bygone, accounts of an yearly festival in memory of Shakspeare, held at a place called ALLOA, situated, I believe, somewhere on the banks of the Forth; a town which I think I have once or twice heard mentioned, though on what account I do not at present recollect, if it was not in consequence of E. What! am I thus dishonoured of the this very club, or a famous STEAM dead? O. The living need no tomb. E. What meanest thou? O. I only speak the truth. E. Oh! lives Orestes? O. Take that ring; observe it. E. Oh! happy hour! O. Yes, happy hour indeed! E. Light of my life! and art thou come at last? O. Expect no other brother. E. Do I clasp My brother to that heart which has not felt, For many a lonely year, the pulse of joy ? O. Thus ever be thy joys." From these gentle feelings, Electra rises to the true sublimity of her character, and, like a demon, instigates her brother to the murder of their mother. When their plans are fully arranged, Orestes enters the palace, and, from behind the scenes, Clytemnestra is heard crying in a loud voice. "Cly. The royal halls are full of murderers! Where are my friends? E. (To the Chorus.) Hush! hear ye not a voice? Cho. Yes, sounds of woe, that shake my Apoy soul with horror. Cly. I am murdered! Oh! where art Cly. My son! my son! E. Thou hadst no mercy On him, and on my father thy own husband. BOAT, on a new plan, that was there constructed. Curious to learn how the anniversary of Shakspeare first came to be celebrated in such a remote corner of our country, I have made every inquiry I could anent it, in order to lay the account before your readers; but to very little purpose. I have been told that this poetic union had its origin about sixteen years ago, and was first set on foot in opposition to a Musical Club (it must be an extraordinary place this Alloa)-which was established there at the same time. The latter, however, like its own enchanting strains, died away, and has brotherhood continued stedfast, flourleft no trace behind; but the poetical ished, gained ground, and promises to be permanent. The members have a hall, a library, and a store of wines, spirits, &c. To this store or cellar every one of them has a key, and is at liberty to treat his friends from it to any extent he pleases, without check or conliberal and unreserved in this, and trol. There is something extremely were we members of. this club, we would certainly prefer this privilege to any literary one that can possibly be attached to it. The festival this year, I am told, lasted eight days complete; and my inform er assures me, that (saving on the 23d, the anniversary of their patron's birth) during all that time every man of them went sober to his bed. I believe the gentlemen thought so, which was much the same as if it had really been the case. Their principal a musements are songs, recitations, literary toasts, and eulogiums; and the meeting, it appears, was greatly enlivened this year by the attendance of a Mr Stevenson, a young professional singer, whose powers of voice promise the highest excellence yet attained in Scottish song. I have likewise been so far fortunate as to procure the sole copy of a poetical address delivered by the President, on his health being drank, which gives a better definition of the club than any thing I could possibly have obtained. It would surely be a great treat to your readers, could you procure some of their eulogiums literally as delivered, that we might see what kind of ideas the people of that outlandish place entertain about poets and poetry in general. The following appears to be somewhat in the style of the Poet Laureate. Brethren, know you the import of this meeting? This festival, in which from year to year These many fleeting years; each in his place; us With kindred joy, and that gray bust of him, Our patron bard, with flowers and laurels crowned. There is a charm in this-a something blent With the best genial feelings of the heart; Each one will own it. Turn we to the past: Survey th' events and changes that have been In lands and nations round us, since we first Joined in poetic unity. That view Is fraught with tints so grand, so wonderful, That Time's old annals, though engraved with steel, And cast in blood, no parallel unfold. In these we had our share-we took a part With arm, but more with heart. With sul len eye We saw the vessels waning from our port; Our native Forth, that wont to be a scene Of speckled beauty with the shifting sail, The veering pennon, and the creaking barge. Deep-loaded to the wale, with fraughtage rich, yoke. Changes must happen-but in silence still With retrospective glance, gives to this day, Ourselves are changed in feature and in frame Since first we met.-Then light of heart we were, Ardent and full of hope, and wedded all And families sprung around us.Thus our joys, Our loves, and feelings, like ourselves, are changed, Softened to sadness-mellowed to a calm U cay, And Empires totter, change succeed to change, But here no change presents-uncoped with still Stands our immortal Shakspeare-he whose birth This day we celebrate.-O! be this day • For ever sacred to his memory And long may we, my Brethren, though To the four winds of heaven, meet again, Then for their paramours the maddening brawl, Shrill, fierce, and frantic, echoes round the hall. No glimmering light to rage supplies a mark, Save the red firebrand, hissing through the dark; And oft the beams of morn, the peasants say, The blood-stained turf, and new-formed graves display. Fell race, unworthy of the Scotian name! Your brutal deeds your barbarous line proclaim; With dreadful Gallas linked in kindred bands, The locust brood of Ethiopia's sands, Whose frantic shouts the thunder blue defy, And launch their arrows at the glowing sky. In barbarous pomp, they glut the inhuman feast With dismal viands man abhors to taste; And grimly smile, when red the goblets shine, When mantles red the shell-but not with wine !" LEYDEN. THE village of Kirk-Yetholm, in Roxburghshire, has long been remarkable as a favourite haunt of the Scottish Gypsies; and it still continues, in the present day, to be their most important settlement, and the head-quarters of their principal clans. The original causes of this preference may be readily traced to its local situation, which af forded peculiar facilities for the indulgence of their roaming and predatory habits, and for the evasion of legal restraints and penalties. Though remote from the principal public roads, they obtained, from this station, a ready access to the neighbouring districts of both kingdoms, by various wild and unfrethe days of the border forays, except quented by-paths, little known since to themselves and a few cattle-drovers. The hills and waters, also, teemed with game and fish, and the upland farms and hamlets required a constant supply of tinkering, crockery, and horn spoons, and abounded with good cheer, while magistrates and constables, and country-towns, were few and far between.-All these were advantages of no trivial nature to the vagrant community, and they seem, accordingly, to have been neither overlooked nor left unimproved by the colonists of Kirk-Yetholm. The village itself lies quite embosomed among the Cheviot hills, and besides its claims to celebrity as the modern metropolis of the "Lordis of Littil Egipt," it is not undeserving of some notice, also, on account of the simple and sequestered beauty of its scenery. It hangs upon the lower declivity of a steep rocky hill, called Stairroch, on the southern bank of the Bowmont, or as Leyden, in the elegant poem above quoted, has named it-the Yeta. This is a fine trouting stream, which issues, a few miles above, from the west side of Cheviot; and after winding through a narrow pastoral valley, unsheltered with wood, but bounded everywhere by smooth steep hills of the most beautiful verdure, flows down between the two villages of Kirk and Town Yetholm. The Bowmont is here joined by a large brook from the bottom of a picturesque recess among the neighbouring hills, which pours into it the superfluous waters of the little lake of Loch-Tower or Lochside. A short way below this it enters England, and afterwards falls into the Till near Flodden Field. Between the two villages is stretched a broad and level haugh, which the Bowmont occasionally overflows. At Fasten's Even this always forms the theatre for the toughest foot-ball match now played in the south of Scotland. Town-Yetholm lies rather low, and exhibits nothing remarkable either in the character of its inhabitants or its internal appearance; but a small conical hill, whose rocky summit retains the vestiges of some ancient entrenchments, rises between it and LochTower, and presents a very pleasing view on approaching from the north. It is cultivated on all sides quite to the top, and the small village-tenants, by whom it is chiefly occupied, have parcelled out its sloping declivities into parks, or little enclosures, of almost Chinese variety, each of which annually exhibits, on a small scale, the diversified operations and variegated vegetation of Scottish husbandry. women loitering at their doors, or lazily busied among their carts and panniers-and ragged children scrambling on the midden-steads (which rise before every cottage) in intimate and equal fellowship with pigs, poultry, dogs, and cuddies. This description, though brief and general, may perhaps appear to some readers more minute than the occasion requires; but some little indulgence, we trust, will be allowed,-if not on account of our own early partialities, at least for the sake of the nowclassical scenery of gypsey heroismthe native haunts of Jean Gordon, alias Meg Merrilies. The general aspect of the surrounding country, however, cannot be said to bear any striking analogy to the more dark and savage features of the gypsey character. Though the mountains of Cheviot can never fail to awaken in the breast of a Scotsman a thousand elevating emotions, there is little in their natural scenery that deserves the epithets of terrible or sublime. It is wild, indeed, but without ruggedness-and interesting rather than picturesque. Its chief characteristic is pastoral simplicitywith something of that homely and affecting bareness peculiar to Scottish landscape;-like the Border scenery in general, the green banks of Bowmont seem more calculated to sooth the fancy and soften the heart, than to exasperate the passions by exciting the imagination. To sources very different from the influences of external nature must be traced the strange peculiarities of these wild and wayward tribes. In the same Arcadian vallies, reside at the present moment a peasantry distinguished for superior intelligence, morality, and delicacy of feeling-whose moss-trooping ancesThe aspect of the opposite village, tors, little more than a hundred years to which the gypsey population is en- ago, were nevertheless sufficiently fatirely confined, is of a different char- miliar with stouthe reif and pykarie,' acter: a mill and a church-yard ris- with feudal rancour and bloody revenge ing from the brink of the water-the-but the moral causes, which have church itself low and covered with thatch-beyond which appear the straggled houses of the village, built in the old Scottish style, many of them with their gable-ends, backs, or corners, turned to the street or toun gate -and still farther up, the TinklerRow, with its low, unequal, straw covered roofs, and chimneys bound with rushes and hay-ropes-men and happily changed the Border reivers into a religious and industrious people, have scarcely yet begun to dawn upon the despised and degraded Gyp sies. Tradition affords no intelligence respecting the time when the first Gypsey colony fixed their residence at KirkYetholm. The clan of Faas are generally supposed to have established themselves there at a very remote period; and the pretensions of the present chieftain of that name to unmixed nobility of blood, as the lineal descendant of the renowned Erle Johnne,' are probably as well founded, at least if not so splendidly illustrated, as the proud genealogy of the famous Prince de Paz, which certain northern heralds, it is said, had lately the merit of tracing up to the ancient royal blood of Scotland! The tribe of Youngs are next to the Faas in honour and antiquity. They have preserved the following tradition respecting their first settlement in Yetholm:- -At a siege of the city of Namur (date unknown) the laird of Kirk-Yetholm, of the ancient family of Bennets of Grubet and Marlfield, in attempting to mount a breach at the head of his company, was struck to the ground, and all his followers killed or put to flight, except a gypsey, the ancestor of the Youngs, who resolutely defended his master till he recovered his feet, and then springing past him upon the rampart, seized a flag, which he put into his leader's hand. The besieged were struck with panicthe assailants rushed again to the breach -Namur was taken-and Captain Bennet had the glory of the capture. On returning to Scotland, the laird, out of gratitude to his faithful follower, settled him and his family (who had formerly been wandering tinkers and heckle-makers) in Kirk-Yetholm, and conferred upon them and the Faas a feu of their cottages for the space of nineteen times nineteen years-which they still hold from the Marquis of Tweeddale, the present proprietor of the estate. The other families now resident in this village (as we shall afterwards see) are of more recent introduction. They seem to have gradually retreated to this as their last strong hold, on being successively extirpated from their other haunts and fastnesses upon the borders. We mentioned in our last Number, that Mr Hoyland, in the persecution of his meritorious design for ameliorating the condition of this unfortunate race, had addressed a circular to the chief provincial magistrates, with a list of queries respecting their present state, &c. These, being transmitted to the sheriffs of the different Scottish counties, produced replies, several of which Mr Hoyland has published. Of these notices by far the most interesting are, a short report of Mr Walter Scott, sheriff of Selkirkshire, and an account of the Yetholm Gypsies by Bailie Smith of Kelso-which we shall extract in full; for though they relate, in some points, to particulars already detailed, they are altogether too graphical and curious to be subjected to any abridgment.-Mr Scott writes as follows: "A set of people possessing the same erratic habits, and practising the trade of tinkers, are well known in the borders; and have often fallen under the cognizance of the law. They are often called Gypsies, and pass through the county annually in small bands, with their carts and asses. The men are tinkers, poachers, and thieves upon a small scale. They also sell crockery, deal in old rags, in eggs, in salt, in tobacco, and such trifles; and manufacture horn into spoons. I believe most of those who come through Selkirkshire reside, during winter, in the villages of Horncliff and Spittal, in Northumberland, and in that of Kirk-Yetholm, Roxburghshire. "Mr Smith, the respectable Bailie* of Kelso, can give the most complete information concerning those who reside at Kirk-Yetholm. Formerly, I believe, they were much more desperate in their conduct than at present. But some of the most atrocious families have been extirpated; I allude particularly to the Winters, a Northumberland clan, who, I fancy, are all buried by this time. "Mr Riddel, Justice of Peace for Roxburghshire, with my assistance and concurrence, cleared this. country of the last of them, about eight or nine years ago. They were thorough desperadoes, of the worst class of vagabonds. Those who now travel through this country give offence chiefly by poaching and small thefts. They are divided into clans, the principal names being Faa, Baillie, Young, Ruthven, and Gordon. "All of them are perfectly ignorant of religion, and few of their children receive any education. They marry and cohabit amongst each other, and are held in a sort of horror by the common people. "Bailie is a magisterial designation in Scotland, agreeing in rank with that of Alderman in England." |