CASTLE OF LANGARRAN.

A WELCH STORY.

From the MSS. of the late James Petit Andrews, Esq. F. S. A

LETTER XVII.

Lord Glenham to Sir G. Sinclair, Bart.

Cork.

OH George! what a devil of a jaunt have I made of it? Expecting to be at Swansea in three days, from Dieppe, and, after tossing about on the troubled ocean, (absolutely in the bay of Biscay) during ten days and nights, here am I, about as far from the isle of Lundy as I was in the rotunda of my beloved at La Proirie ! 'Twas a cursed wind, to be sure, that drove me so unaccountably out of my road; but 'tis an ill wind'—you know the proverb: In short, I cannot be much out of humour at any incident which tends to delay the necessary eclaircissement between me and my eccentric uncle. But I must relate to you the last interview I had with Theodosia. I flew to her as soon as I had finished my letter to you. I found her in tears, and own that I was ungenerous enough to be charmed with so unequivocal a token of her grief for losing me.but the dear girl, lifting up her sweet face, (by the way, George, she cries the most prettily of any woman in the universe. I believe I told you so before; I see that I must quarrel with her every now and then for the pleasure of seeing her tears) told me, that, besides the pain which she owned herself to feel for my departure, she had another cause. This she was, I saw, unwilling and even ashamed to tell me. It was neither more nor less than a dream. Last night,' (said she, after I had almost scolded the poor dear creature to make her speak) last night I had a dream or vision, for it affected me as if it were real. You were gone, and no letter or news of any kind arrived from you, and the importunities of Sir Michael redoubled. Distracted between attachment on the one side and aversion on the other, I wandered away from my father's house, and crossed a deep and wide river, I know not how. A storm, attended with repeated flashes of lightning, now raged around me. At length, fatigued and distressed, I felt myself happy at seeing a building near me, with its doors unbarred and open. I entered hastily; it was a church; but no way resembling any one I had ever seen; a couple stood before the altar, on the point of being united by a priest clothed in vestments strange to my eyes. My hasty steps alarming them,

D VOL. X

the bride turned a beautiful countenance my way, and touching the bridegroom on the shoulder, made him look round. It was yourself! I was by this time advanced close to the altar, when your figure, snatching a dagger from its side, first plunged it into the bosom of the bride, and, drawing it thence, covered with her blood, buried it in mine. I fell with the stroke, and waked at the instant; but the impression of the dream, if it were a dream, still remains fixed in my fancy, nor can all the reasoning in the world make me think it otherwise than a warning of some fatal event, which impends over our intended union.'

I forget, George, what author it is who says that it is much easier to combat real than imaginary evils.' I found it so with my poor Theodosia. This absurd, inconsistent dream had gained entrance into her naturally firm mind, through the avenue of superstition; nor could all the exertions of ridicule, nor the soothings of affection, enliven her spirits. She forced me to quit her, by the visible distress which she suffered at the possibility of her father's and her brute of a lover's arrival; and I left her, at last, with a bleeding heart, to the care and consolation of her aunt. Poor consolation, I doubt! Miss Fitzgerald had been as much affected by this cursed dream as my poor girl. And I protest to you, George, by the reproachful glances which she frequently darted at me, she seem ́ed to have already set me down as a recreant and a murderer. Good heavens! what a moment to leave one's mistress! Yet I left her, and can most solemnly aver, that the agonies of that lovely girl, her hands now gracefully extended with affection towards your unhappy friend, and now withdrawn, with a kind of shudder, at the recollection of the detestable vision, and her melodious accents at one time conjuring me to remember my vows, and, at the next instant, with half phrenzy, charging me with the inconstancy and cruelty of the devilish fellow in her dream. These objects have never been five minutes out of my mind since we parted.

I wish I had been less particular in my narrative. I have renewed every pain; and, I blush to write it, I am blubbering like a · flogged school boy; and were the accomplishment of that confounded dream any way probable, nay possible, I could, in my present humour, believe every word of it, and pistol myself to avoid a more painful catastrophe.

Come, let me repel these wretched thoughts, and turn to ideas less gloomy. Don't you think, George, that my securing the me'diation of Dubois, at the post-house, was a master stroke? No

letters can now be intercepted; no false stories told; no plots can be put in practice, such as you read of in novels, and are bound to believe, although you are conscious that the merest idiot would not be taken in by them. An old stager, like you, in intrigue, would easily have lighted on such a plan; but for a novice, like me, I will venture to say, it was sans prix' which conveys this letter to you, will, I hope, deign to waft me across St. George's Channel. By this time I hope you have receiva packet from Dubois. Keep it by you until I write again, since I would not have it, (impatient as I am) enter my uncle's house until I am there.

Well, my friend, the same wind

Affectionately yours,

GLENHAM.

LITERARY GLEANINGS.

No. VIII.

ANTIQUITY OF CHORISTERS.

So late as the reign of Edward the Sixth, whenever a boy had a promising voice, he was forcibly taken from his parents, to be educated as a chorister for the king's chapel. I infer this from some lines, in a poem of Thomas Tusser, Gentleman, entitled The Author's Life, printed in 1577, 4to.

"Then for my voyce, I must (no choyce)
"Away of force, like posting horse;

"For sundry men had placards then,
"Such childe to take."

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.

THE instruments used by the English in Chaucer's time, were the Ribible, Geterne, and Sautrie; see the Miller's Tale: and it should seem, that a player upon them attended at most of the brew-houses, as they are called by Chaucer, for the entertainment of the guests, as the harpers continue to do in Wales at present. The English lover likewise serenaded his mistress. The kings of England, had, in the first year of Queen Mary, both harpers and bagpipers in their band of music, with a salary of 181. per annum. The two harpers, musicians to this queen, were not Welshmen, as far as can be collected from their names; nor was the bagpiper a Scotchman. Fidler

does not signify what we now understand by the word player on the violin; thus in Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle,

"They say it is death for these fidlers to tune their rebecks."

Thus also, in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew:

that

which is applied to a lutanist, The violin seems not to have been known in England, till the time of Charles the First; my authority for which is Anthony Wood, though I cannot recover the page contains the passage I allude to. It seems to have been borrowed from the old Welsh insrument called a crwth; which is not, however, tuned in the same manner with a violin, nor are there above two or three persons now in Wales who can play upon it.

LAWYERS PROHIBITED A SEAT IN PARLIAMENT. A PROCLAMATION issued on the 6th of November, and twentieth year of the reign of James the First, in which the voters for members of parliament are directed, "not to choose curious and wrangling lawyers, who seek reputation by stirring needless questions." "A prating lawyer (one of those which cloud

"That honour'd science) did their conduct take;
"He talk'd all law, and the tumultuous croud
"Thought it had been all gospel that he spake.
"At length these fools that common error saw,
"A lawyer on their side, but not the law."

Aleyn's Hen. vii. p. 103. London, 1638, 12mo.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

ROPER, in his life of Sir Thomas More, informs us, that he read every bill preferred to him, and often stopped any further proceedings. From the dispatch which he gave, as Chancellor, the following lines were written in his commendation, by fome poet, in the reign of Henry the Eighth:

"When More some years had Chancellor been,

"No more-suits did remain;

"The same shall never more be seen

"Till More be there again.

GAMING.

THE vice of gaming had been introduced into England before the time of Edward the Fourth, as Chaucer speaks thus of it; "As hasard, riot, stewes, and tavernes, "Whereat with lutes, harps, and geternes,

"Thei dauncen, and plaien at dice night and day."

And again:

For in the cite, n' as there no prentse
"That fairer couth castin a pair of dice."

Chaucer in the Cook's Tale.

In the following reign of Henry the Seventh, Caxton in one of his prefaces, addresses his readers;

"What do ye now, but play at dyce."

ORIGIN OF YEW TREES IN A CHURCH YARD.

THE planting yews in church-yards, being places fenced from cattle, originally arose from an attention to the material from which the best bows were made; nor do we hear of such trees being planted in the church-yards of other parts of Europe. It appears by 4 Hen. V. ch. iii. that the wood of which the best arrows were made, was the asp. As the botanical distinctions between this tree, and the black poplar, are attended with some nicety, it must have been very difficult to convict on this statute. If this remark is 'considered as too minute, it must be recollected, that the elders (according to the account in the Apocrypha) were convicted merely on the circumstance of their differing with regard to the kind of tree, under which Susanna was supposed to have committed adultery.

THAT THAT'S NAUGHT IS NEVER IN DANGER." PETRARCH (in one of his letters) gives a description of a most extraordinary storm, which happened at Naples in the year 1343. There were 400 criminals on board a large vessel in the harbour, whose punishment was changed from death to transportation to Sicily. This vessel, so loaded with every kind of villainy, was the only one which outrid the storm, and was saved. Mem. de Petrarche, vol. ii. p. 167. Lucan, however, justly says,

servat fortuna nocentes,

THE ISLE OF DOGS.

THE island opposite to Greenwich, obtained the name of the Isle of Dogs, from the king's spaniels being kept there. Edward the Third, in the twenty-first year of his reign, ordered the sheriffs of Essex and Hertfordshire to build bridges in the neighbourhood of Waltham, that he might enjoy the amusement of falconry: He also forbids any one's hawking in those parts, without his most special licence. See Rymer, vol. iii. part 1. p. 23.