Julian believed, with Herod, in the transmigration of souls, and that he had been Alexander the emperor. Frederick II., who disdained the wisdom of the church, had always some Arabian astrologers at his side, without whose advice he under took nothing. Wallenstein, who disdained the exercise of piety, had recource to the stars to learn what would be the success of bis projects. Eccelino, who was a heretic as well as a persecutor of monks, and as such condemned by the church, had astrologers always with him, calculating and divining, by whose advice he used to give battle: he had Master Salio, a canon of Padua, Riprandino of Verona, Guido of Bonato, and Paul the Saracen, with a long beard, who came from Baldach and the remote regions of the east. When enveloped at the bridge of Cassino, over the Adda, by a superior force, he shuddered; for his astrologers had told him that this place would be fatal to him. The last ruler who laid violent hands on the vicar of Christ believed in the occult powers of fate, and was

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WHITE BOYS.

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"these laws are seldom put in execution. Is property, is parental authority to depend upon the courtesy of an "avaricious malignant neighbour, or the gratitude of a "profligate abandoned child? Damocles was perhaps safe "under the suspended sword of Dionysius; but the appre"hension of danger scared away those visions of happiness "which he had seen in the envied pomp of tyranny." (pp. 252-99.) We shall illustrate our author's meaning by some extracts from Mr. Banim's book.

Excluded by one of the penal laws from the right of educating themselves—their creed proscribed-their worship forbidden under heavy penalties-and their priests hunted like foxes into caverns and other hiding-places by the bloodhounds who sought their lives-the peasantry of Ireland, in the middle of last century, were left in poverty, bitterness, and ignorance, without advisers, without comforters, to exact vengeance instead of redress from the immediate agents of their wretchedness. The basest and most insigthe rigid letter of those laws; and they did it with impunity, for, besides the arms which they alone were privileged to carry, they were sure of the connivance, if not of the active concurrence, of the magistrates. Near Kilkenny, about that very time, three or four mean Protestant mechanics, with guns in their hands, came upon a priest at mass in the open air before a rural congregation. Without more ado, the wretches fired among the crowd, killed some of them, and wounded the priest himself. We regret to observe in passing, that this spirit still exists wherever Protestantism is insolent. We refer especially to the counties of Tyrone, Monaghan, Derry, Armagh, Down, and Fermanagh.

An intelligent Irish Protestant, writing in the year 1777,* after citing with approbation Sir John Davies's famous panegyric of the soil, air, and ports of Ireland, and the natural abilities of her people, remarked that the country was then verging on depopulation, and the inhabitants either "moping under the sullen gloom of inactive indigence, or blindly asserting the rights of nature in noc"turnal insurrections;" or, as he afterwards says, star"light insurrections, disavowed by everybody." These disturbers, he adds, were originally called Levellers, from "their levelling the enclosures of commons, but now White "Boys, from their wearing their shirts over their coats, for "the sake of distinction in the night." He hazarded many conjectures as to the causes of their discontent, but without exactly touching the truth. He denied that the priests were at the bottom of it, and referred to a pamphlet that appeared eleven years before upon this subject for the proofs of his assertion. Herein he was right. But in doubt-nificant of the Protestants were precisely those who enforced ing that the disaffection of the Irish people had any reference whatever to religious questions, he clearly went too far. Mr. Banim, in a very clever chapter of his "Crohoore of the Billhook," has so clearly and pointedly stated the true grievances which stung these unhappy men into crime, that we cannot do better than make use of what he has said. The original cause that immediately brought them together may have been what the Protestant author states on the authority of another pamphlet of the year 1762, viz., the enclosure of commons by their landlords, in defiance of their compacts. Yet, once in arms, it is easy to suppose that they would not be contented with abating this grievance, if greater ones remained unredressed. Accordingly he tells us, but evidently without understanding the case, that they "began to direct their vengeance against the clergy," and with such effect, that "it became the policy "of the landlord and grazier to cherish, or at least connive "at the spirit of curtailing the Church of its pittance." He then mentions, that in some places the White Boys forbade any man from helping the parson to let his tithes, under pain of losing his nose, or ears, or both. "In other places they refuse absolutely to pay those dues;" nor does he wonder at that. The Irish Commons had voted agistment tithe illegal, to the direct profit of graziers, which all the middlemen then were: and thus tithe fell exclusively upon tillage. The grazier who paid £10,000 a year rent was actually tithed less than his tenant who tilled his ten acres. İlence "the country was almost usurped by bullocks and sheep;" and as to the people, "the state not being their friend, nor the state's law, they became constant enemies to the state." This in truth was the real seat of the malady. As to the causes that produced it, whatever they were, like the malady itself, they were not general, but local. This the authorities already cited, as well as those which follow, abundantly prove. The story of a wide-spread organization, embracing Ireland, or even one province of Ireland, was a silly fiction, and is not worth serious notice. White Boys there were, in more districts than one, because in more than one district there was disaffection. But the insurgents had not a common leader, nor perhaps a common grievance. Each district had its own grievance to redress, and its own mode of doing it. There were as many leaders as districts. The same may be said of the Rockites, Terry Alts, and Ribbonmen of modern times. They inherited from their White Boy predecessors, among other characteristics, their purely local organizations, and each one was quite independent of its neighbour.

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When our readers are informed that all the penal laws were at that time in full force, most of them can pretty well guess at the condition of the Irish people. Our author was himself struck with the absurdity of keeping alive such wicked laws. "The Irish," he says, are no longer out "laws and enemies; but they are in many respects aliens. "Can partial laws command more than partial obedience? "If a yoke be heavy, will it not gall? If chains are iron, "will they not sometimes rattle? Let it not be argued that

*"A Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland, in a Series of Letters to John Watkinson, M.D.," p. 293.

The peasant so dealt with hated the dominant sect, because it was privileged to persecute the Catholic Church, and because it used that privilege. What was an additional exasperation, it was on him, and not his absentee head landlord, nor his immediate landlord the grazier-it was on him, the persecuted Catholic, the rack-rented cottier, that the burthen exclusively fell of supporting the sectarian clergy in their splendour and insolence. The hard-earned pittance he could not afford to the priest was wrung from him by the law, and handed over to the Protestant parson, who exacted it to the last farthing, and, so that he got it, seemed quite indifferent to the bitter discontent of his miserable debtor, or the manner of the collection. Yet the manner of collecting the tithe was the immediate spur to the headlong course of the frantic peasant. The tyranny of the tithe-proctor-a race now happily extinct, since tithes have been commuted-was exquisite indeed. Peery Clancy, tithe-proctor for the parish of Clarah, in Mr. Banim's tale already mentioned, is no fancy-sketch. The book appeared in 1825, a period when the species was abundant enough, and he assures us that both the man and the statements are carefully copied from the life. We may rely, therefore, on the faithfulness of their delineation.

Peery Clancy was a Catholic of very bad character, but as poor as Job. After failing in every speculation of early life-after being once in gaol for debt and once for sheepstealing-he found himself, at the age of fifty, an old man without credit. He was a waddling fellow, of queerly jumbled manners. If you looked at his pursed brow and clenched teeth, you pronounced him a bully; but his rambling eye, his fidgety and wincing manner, and the awkward seesawing of his arm as he spoke to you, almost tempted you to recall that opinion, to forget his years, and to imagine him a shamefaced brat, fearful of the deserved whipping. His speech was made up of rude assertions, frightful oaths, and obscene jests, little becoming his grey hairs. Such was the man who, at the above age, changed his plans once more, and suddenly blazed up in the new character of tithe-proctor. Matters now changed with him in their turn. A certain air of purse-pride began to blend itself with the strange manner of the man. ample clothes (twice as large as were necessary) began to be of the best texture and a half-city-cut, which really gave him a look of wealth and superiority: in fact, he had become a wealthy man; his coffers were strong-he could command a round thousand. Thus it was.

His

The very, very poorest were his best profit, his fat of the

1

TALES OF TYNEDALE.-No. I.

the Quilter-
"It was a fearful looking for of judgment!" said Joe

interrupt old Joe's tale to say something of himself.
Anticipating the question of the impatient reader, we

land, his milk and honey. Some got rid of him by satisfying his exorbitant demands in the first instance; but these were they who satisfied him the least. The wretched man, who, from sunrise till many hours after sunset, bent beneath the first malediction of our race, without earning more than the scantiest and meanest food, rags for his In the days of quilts or coverlets wrought with the covering, and despair for his guest-this was the prey for hand, and in the days of quilted petticoats, many a Peery! He would call on such a man for tithe. The crop poor man and woman gained a good living by the exwas not ripe, or it was a bad time to sell it. No matter; crcise of an art of which old Joe, of Holmer's Lane, was Peery would take Dermid's note of hand willingly. It was given time wore on, and it became due; but, the amount probably, as he always called himself, "the last practitioner." Those venerable articles, dedicated to the not being in the way when Peery called for it, Dermid had domestic comforts of our grandmothers, have already, in to give him a douceur, and to submit to some rude jests to most instances, passed from the memory of a generation his wife and daughter, such as made them blush; and so the which has lived with spinning-jennies and steam-boilers; note of hand was renewed. Meantime the crop had failed, and, but for a well-preserved padusoy, or a carefully-kept or perhaps seized for rack-rent and sold. From these or other casualties there is no provision to meet the assiduous coverlet, the first court-dress of a grand-aunt, or the Peery at his next coming. Dermid has to sell some of his of the art of quilting-the art itself might have been added wedding-bed cover of a great grandmother-the last relics few potatoes, and, though he and his family are stinted of to the long list of the lost sciences: the buried knowledge even this miserable food by the act, he is enabled to pur- of an earlier age, which the industry of the present is chase another renewal of his note with another douceur. daily digging up, and eagerly applying to its own purBut when payment is demanded after the expiration of this poses. In proof of this spirit of revival, the venerable rethird term, he is worse than ever, as Peery well knows. The mains of a quilted petticoat of black and amber satin have tithe-proctor scowls and bullies, thunders out by J and actually been detected on the shoulders of a fashionable the Holy G that he must be paid, and abruptly departs belle, in the form of a capote au cardinal; a comfortable to issue what is called a citation to the Ecclesiastical Court. and appropriate transposition, concerning which the conThe original demand did not exceed one pound: the noisseur in costume may satisfy himself by actual inspection citation makes it more than double; then comes the de- any morning-that is about four o'clock in the afternooncree; and lastly, a civil process. Peery fills up the process in Regent-street, or any other fashionable "shopping" himself, thereby pocketing the fee of thirteen-pence Irish, locality. It was only on the wild borders of Tynedale, and which the law allows. The same fee is allowed in each nearly 20 years ago, that the last of the quilters plied his case for personal service; Peery, however, has perhaps a long needle; and, with spectacles on nose and slippered hundred others to serve. He hires a needy understrapper, feet, sat like an Indian idol on the farmhouse table, or at at twenty-pence a day, and two throws of whisky, to serve the window of his own lonely cottage, alternately drawthe whole batch, and fobs the difference himself. Dermid ing from his pouch the thread of silk or linen, and from is all this time incurring more debts to Peery. The under- the tangled web of his memory the tattered thrums* of strapper, too, extorts from him another shilling for himself old tradition. While he restored with a bright crimson at the moment of serving him with the process, promising patch, and seamed with a fretted purple thread the green him, in return, his powerful interference, than which nothing or grey coverlet, fretted with the wearing of a century, is further from his inclination or ability. By the time that he drew together vivid sketches of old manners, with sessions have come on, Dermid has managed, by a desperate snatches of old song and fragments of old story; mingeffort, to scrape together the one pound originally de- ling the yarn, as it was often shrewdly suspected, with manded, and he tenders it. To his consternation he now cruel † drawn from the bottom of his own imagination. finds that is trebled; he says he is ruined; wrings his His stories, like his coverlets, were a patchwork of many hands; weeps perhaps. Peery hints, in his brutal way, to stuffs and colours," Calimanky crimsons" and "Monkey him that he has "a well-lookin' wife and daatur" at home. (that is Manchester) cottons," which he never sewed on The diabolical jest is too much to be borne, but he dares without a thousand "psha's" and "pishes," with an unnot vent his anger. The sessions decree in Peery's favour, usual shrug of the shoulders, an awful elevation of the and he carries off Dermid's only horse or cow to public nose and eyebrows, a holding of it up between himself auction, where, at one fourth of its value, it is knocked and the light, and a contemptuous comment on the flimdown to himself, to be resold soon after at a good profit.sinesss of all cheap, weaver-grinding, modern productions, He then charges the parson with the expenses of recovering as compared with the sound, labour-paid, fabrics of his own Dermid's tithe, setting off against them the auction price of the horse, and perhaps leaving his reverend employer a loser by the transaction. To sum up all Peery's winnings: there are first the two douceurs; next the fee for the process; next the profit of 800 per cent. on serving it; then the two pounds (at least) cleared upon the cow or horse; and lastly, the bill of costs against the parson, who was doubtless pretty well fleeced in his turn. Well might this pious Catholic relish his evening bumper of whisky-punch after closing such an account as this, and drink long life to the parson's tithes, and may they never fail him! Meanwhile poor Dermid has gone to his dreary hovel, satisfied that for a papist, and especially a poor one, there was no law nor mercy either. He had heard himself decreed in the sessions court; he had witnessed the knockingdown of his "baste" for an old song. This, then, was the end of all the sweat and suffering of which his life had been compounded. This agonising thought became the cud of his bitter rumination as he walked home. On the squalid threshold his children were crying for food; he heard and therefore turned his back upon them; walked hastily abroad again; kicked out of his way the idle spade; sought out some dozen Dermids as ill off as himself; covenanted with them to take the tithe-law and its proctors into their own hands, and ratified that covenant with silly oaths, and the result was-the White Boys!

day.

Poor Joe was murdered, in his 70th year, in his lone cottage near the broken cross in the dreary lane of the Holm-keeper (" Holmer's-lonning"), just above Warden Mill, on the picturesque banks of the North Tyne, near its confluence with the southern branch of that noble river, and within the abbey-lands of Hexham, in Northumberland. He was a prudent and industrious workman, a great favourite with the farmers' wives, and a welcome visitor to the homes of the little "lairds" in his neighbourhood. It was generally believed that he had saved money; and to this belief it is supposed he owed his horrible death, the awful details of which are even yet a familiar topic with the peasantry of Tynedale; for, strange to say, the murderer has to this hour escaped detection.

The lamentable fate of the old man cast a melancholy halo around all that related to him; and it is perhaps for this reason that his budget of traditions, carefully sifted by a much-interested listener, is now, for the first time, opened to the public. The following tale may be taken as a fair specimen of the Quilter's collection.

does not work.
*The tangled ends of the woof, in weaving, which the warp
† Worsted ravelled out.
A clew.

THE FALSE WITNESS.

"Ay, ay, I know. Well, Cuthbert Myddleton was "It was a fearful looking for of judgment, I say, that married on the bonniest lass the English border ever bred. peeped out in everything that Cuthbert Myddleton did, She was promised to Gilbert Scott, of Ruberslaw, a slip said, or thought after that journey to London. The poor from Harden, grafted on Cavers, cut off in the auld time, wanweird would come to market, but he could neither and growing rich among the woolcombers of Hawick, buy nor sell; he would come to church, but he could and the dyers of Jeddart; but all the water of the Teviot neither pray nor listen; he was aye at Ovingham Races, would not have washed the Tynedale blood off his hands, but he neither rode nor betted; he never missed Stain- for he was a reiver like his forebears, only, instead of shaw Bank fair, but who ever saw Cuthbert Myddleton meeting the English archers by daylight in the marches, in any dancing or diversion? Every body kenn'd Cuth- he waylaid the southern merchants at night on the hills. bert Myddleton, but he never gripped hands, or 'changed He wad stay praying at the meeting-house on a Sabbath, good wishes, with any of his auld acquaintance. At till all his men had gathered at the Cateran's-hole, or the church, at market, at fairs, and races, Cuthbert huddled Reedsuire-bar, and then drive away a score of packhorses himself up in the crowd, and seemed to feel easiest when loaded with English goods for Boswell's-green; dirk the among a lot of strangers: was he seeking somebody that was merchants, and if any of them got away it was an easy na' there? He was pleased to find himself among men, but thing for a longfaced covenanting hypocrite, that had sold it looked as if he couldna' bear to be alone with any one. his birthright for a slip of bad land, to buy a bit of Jed"In the fine afternoons of summer he would wander away dart justice against the complaints of an Englisher. from his own neglected fields, and into the woods, and go Gibby's gold was bright enough to induce old Harbottle pondering up and down among the auld-ancient towers at to sell his daughter; but, aha! she liked Cuthbert MydPrudhoe, or far up the water to Langleydale, to bury him- dleton, and he liked her, and it was no hard matter for a self in the castle that young Frank of Liddesdale was laird few lads of spirit from the fell and the forest to whisk off of lang syne, when Jock o' Hazeldean ran away wi' his wi' Gilbert Scott, nag and all, from the wedding party, lass. He would be up on the high walls looking out and to frighten old Harbottle into fits by setting fire to like a watch keeper in the '45, but he never ventured his barns and his byers, while Myddleton galloped away down among the vaults. They were not considered canny wi' his Mary to St. John Lee, where they were coupled them old vaults; and if Cuthbert Myddleton was hardly up by the drunken auld anti-Jacobite curate, with a blunquite canny himself, he had o'er great a respect for the derbuss at one lug and a duck-gun at the other. As to evil one to force his way into his company. He grew Gilbert, whether he was thrown into the Thrum, or made bolder after a while. to dive after the bells of Brinkburn, or slept with the fairies of Fawdon, or made his bed with the seven sleepers at Sewen Shields, or was coiled up with the Laidley-worm of Spindleston Heugh, nabody ever knew. His wealth was wasted by a profligate nephew, and naething was left of him but a lump of limestone, falsely calling itself marble, that's stuck up in the kirk at Ancram, and is cut all over with lies about Mr. Gilbert Scott's 'pious prayerfulness,' godly course,' and his 'mysterious exit from a world of woe.'"

"If the gloamin' fell in while Cuthbert was on his wanderings, he would put himself to wonderful speed to make home before the darkening. He would run a bit, and stand a bit, and listen and look round under his eyelashes, and then off again like a leather-plater, as if the whistling of the wind under his wig had feared him. Then he would stand still again, and glowr up at the trees, or pick up a stick or a stone and talk to it as if it could understand him, and then listen for its answer with a foolish stare just like the young Rector o' Rothbury, that's little better than a fool, though his father was an archbishop. He's daft about the ribs of the earth and the families of the rocks, while he cares as little as the stones themselves about the families o' the poor, or the ribs of their bairns. It's a fine thing to be a scholar, but the auld warld priests wore the gown of humility; pride came in with a false speech about ministers, and preaching to the poor; but where's Hexham Abbey ?"

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Well, Joe, but where was Hexham Abbey in the '15? Ah, you're right, lad, to call me back to my story, but it was long after the rising that they called the rebellion of '15 before Cuthbert Myddleton went wrong. He died before the '45, and that's about fourscore years sin'syne; but my mother's father kenned Cuthbert Myddleton, and his half sister was at his wedding. He was an old man, my grandfather, when I was born, and all that I can mind about him is that he was sore vexed because I wadna' kiss him when I got on my first breeches. I was proud, and his beard was thorny."

Well, Joe?

"That wedding was the talk of the country-side. In them days Cuthbert Myddleton would have been first at Beefron' when the horn sounded, and although the Scotch raids were long gane bye, the borders were not quiet in them days. A wrestling-match, or a shooting, or a tryst, or a feast seldom ended without a fratch or a fray; and any holiday sport would hae called Cuthbert Myddleton up to Castleton one way, or even to Eldon another, for it was a great delight to him to break a staff over a Scotchman's head, as his fathers had done before him. He had never crossed the Carterbrae, nor hardly ever saw a Scotchman, till warmed with whisky, and the same word served him for Scotchman' and 'quarrel.' We all feel a little of that spirit yet, in spite of the union they should keep their own side of the border."

But now, Joe, both sides of the border are

* One who fights against his fa'e.

Well, Joe-and Mary Myddleton ?

"There never was a bonnier lass, nor a better, and oh, how Cuthbert thrived, and what lovely bairns she bore him, and how he worked his farm, and looked to his lands, and gave up feasts and hoppins, and wrastled no more, nor ever left his home for a fray; nor even tackled the Scotch pedlar for coming to show Mary his pack of silks and sattins and all manner of fineries. But, oh, that Scotch pedlar! Why did Myddleton think for a minute that anything but guile could come out of the mouth of a Scotchman? This sneaking Sawney found out poor Cuthbert's kittle bane, his weak point: he provoked him with pictures of his young neighbours mounted and armed for King James, and only waiting for the Earl of Der wentwater and young Mr. Ratcliffe, to turn out against the Whig rats that had swarmed over from Holland and Hanover, and kept down all true English blood and all gentle breeding, and sent up tar-barrels and sugar-hogsheads, and all the traffick and trash of the kingdom to the parliament, to make laws about Church and State, while the Church was defiled, and the State, that's the King, was banished."

- Joe!

"Yes, 'Jacobite Joe,' and I dinna care who calls me so. I don't know, but I would have done as Myddleton did if I had been played upon as he was by that pedlar. He made Cuthbert carry notes and letters, some to the Earl (but mair to my lady), from the great southern lords and the great northern chiefs; and the Fosters and the Fenwickes and the Featherstons, and the Riddells and the Reeds and the Ridleys turned out, and--but ye can read all about that in the books."