thirty inches or so in height, and furnished with thirty string holes. In front of the upper arm was the crowned heart (the Douglas cognisance), formed of precious stones, and surrounded by minute inlaying of mother-of-pearl.
"I thank you, child, for your readiness," said the abbot, patting her pretty shoulder, "and in my turn, though I may not sing now at my years, I shall tell you a legend of the olden time, which was told me by an aged monk of Tongland, now asleep with his fathers in the abbey kirkyard."
"A bribe, my lord, to make me hasten with my song," said Murielle, smiling in the old man's face.
"And to make it as brief as possible," added the impatient Margaret.
"Say not so, countess," said the abbot, "we will not tire readily of Lady Murielle's voice."
"A churchman turned a gallant in his old age!"
"Your sister is fortunate, lady, in the best gifts of heaven," continued the abbot, "and must have been born—"
"Under a fortunate star, you would say?"
"Yes, countess, if such things exist."
"Nay," said Murielle, laughing, "I had a kind fairy for a godmother, like the good princesses of the old romance."
Then in the chaunting cadence adopted by the singers of those days, she sang the four-and-thirty verses of the old ballad of "Sir Hugh le Blonde," a knight of the Mearns—but with these we will not inflict the reader.
It told of how the subtile Rodinghame made love to a fair coquette, who was queen of Scotland; and how, when she repelled him, in revenge he put a leper man in her bower chamber. Then came the proud and jealous king, who, on finding him in such a place, ordered the queen to be burned at a stake, unless she could find a champion to do battle with Rodinghame, her traducer, but such was the terror of his prowess that none appeared; the day of doom came; the hapless queen was bound to a stake, and the torch was about to be applied, when Sir Hugh le Blonde, in his armour, sprang forward, and lifted the gage of Rodinghame.
They fought long and desperately, but Sir Hugh slew the accuser, after forcing him to confess his treachery. Thus the queen was restored once more to favour and honour, to the joy of her husband and all his court.
In gratitude to her preserver,
Then said the queen unto the king,
"Arbuthnot's near the sea;
Oh yield it to the northern knight
Who fought this day for me!"
"Yes," said our king, "and thou, Sir Knight,
Come, quaff this cann of wine;
Arbuthnot's but a baronie,
We'll to it Fordoun join."
Thus the descendants of Sir Hugh became lords of Arbuthnot and Fordoun; the sword with which he defended the queen was long preserved by the viscounts of his family, and his helmet was hung in the church of Garvoch, which, in 1282, he bestowed upon the monks of Arbroath for the safety of his soul, and in memory of his victory.
"How like you the song?" asked Abercorn of the countess.
"Well," she replied, with a dark smile; "because it acts as bird-lime."
"Bird-lime," said he, with a perplexed smile; "how?"
"For the king's popinjay," replied the countess, waving her fan towards Sir Patrick Gray; but the ballad was suited to the fashion and spirit of the age, and as Murielle's voice was soft and low, it mingled sweetly with the rippling notes of her little harp.
In the olden time, by ballads and stories the nights were usually passed before bed-time; and thus, after some well-bred compliments had been uttered on her performance, Murielle relinquished her harp to Sir Patrick (who achieved one more pressure of a pretty hand), and turned to claim from her venerable friend the fulfilment of his promise.
"My story," said the abbot, smoothing his cassock over his ample paunch, "relates to a time when the Spirit of Evil, he whom I hope to turn one day to a spirit of goodness and purity (here the earl gave a sigh of impatience), had more power in the land even than he hath now. Yet he was conquered and put to flight by our blessed apostle St. Andrew; and now I shall proceed to show you how the cross on which the latter was martyred became the symbol of the Scottish nation, and why it has been borne on our breasts and on our banners in many a righteous battle."
"'Tis well, Lord Abbot," said Earl James the Gross, bluntly; "I like your ending better than your beginning, which savoured somewhat of a sermon, and the night waxes apace."
Then the abbot related the following miraculous story, which we give more correctly than it will be found in the Bollandists, in the "History of the Blessed Regulus," which was written at St. Andrew's in 1140, in the "Golden Legend," or even in the old Gothic "Legenda Sanctorum, post Longobardicam Historiam," because we had it from the writings of the abbot himself.
CHAPTER VII.
THE LEGEND OF ST. ANDREW'S CROSS.
Some seek the Edens of the east,
Some Carrib isles explore;
The forests of the far-off west,
And Afric's savage shore.
Still charms of native speech and spot, And native springs for aye, Will band like brothers Scot with Scot Upon St. Andrew's day!—Scottish Song.
In the year 370, St. Regulus, or Rule, a holy Greek monk, who dwelt in Petræa, a city of Achaia, and who had preserved in secret the reliques of St. Andrew the apostle and martyr, was strangely warned by a vision, which was repeated three nights in succession, to secure them from the Emperor Constantius, who was coming to deprive him of his charge, and Regulus was commanded to take them elsewhere.
A deep and melodious voice, that seemed to come from afar, desired him to go to the shrine wherein the reliques lay, to take therefrom an arm, three fingers of the right hand, a tooth, and a kneebone; these he was carefully to preserve, and to convey into a distant land in the west, "a region situated in the uttermost part of the world."
After the third vision St. Regulus obeyed.
He placed the reliques in a box, and embarked in a small ship, taking with him Damianus a priest, and Gelasius and Tubaculus, two deacons, eight hermits, and three devoted virgins.
After great toil and suffering, and after encountering many storms, they passed Melita, where, as the Scripture tells us, St. Paul had been of old, thence between the Pillars of Hercules, along the coasts of Gaul and Celt-iberia; and, after traversing the sea of Almainie, were cast on a bleak and rocky promontary of Caledonia, near where now the spires of the fair and stately city of St. Andrew form a landmark to the mariner.
Then the coast was wild and desolate, and was named by the painted Picts, who dwelt there, Muick-rhos, or "peninsula of fierce boars."
Wild woods, pathless and dense, covered it, and a stormy sea beat drearily on its rocky shore.
But these pilgrims having now reached, as they thought, "the uttermost part of the world," built their cells, and began to preach and baptize, uniting their labours with those who had landed elsewhere on Scottish ground, and so, in the fulness of time, that peninsula became a bishopric.
In the beginning of the ninth century, Adrian, a holy man, became first bishop of this see of St. Andrews, where in days, then long passed away, St. Regulus and his kuldees had founded a cell dedicated to the Holy Virgin, about a bowshot westward from the shore, upon a sea-weedy rock named unto this day, Our Lady's Craig. But no vestige of the edifice remains, and the wild waves of the German Sea sweep over it with every rising tide.
There, in his own chapel, did St. Regulus serve God devoutly for two-and-thirty years, and there also