THE LEGEND

OF

CUDDY BELL

AND

NANNY OGLE.

(MIT FOR D.)

"Tall, like the poplar, was his size,
Green, green his waistcoat was, as leeks,
Red, red as beet-root, were his eyes,
Pale, pale as turnips, were his cheeks!"

COLMAN.

The Legend of Cuddy Bell.

THE following Legend is illustrative of the popular opinions and apprehensions that pervaded the minds of almost all classes of society during the early and middle ages; namely, a firm belief in ghosts, hobgoblins, and the whole tribe of white spirits and black, blue spirits and grey, that at will could assume all forms, dilated or condensed, bright or obscure, as the caprice of the moment influenced their spiritual choice. In those times it was customary, during "the piping times of peace," for squires, pages, and not unfrequently grooms and the other retainers that formed the dramatis personæ of a baron's retinue, to assemble around the log-fire blazing in the great hall of the castle, after the sports and exercises of the day were ended; and, to while away the tedious hours that intervened between even-fall and night's cheerless noon, they had recourse to story-telling. Local romances, and the most terrific traditionary tales peculiar to the neighbourhood, were eagerly sought after, and attentively listened to, till dread "caused each particular hair to stand erect" upon the heads of the fear-stricken auditors, who would start, even at their own elongated shadows dancing among the rusted swords and lances, stags' horns, and other trophies of the chase, that adorned the vacant spaces

K

of the smoke-dyed walls of the spacious apartments. Meanwhile the noble flagon and his trusty attendant -yclept Black Jack-were in constant circulation. Yet such are the characteristics that mark an untutored people, that these men in real difficulties evinced an unusual degree of courage and chivalrous enterprise. If the bugle sounded a foray o'er the Border, or announced the approach of the foemen, they hastily sped to the place of rendezvous; and, regardless of danger and reckless of life, they would grapple the enemy with the same alacrity and enthusiasm as evinced by schoolboys on the projected despoliation of a hornet's nest, or the dispersion of predatory rooks from the harvest fields of the husbandman.

The pusillanimous yet valiant Cuddy has a literary companion possessing an analogous character, in the attendant on the Count in Lodoiska, who quaintly observed, when his master ridiculed him for his lack of valour, "I can fight the devil by day-light, but a ghost in the dark is quite a different thing."

'The STANNERS,' mentioned in p. 112, are portions of ground on the margin of the Wansbeck, near to Morpeth. The appellation STANNERS is used provincially to denote those small stones and gravel within the channel of a river, which are occasionally left dry. The word STANNERS is derived from the Gothic STENOER, composed of STEN, a stone, and OER, gravel.

THE

LEGEND OF CUDDY BELL.

IN days of yore, before the birth of order,
When Rapine was the warden of the Border;
When will was law,-craft, wisdom,-and strength,

right,

And the best plea for doing wrong was might!
Those good old times the poets love to paint,
When whip-cord and cold water made a saint,
And turbulence a hero; when the maid
Stabbed her betrayer-if she was betrayed.
Or, if the gentle suitor begged her love,
She sent him to the wars his faith to prove ;
When all the honeyed words the lover spoke
Were far less moving than the heads he broke.
Then if he died, or stayed away too long,
The minstrels told his story in a song ;
And the fair lady strove her grief to smother
For one true love-by wedding to another!

Ay! these were times indeed-when if a fair one
Had twenty lovers, yet she could not spare one,
But set them in a chamber all together,
Or in the yard (according to the weather);