Morning journal and courier., 1891-01-31

aic l1cIc SISaluEcS OI oudhtSpcaIc IdnCN until you find in the musty records of old Inverness that they once walked its streets with all of your own passion, hope, ambi- tion; and until you have stood on Tomna- haurich, by the Ness side, you have never really known Hugh Miller, stone-mason, great-heart and sage. Despite Dr. John sons matchless apostrophe to Iona, the story of Columb's saintly isle, of the Christian enlightenment emanating from it to the whole British Isles and the great CT part of Europe, when nearly all the scenes lighted by the first fires of apostol- ic sacrifice had partially relapsed into su- perstitious barbarism, is as dreamful as the legends of the Holy Grail, until you have stood among the majestic ruins of Iona and wandered along its ''Straid- -na- Marbh," where lie countless chiefs, friars, | abbots and kings. After you have passed | an hour in the ancient churchyard of GreyfrIars, in Edinburgh, you will begin to realize who were the Covenanters of | Scotland, and what they endured for their | consciences' sake. When you have come | to the ruins of Lochmaben, Robert the Bruce, patriot king and warrior, first leaves the mists of legend and tradition, and welcomes you as man of flesh and blood to his old home by the sedgy lake. | Melrose, Dryburgh and all the grand mo- nastic structure of the sunny, murmurous Tweed are poets phantasms until you wander among their ruined cloisters and touch with your own hands the brave old stones of their majestic arches Scott. the "Ettrick Shepherd" Carlyle, even | Burns himself, are half ideal until you have stood by the Ettrick and Narrow, sadly left the princely Abbotsford, shud- dered at the dolorous dearth and meanness | of Carlyle's boyhood home at Ecclefechan. | and haa ar1 with .l
 lodious songs of the Nth and the Doom. | If this is true of Ireland and Scotland, how infinitely more impressive is this iden- | tifcation to the average American pilgrim l in England, the mother-land of our own race and tongue. \ mighty volume, and a sweet and tender one withal, could be made, relegating apprrent realities to their home in myth-land, and beckoning from the realms of legend and tradition the ac- tual beings whom imagery first swept | from reality, and whom successive centu. ries of poetic fancy, shared alike by us | from childhood to manhood, have placed | further and further behind the ever-loved | veilings of mystery and song. No two characters in the semi-mythology of Bri. | tain are better illustrations than those oi King Arthur and Robin Hood. Antitypes | as they were and are. the one the embodi. ment of the loftiest and noblest qualities in ruler and man, the other, jocund Anar
 chist and Puckish freebooter and 'level. Ter" of his time, both are objects of equal
 though unlike, devotion not only in the literature of centuries, but in the breasts of millions who speak the English tongue. | The most curious thing about these two characters is that the least aids to identif. cation are found among the high-minded and learned. Literature universally places them in shadow-land. But go where you may among the>English lowly, King Ar. | thur is really there: Robin Hood with his faithful Little John, Friar Tuck and their hundred archers bold, are ever a goodly company, helpful unconscious ethical | couuterpoise, it has sometimes seemed to | me, where burdens and impositions oi | caste and condition are most grieyous and sore to abide. A few years of wandering among the British lowly, more than all reading and study, have convinced m, | that both King Arthur and Robin Hood | once really existed and lived much tn,
 same manner of lives as the song and bal
 lad makers, altogether responsible fol
 their legendary character, have shadowed
 forth. can take you into thousands oi
 cabins in Devonshire, Cornwall and il
 Brittany-for King Arthur is even more { god to the Britons than to the West oi | England Armorican Celts-where books |
 ture ever came: where history of clan and
 sept have been preserved from father tc
 son, where the Arthurian legends live
 more bright and glowing than in all the
 printed tales of the Round Table Thes.
 absolutely booklcss folk will take you tC
 the very landing-place of King Uther
 show you the real remains of the twir
 castles Tintagel and Terrabil: relate how
 Uther Pendragon besieged the Duke O
 Cornwall, slew him, and the same day
 wed his widow, Ygrayne, to whom thl
 child, Arthur, was born, and reared by
 the enchanter, Merlin, under good Sir Ec
 tors care, who restored to him the king
 dom of Cornwall on Pendragon's death
 how the noble King Arthur instituted thu
 Order of Knights of the Round Table
 whose saintly acts in the service of Cox
 and man, until they fell into sin, wen
 deeds good and glory; how Arthur love-
 only and wed Guinevere, betrayed b,
 Launcelot; and, at last, receiving hi
 death-wound in battle with his rebellion nephew's forces at Camelford (which tn poets make Camelot), Arthur bade the Joy al knight, Sir Bedever, carry him to Dog mare Pool, fling his sword Excalibu
 therein, when a boat, rowed by thre queens appeared. Into this Arthur wa lifted and borne away to the island-vale O
 
 s healed. These folk say, and believe, tha Arthur is still in fairy-land: that his spiri often returns in the guise of a bird. tn : enough, lowering about the old scene 5 with pathetic murmurings: and that h
 will surely "come again."
 , | wearing the white flower of blameless life, to reign as a king should and might owe his beloved England. Literature neve . provided an hundred thousand bookles ' folk with this. It remains, because in
 has been preserved, without books, fade
 less actuality.
 In like manner Robin Hoods land bt : comes the whole of England. Piercin 6 their armor of sodden reserve, you wi
 find that the sober English peasant an
 the grave English workman have mind full enough of chivalry and romance e Robin Hood is immortal with these, b
 cause, as a ''leveller" of rank and clas : he represents an undefinable yet certai
 power to buffet the church and the nobil ty. He is rescuer of maids in distrei t and men in duress. He embodies the LII l. conscious vet universal leaning toward
 Communism among the English lowl,
 Above all, he is the luminous type of tn > dearest thing to every lowly Briton's hear ], flair play" whether in frolic, freebootir c or fight Fairly defined, Robin Hood . land comprises the shires of Nottingha 's and Lincoln, with the southern half { It Yorkshire. There is not a ploughmal e forester, gamekeeper, and, would almo r. venture to say, any human being amor 10 the lowly, outside the factories, in th IF portion of England, who has not a clear ,- conception of the life, character and e l., ploits of the merry outlaw than all bool D. could give. As is well known, the man i- script and old-record researches by | , Rev Joseph Hunter, an assistant keep rr' of the public records of England, ma ', public in 1852. placed fairly within | h. domain of authentic history the facts co ,e corning the actual existence and career ,3 Robin Hood. He was born about l2g n His family were of some station and ses
 ed at Wakefield. With many others b., became an outlaw from having espous
 the cause of the unfortunate Earl of La ve caster. He retreated with a hundred
 more of his comrades to the depths is Sherwood forest, not a score of miles fro m his birthplace. By their unequaled sk az in archery; goddess pranks with lords ai be bishops; robberies of the high 10 sha .e- with the lowly; and their adequate wits a- all exegenciea; they secured the loyalty "a the peasantry roundabout and put to ds he ance the entire forces of the crown.
 in this iuncture King Edward wisely D ,t- doned Robin Hood, giving him service ". one of the ''valets, pOrtsurs de la cha d, bre" in the royal household. Here he IT. mained for more than year; to which ay isting vouchers for his payment ate ot But the hunger for the greenwood was ed strong. Begging the king for permissi UT to visit the old chapel st Barnsdale, it V A granted 'Efor a s'ennighf" Having ol