The Lee County journal. (Leesburg, Ga.) 1904-19??, 1907-09-20
4 HAMPSHIRE PAGEANT.
How Ronsey Has Celebrated thousand
Years Circuit.

the stage, with the monarch giving
counsel to his son and receiving the
Queen and a group Of princesses, and
the aged Bishop Of Winchester ac-
knowledging gratefully the gift to
the church, while his attendants are
singing a Latin chant. The second is
more dramatic, for it recites the
HAMPSHIRE variant of Tristram and
Isolde, with the Kings messenger
telling in love with the fair Elfrida
instead of pressing the royal suit and
being murdered for his treachery
with the rebuilding of the abbey at
the Bishops suggestion in eXpiaticn Of
the crime. This incident occurred at
Wherwell, in the upper Test valley
but is utilized for the Romsey pag-
ant. The third episode is more spir-
tied still, for it portrays the process
sion Of the abbess and nuns, with
crowd of villagers behind them, to
Shrine outside the convent, where a
saint appears with golden wings and
promises them protection, and super
natural help is needed; for, while
they are kneeiing in their litany, the
Danes are on the river in their boats
and emerging from the woods set fire
to the church before the townspeople
can rally and beat them back Next
comes the wooing Of Princess Matilda,
a professed nun eager to escape from
the convent garden, and when the
Norman king had glanced wrathfully
at the cloister walls and departed for
his fatal chase in the New Forest,
his brother meets her and makes
love to her, pausing only when the
charcoal burners cart with the dead
monarch's body covered with broken
is driven across the meadow. History
is closely repeated here, for the an
Gent road from the New Forest
crossed this open air theatre, and the
driver Of the cart is another Purkiss-
a descendant Of the charcoal burner
of the Red Kings time.
The history of Romsey is brought
down to 100 with the abduction Of
the Abbess Mary by Matthew of Al
sace-another fine tableau with pic
turesque grouping Of nuns soldiers
and villagers. The deposition of the
Abbess Elizabeth by the Bishop and
her subsequent reelection by the
nuns are the themes Of the sixth ep-
isolde With the seventh the record
is carried into the sixteenth century,
when the abbey was suppressed by
the kings commissioner and the
property purchaser by the vicar and
townsfolk Modern history opens
sluggishly with a civic function-the
incorporation of the borough by
James l., and then comes a stirring
fight of the Civil war, with the post
ing of the advance guard Of the Roy
alists at Romsey, the dicing and rev
elry of the troopers by their camp
fire and the stealthy approach Of the
Puritan cavalry and successful raid
upon the enemy's camp. This is fol
lowed by a moving scene-the passage
OF King Charles l. as a prisoner
through the town, on his way to the
scaffold in Whitehall, with a little
girl Offering him a basket of roses as
he goes on his sorrowful way. The
final episode commentaries the Res
toration of Charles II. and closes with
a thanksgiving anthem from the an
Gent abbey, and then there is a splen-
did tableau-the march of all the per-
across and around the broad
lawn fringed with woods-circling
files of monks, nuns, ecclesiastics, war
riors, courtiers, prineesses, sovereigns
and villagers, with splendid blends of
color under the duh gray sky and the
broad river and water meadows be-
yond with their overhanging foliage.
1t is glorious spectacle, on the
memory of which ancient Romsey can
live TRANQUILITY for another thousand
years
This outline Of the three hours en-
conveys only an made
quate impression Of the beauty of
the pageant plan in Mr.. Ashley's
park and of the combination of arts
tic energies which has made it so eff
fective. For over a year the prepa-
rations for it have been in progress.
The vicar of the abbey and the Rev
Canon Shrine have been writing the
songs and dialogue; the costumes
have ben designated with painstaking
care and made in the town; the
Shields armlets and helmets have
been turned out by metal workers in
a mission club; the music has been
by Mr. Tours and the or
ganist of the parish choir; the dances
have been planned by Mrs. Benson,
and rehearsals of actors, singers and
musicians have bpen carried on for