tion of the sybil among all the companies of the hundred ships which annually pass the Orkneys on their way to the different fishing stations within the Arctic circle; for these simple mariners, yielding to their superstitious bias and love of the marvellous, easily allowed, themselves to forget the numerous cases wherein Meg's foresight was proved at fault. A few years ago the reputed author of Waverley made an excursion to Orkney; and, whilst there, failed not, of course, to visit Fair-wind-Mag. It is said he spent the greater part of a day with her, listened to a description of the means she used to controul the hyperborean storms, and to a recital of the many wonders by which her power over nature had been signalized; and, in short, in her he found materials to constitute the ground-work of Norna's character-the enchan'tress of the Fitful-Head.

The originals of not a few of the heroic personages who figure in the Scottish Novels are individually known to the people of the north; and we have been assured, that several of the pictures which have most the air of caricatures, are, in reality, the most true and faithful to nature. Dominie Sampson, for instance, with all his extreme awkwardness and grotesque manners, does nothing more than represent the habits of a worthy minister in Scotland-a great lover of books and of mankind; generous and active in all works of benevolence-but at the same time entirely ignorant of the world and all its modes, and very much addicted to bawl out "prodigious!" We have even been told, that the change of a into i, in the first syllable of the name, gives the patronymic of the learned divine, who is immortalized under the feigned character of the pædagogue of Ellangowan,

Having occupied so much time in detailing the incidents connected with the real pirate, Gow, we had better not attempt any analysis of the history of the fictitious pirate, Captain Cleveland. The Novel itself will be very generally read; and those who do not read it would receive but an imperfect view of its merits from such a prescis and list of extracts as we have it now in our power to introduce. We therefore prefer to end our article as we began it, by producing from a work in Shetland, just published *, a few more of the materials employed by the "Great Unknown," as he is wont to be called, in the elucidation of Zetlandic manners.

In a chapter entitled, "Festivities of Shetland," Dr. Hibbert informs us that Papa Stour is the only island in the country where the ancient Norwegian amusement of the

* A Description of the Shetland Isles, &c. by Dr. Hibbert, to be noticed at length in a subsequent Number.

sword dance has been preserved, and where it still continues in Thule to beguile the tediousness of a long winter's evening. At the shortest day, the sun is not more than five hours and a quarter above the horizon. To dissipate, therefore, the graver phantoms of the night, the careless Shetlander spends, in the conviviality of an assembled party, the hard earnings which he has received for his summer's labours on the seas of Shetland, and it is then that he invokes the spirit of conviviality,

"Whose beauty gilds the more than midnight darkness, And makes it grateful as the dawn of day."

When the ancient Udaller gave an entertainment, it was open to the whole country; but strangers from the south, with more rigid notions of economy, corrected the generous custom, by rendering such feasts liable to the scrutinizing influence of the Ranzelman or bailiff, who was empowered to levy a fine to the amount of forty shillings Scots upon any one who came to feasts uninvited. Marriages also, which are chiefly contracted during the winter, serve to draw together a large party, who, not many years ago, used to meet on the night before the solemnity took place. It was then usual for the bridegroom to have his feet formally washed in ́ water by his men, though in wealthy houses wine was used for the purpose. A ring was thrown into the tub-a scramble for it ensued, the finder being the person who would be first married. On the eve before the marriage the bride and bridegroom were not allowed to sleep under the same roof; and on the wedding-night the bridegroom's men endeavoured to steal the bride from her maidens, and a similar design on the bridegroom was made by the bride's maids-kisses being the usual forfeiture exacted from the negligent party. Last of all took place the throwing of the stocking, and many other pretty sorceries." The bride, when in bed, threw the stocking of her right foot over her left shoulder; and the individual on whom it fell, was predicted to be the first who should be married. Many of these customs are, however, at the present day much laid aside; but there is a sport still retained on occasions of festivity that deserves particular notice.

A martial dance was practised by many early nations, as by the Germans and the Gauls; it was also known to the Curetes or priests of Cybele. Olaus Magnus, in his account of the manners of the Norsemen, describes an ancient military dance as being common to them, which from the illustration he has given of it in a plate, seems to have been achieved by six persons. It was accompanied by a pipe and song-the music being at first slow and gradually increasing in

celerity. The dancers held their swords, which were sheathed, in an erect position-they thence danced a triple round-released their blades from the scabbards-held them erectrepeated the triple round-grasped the hilts and points of each others' swords, and extending them moved gently round -changed their order, and threw themselves into the figure of a hexagon, named a rose. They again, by drawing back and raising their swords, destroyed the figure which they had made, in order that over the head of each other a four-squared rose might be formed. Lastly, they forcibly rattled together the sides of their swords, and by a retrograde movement ended their sport.

2

The revels at Burgh Westra, on the Eve of the Festival of St. John, described with so much spirit in the second volume of the Pirate, are evidently an imitation of the martial dance practised by the ancient Zetlanders. The mask, too, which follows the dance, is founded on usages equally well known; and although the pagan allusions of the Norsemen are now superseded by a dramatic romance, drawn from monkish legends, the actual pomp and pageantry of the scene remain still unchanged. The seven champions of Christendom occupy the arena formerly set apart for the sea-gods of Scandinavia; but the music which announces their approach and celebrates their triumphs, is the same Norse melody, so long sacred to the divinities of the rocks, and to those of the troubled sea which washes their base.

The sword dance of the Champions at John's Mass calls forth the utmost exertions of agility and address, which are only relieved by the occasional spouting of a little indifferent poetry, in praise of their own exploits. This done, the guisards are usually announced. "A number of men," says Dr. Hibbert, "enter the room dressed in a fantastic manner, their inner clothes being concealed by a shirt as a surtout, which is confined at the waist-band by a short petticoat formed of loose straw, that reaches to the knee. The whole are under the controul of a director named a scudler, who is distinguished from his comrades by a very high straw cap, the top of which is ornamented with ribbons," &c.

The great delight, however, of the ancient Udaller's convivial hours, was in the recitation of Norwegian ballads: and in Shetland, as elsewhere, the exploits and misfortunes of ancestry were kept in remembrance by a class of men, who, without the aid of letters, transmitted from generation to generation a series of rude rhymes, which, on the yearly festival, or the more frequent wassail, pleased the ears of the maudlin chief, and kindled the enthusiasm of his savage dependents. In 1774, Mr. Low, that industrious tourist,

got into his possession what may be called the lay of the last minstrel of Hialtland, and which is still preserved in the Advocate's library of Edinburgh: and writing to a friend at the time, he says, "I wish you would try if Dr. Percy could make any thing of it. If you have no copy I shall send an exact one, though I cannot depend on the orthography, as I took it from the mouth of an honest countryman, who could neither read nor write, but had the most retentive memory I ever heard of. He, I am afraid, is by this time dead, as he was then old and decayed; but when I saw him, he was so much pleased with my curiosity-and now and then a dram of gin-that he recited and sang the whole day."

We have copied the above particulars chiefly with the view of shewing how true to antiquarian usage and tradition the Author of Waverley constructs his fables and delineates his characters. In regard to dates, indeed, and names, and even events, he uses a degree of freedom which has exposed him, as an historical romancer, to a severity of criticism not altogether undeserved: but, as to manners, opinions, and all those minute circumstances which constitute what may be called the costume of the mind, at a certain time and place, his writings are extremely correct; holding up to us a mirror in which we may peruse the lineaments of ages long gone by, and of which the general historian exhibits only the vague outline; the skeleton without the accompaniment of muscular motion or the colouring of blood; the form without the expression; the human species without one trait of personal individuality. As a farther proof of the author's attention to the actual habits of the people whom he describes, we quote from Hibbert the following passage illustrative of the rapacious and cruel dispositions of the Shetlanders, in regard to ships wrecked on their coasts.

"From Owzie Firth I ascended a high promontory, named the Neing of Bremdaster, beset with dangerous islets and stucks which have too often proved fatal to vessels that have been driven on this insidious shore. The rapacity exercised on such occasions by the matives of this wild district, has often been reprobated. Earl Pattrick Stewart issued forth an edict, the most cruel that perhaps ever entered into the code of any despot, imposing a personal punishment and a fine, the amount of which depended on his own pleasure, upon any one who should be found giving relief to vessels distressed by tempest. It is by no means improbable that so barbarous an edict, thus publicly proclaimed, should have been one of the first causes that produced that insensibility to the crime of stealing from a wreck which has been transmitted through successive generations to the present sons of Thule. Not long before I visited Owzie Firth, a vessel was stranded in the vicinity. The

vultures of the coast immediately flocked to the spot; the master loudly remonstrated against the object of the visit, and maintained that the vessel could be got off: the Shetlanders, on the contrary, as a justification for their meditated plunder, asserted that she came under their peculiar definition of a wreck. A scuffle ensued; when the captain overpowered with numbers was threatened with death, if he opposed the views of the savage and rapacious multitude by whom he was surrounded. But if the pillage from vessels driven on these shores be reconciled to a Shetlander's conscience as a God-send, or, if pilfering of sheep out of a scathold be considered by him as not belonging to the prohibition contained in the eighth article of the Decalogue, it would be an injustice to his character not to state that against other temptations to dishonesty, he is proof to a remarkable degree*. It is in fact from the earliest period of youth that the Shetlander is taught to regard an attack upon a wreck as no less commendable than was piracy to the ancient Scandinavian sea-kings, one of whom has by a northern Scauld been thus lauded:

"At twelve years began

The king to plunder."

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The character and exploits of Bryce Snailsfoot, in the "Pirate," are therefore perfectly natural. The whole scene at the Roust of Sumburgh, disgusting and inhuman as it must appear, is strictly confined within the limits of historical truth; and the " folk of Jarlshof," rapacious and bigoted in the extreme, exhibit, we are sorry to say, only a fair specimen of all the inhabitants of Hialtland. They," said the pedlar, will make clean wark; they are ken'd for that far and wide: they winna leave the value of a rotten ratlin; and whats' waur, there is na ane o' them has mense or sense enough to give thanks for the mercies when they have gotten them. There is the auld Ranzelman, Neil Ronaldson, that canna walk a mile to hear the minister, but he will hirple ten if he hears of a ship embayed."

The descriptions, in the "Pirate," of the scenery and localities of Shetland, are admirably correct, and graphically minute. We have compared them not only with Daniel's “Views" of that country, just published, but also with Dr. Hibbert's letter-press details of the same wild region, and have found them astonishingly faithful. "From SumburghHead we had a view of what is named the Roast,-this being a term of Scandinavian origin, used to signify a strong tumultuous current, occasioned by the meeting of rapid tides.

*Not two miles from Owzie Firth, the contents of my trunks, owing to the loss of my keys, were indiscriminately exposed, in a small house, to more than a score of eyes, for several days together, but I was perfectly easy with regard to the safety of my property: nor was I in this, or any other instance of the like Lind, deceived in the confidence I placed in the cottagers of Shetland,”