FAMILY STORES. No. X.

BY THOMAS INGOLDSBY.

WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.

GRANDPAPA'S STORY-THE WITCHES FROLIC.

[Scene, the Snuggery" at Tappington.-Grandpapa in a high-backed, canebottomed elbow-chair of carved walnut-tree,dozing; his nose at an angle of forty-five degrees,-his thumbs slowly perform the rotatory motion described by lexicographers as "twiddling."-The "Hope of the family "astride on a walking-stick, with burnt-cork moustachios, and a pheasant's tail pinned in his cap, solaceth himself with martial music.-Roused by a strain of surpassing dissonance, Grandpapa loquitur.]

COME hither, come hither, my little boy, Ned!

Come hither unto my knee

I cannot away with that horrible din,
That sixpenny drum, and that trumpet of tin.
Oh, better to wander frank and free

Through the Fair of good Saint Bartlemy,
Than list to such awful minstrelsie.

Now lay, little Ned, those nuisances by,
And I'll rede ye a lay of Grammarye.

[Grandpapa riseth, yawneth like the crater of an extinct volcano, proceedeth slowly to the window, and apostrophizeth the Abbey in the distance.]

I love thy tower, Grey Ruin,

I joy thy form to see,
Though reft of all,

Cell, cloister, and hall,

Nothing is left save a tottering wall,
That, awfully grand and darky dull,
Threaten'd to fall and demolish my skull,
As, ages ago, I wander'd along

Careless thy grass-grown courts among,
In sky-blue jacket and trowsers laced,
The latter uncommonly short in the waist.
Thou art dearer to me, thou Ruin grey,
Than the Squire's verandah over the way,
And fairer, I ween,

The ivy sheen

That thy mouldering turret binds,

Than the Alderman's house about half a mile off,

With the green Venetian blinds.

Full many a tale would my Grandam tell,

In many a bygone day,

Of darksome deeds, which of old befell

In thee, thou Ruin grey !

And I the readiest ear would lend,

And stare like frighten'd pig;

While my Grandfather's hair would have stood up an end,
Had he not worn a wig.

One tale I remember of mickle dread

Now lithe and listen, my little boy, Ned!

Thou mayest have read, my little boy Ned,
Though thy mother thine idlesse blames,
In Doctor Goldsmith's history book,

Of a gentleman called King James,
In quilted doublet, and great breeches,
Who held in abhorrence tobacco and witches.

Well,-in King James's golden days,

For the days were golden then,

They could not be less, for good Queen, Bess

Had died aged threescore and ten,

And her days, we know,

Were all of them so ;

While the Court poets sung, and the Court gallants swore, That the days were as golden still as before.

Some people, tis true, a troublesome few,
Who historical points would unsettle,
Have lately thrown out a sort of a doubt
Of the genuine ring-of the metal ;

But who can believe to a monarch so wise
People would dare to tell a parcel of lies?

-Well, then, in good King James's days,
Golden or not does not matter a jot,

Yon ruin a sort of a roof had got;

For, though repairs lacking, its walls had been cracking Since Harry the Eighth sent its friars a-packing.

Though joist and floors,

And windows and doors,

Had all disappear'd, yet pillars by scores
Remain'd, and still propp'd up a ceiling or two;
While the belfry was almost as good as new;
You are not to suppose matters look'd just so
In the Ruin some two hundred years ago.

Just in that farthermost angle, where
You see the remains of a winding stair,
One turret especially high in air
Uprear'd its tall gaunt form.

As if defying the power of Fate, or
The hand of "Time the Innovator ;"
And though to the pitless storm

Its weaker brethren all around

Bowing, in ruin had strew'd the ground,
Alone it stood, while its fellows lay strew'd,
Like a four-bottle man in a company "screw'd,"
Not firm on his legs, but by no means subdued.

One night-twas in Sixteen hundred and six-
I like when I can, Ned, the date to fix,-
The month was May.
Though I can't well say

At this distance of time the particular day-
But oh! that night, that horrible night!

Folks ever afterwards said with affright

That they never had seen such a terrible sight.

The Sun had gone down fiery red,
And if that evening he laid his head
In Thetis's lap beneath the seas,

He must have scalded the goddess's knees.

He left behind him a lurid track

Of blood-red light upon clouds so black,

That Warren and Hunt, with the whole of their crew,
Could scarcely have given them a darker hue.

There came a shrill and whistling sound,
Above, beneath, beside, and around,

Yet leaf ne'er moved on tree!

So that some people thought old Beelzebub must
Have been lock'd out of doors, and was blowing the dust
From the pipe of his street-door key.

And then a hollow moaning blast

Came sounding more dismally still than the last,

And the lightning flash'd, and the thunder growl'd,

And louder and louder the tempest howl d,

And the rain came down in such sheets as would stagger a

Bard for a simile short of Niagara.

Rob Gilpin "was a citizen;"

But, though of some "renown,"

Of no great "credit" in his own,
Or any other town.]

He was a wild and roving lad,

For ever in the alehouse boozing,

Or romping, which is quite as bad,

With female friends of his own choosing.

And Rob this very day had made,

Not dreaming such a storm was brewing,

An assignation with Miss Slade,

Their trysting-place this same grey Ruin.

But Gertrude Slade became afraid,

And to keep her appointment unwilling,
When she spied the rain on her window-pane
In drops as big as a shilling;

She put off her hat and her mantle again,-
"He'll never expect me in all this rain!"

But little he-recks of the fears of the sex,

Or that maiden false to her tryst could be.
He had stood there a good half hour
Ere yet commenced that perilous shower,
Alone by the trysting-tree.

Robin looks east, Robin looks west,
But he sees not her whom he loves best;

Robin looks up, and Robin looks down,
But no one comes from the neighbouring town.

The storm came at last, loud roar'd the blast,
And the shades of evening fell thick and fast;
The tempest grew, and the straggling yew,
His leafy umbrella, was wet through and through.
Rob was half dead with cold and with fright,
When he spies in the ruins a twinkling light-
A hop, two skips, and a jump, and straight

Rob stands within that postern gate.

And there were gossips sitting there,
By one, by two, by three:

And oh! such awful music!-ne'er

Fell sounds so uncanny on mortal ear.

There were the tones of a dying man's groans,

Mix'd with the rattling of dead men's bones:

Had you heard the shricks, and the squeals, and the squeaks,

You'd not have forgotten the sound for weeks.