I had often heard the song before, and always with lively delight; for Bessie had a sweet voice--at least I thought so. But now, though her voice was still sweet, I found in its melody an indescribable sadness. Sometimes, preoccupied with her work, she sang the refrain very low, very lingeringly: "a long time ago," came like the saddest cadence of a funeral hymn. She passed into another ballad. Tabby Aykroyd going to the Parsonage when the motherless Charlotte Brontë was but nine, Charlotte seems to have been drawn to look upon her as a new-found friend, and afterwards she idealized those memories associated with her. It is noticeable she had been impressed in childhood by her singing and the sympathetic sweetness of her voice. There is a world of meaning--a gracious waiving aside of qualifying fact in the sentence, "Bessie had a sweet voice--at least I thought so." Charlotte was fond of Scottish ballads, and in _Villette_, Chapter XXV., she identifies herself in her phase as Paulina (see my further reference to this phase of Charlotte Brontë) with a a love for a Scottish song. With Tabitha Aykroyd she loved to associate the singing of her favourite ballads, as we have seen in her reference to the songs of Tabitha in her phases as Bessie of _Jane Eyre_ and Mrs. Dean of _Wuthering Heights_. And so it is we find Mrs. Dean telling us in Chapter IX. of _Wuthering Heights_, 'I was rocking Hareton on my knee, and humming a song that began:-- "It was far in the night and the bairnies grat, The mither beneath the mools heard that."' Whether traits of Nancy Garrs or her sister, or Martha Brown, the other Brontë servants, contributed to Charlotte's portrayal is doubtful. I think they did not. We see in this chapter the original of Bessie of _Jane Eyre_ was certainly the original of Mrs. Dean of _Wuthering Heights_--Tabitha Aykroyd; and as Charlotte Brontë portrayed Mrs. Dean as an elderly woman servant, before she began _Jane Eyre_, we must decide the question of the real age of the original of Bessie by that fact. Confirming is the portrayal of the same character by Charlotte as the elderly Hannah in _Jane Eyre_. See my chapter on "The Rivers or Brontë Family."[25] Of "Dean" or Tabitha Aykroyd in the rôle of Hannah of the family "Jane" says:--"I had a feeling that she did not understand me, ... that she was prejudiced against me." Nevertheless she says to her: "You ... have been an honest and faithful servant, I will say so much for you." Much stress is placed by Tabitha Aykroyd, as Nelly Dean, and Bessie, on Charlotte Brontë's passionateness. Says Mrs. Dean of Catherine in _Wuthering Heights_: "The doctor had said that she would not bear crossing much, she ought to have her own way; and it was nothing less than murder in his eyes, for any one to presume to stand up and contradict her, ... serious threats of a fit ... often attended her rages."