The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 22: Juvenilia and Other PapersStevenson, Robert Louis
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The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 22: Juvenilia and Other Papers
Stevenson, Robert Louis
English literature -- 19th century
Abercrummie has told you enough of the Tolbooth; but, as a bit of
spelling, this inscription on the Tolbooth bell seems too delicious to
withhold: "This bell is founded at Maiboll Bi Danel Geli, a Frenchman,
the 6th November 1696, Bi appointment of the heritors of the parish of
Maiyboll." The Castle deserves more notice. It is a large and shapely
tower, plain from the ground upward, but with a zone of ornamentation
running about the top. In a general way this adornment is perched on the
very summit of the chimney-stacks; but there is one corner more
elaborate than the rest. A very heavy string-course runs round the upper
story, and just above this, facing up the street, the tower carries a
small oriel window, fluted and corbelled and carved about with stone
heads. It is so ornate it has somewhat the air of a shrine. And it was,
indeed, the casket of a very precious jewel, for in the room to which it
gives light lay, for long years, the heroine of the sweet old ballad of
"Johnnie Faa"--she who, at the call of the gipsies' songs, "came
tripping down the stair, and all her maids before her." Some people say
the ballad has no basis in fact, and have written, I believe,
unanswerable papers to the proof. But in the face of all that, the very
look of that high oriel window convinces the imagination, and we enter
into all the sorrows of the imprisoned dame. We conceive the burthen of
the long, lack-lustre days, when she leaned her sick head against the
mullions, and saw the burghers loafing in Maybole High Street, and the
children at play, and ruffling gallants riding by from hunt or foray. We
conceive the passion of odd moments, when the wind threw up to her some
snatch of song, and her heart grew hot within her, and her eyes
overflowed at the memory of the past. And even if the tale be not true
of this or that lady, or this or that old tower, it is true in the
essence of all men and women: for all of us, some time or other, hear
the gipsies singing; over all of us is the glamour cast. Some resist and
sit resolutely by the fire. Most go and are brought back again, like
Lady Cassilis. A few, of the tribe of Waring, go and are seen no more;
only now and again, at springtime, when the gipsies' song is afloat in
the amethyst evening, we can catch their voices in the glee.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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