Stories from History (eBook)

CHAPTER I.

EARLY BRITAIN.—TRADITIONS.—JULIUS CÆSAR.—THE BARDS AND MINSTRELS.—KING LUD HURDEBRAS.—PRINCE BLADUD.—IS AFFLICTED WITH LEPROSY.—BANISHED HIS FATHER'S COURT.—THE DRUIDS.—STONEHENGE.—ROCKING-STONES.

The early history of England, or Britain, as it was anciently called, is involved in great obscurity. The reason of this is, that its first inhabitants, a colony from some other nation, were so much occupied in providing for the actual wants of life, as to have but very little time to spare for the purpose of preserving records of the country whence they came. They were, too, in a state of barbarism, and altogether ignorant of the arts of reading or writing. When they wished to keep a memorial of any great event, such as a victory, a treaty of peace, the death of one king, or the coronation of another, they marked the spot where the occurrence took place with a heap of stones, or set up a rough hewn pillar, and bade their children recount to their descendants the circumstance which it was intended to commemorate. An imperfect memory of certain great events was thus kept alive, and the pillar, or the heap of stones, was appealed to as a memorial, long after the people who had assisted in raising it were dead.

The traditions connected with these rude memorials are the only sources from which our knowledge of some very ancient events is to be derived. They are calledtraditions, because they were not written accounts, but such as were transmitted, or handed down, through a long succession of ages, by being repeated from father to son. Sometimes, too, these traditions were made into songs, which, being easily learned by heart, very much assisted in preserving a knowledge of the events they were intended to record.

Julius Cæsar, the great Roman dictator, or, as he is by some called, the first emperor of Rome, invaded and conquered Britain, and in a great measure brought it under the yoke of Rome. This Julius Cæsar, who wrote the history of his own wars and conquests, is the first real historian who has made mention of the Britons. He calls them barbarians,—and so, in comparison with the Romans, at that time the most civilized people in the world, they certainly were,—yet, from many circumstances which he himself mentions, it is certain that they were acquainted with the art of working mines, the use of metals, and the construction of many curious and useful articles.

The Britons also practised the arts of poetry and music. They had among them Bards, who put their histories and traditions into poetry and songs, which their Minstrels, or Singers, chanted at public festivals, and on going into battle, to the sound of the harp and other musical instruments.

It is said by some ancient historians, and by those who have bestowed much pains in examining and comparing old traditions, that several kings reigned over Britain before Julius Cæsar landed in the country. Lud Hurdebras is supposed to have been the eighth king from Brute, whom the Bards, and after them, the monkish historians, report to have been the first monarch of Britain. I am going to tell you a story of Prince Bladud, the son of this Lud Hurdebras, which, there is reason to believe, is founded on fact.

Bladud was the only child of the king and queen, and he was not only tenderly beloved by his parents, but was also considered as a child of great beauty and promise by the chiefs and the people. It, however, unfortunately happened that he was attacked with that loathsome disease, so frequently mentioned in Scripture by the name of Leprosy. The dirty habits and gross feeding of the early natives of Britain, as well as of all other uncivilized people, rendered this malady common; but at the time in which Prince Bladud lived, no cure for it was known to the Britons. Being highly infectious, therefore, all persons afflicted with it were not only held in disgust and abhorrence, but, by the barbarous laws of the times, were doomed to be driven from the abodes of their fellow-creatures, and to take their chance of life or death in the forests and the deserts, exposed alike to hunger and to beasts of prey.

So great was the horror of this disease among the heathen Britons, and so strictly was the law for preventing its extension observed, that even the rank of the young prince caused no exception to be made in his favour. Neither was his tender youth suffered to plead for sympathy; and the king himself was unable to protect his own son from the cruel treatment accorded to the lepers of those days. No sooner was the report whispered abroad, that Prince Bladud was afflicted with leprosy, than the chiefs and elders of the council assembled together, and insisted that Lud Hurdebras should expel his son from the royal city, and drive him forth into the wilderness, in order to prevent the dreaded infection from spreading.

The fond mother of the unfortunate Bladud vainly endeavoured to prevail on her royal husband to resist this barbarous injunction. All that maternal love and female tenderness could urge, she pleaded in behalf of her only child, whose bodily sufferings rendered him but the dearer object of affection to her fond bosom.

The distressed father, however deeply and painfully he felt the queen's passionate appeal, could not act in contradiction to the general voice of his subjects; he was compelled to stifle all emotions of natural compassion for his innocent son, and to doom him to perpetual banishment.

Bladud awaited his father's decision, in tears and silence, without offering a single word of supplication, lest he should increase the anguish of his parent's heart. But, when the cruel sentence of banishment was confirmed by the voice of his hitherto doating sire, he uttered a cry of bitter sorrow, and covering his disfigured visage with both hands, turned about to leave the haunts of his childhood forever, exclaiming, "Who will have compassion upon me, now that I am abandoned by my parents?"

How sweet, how consoling, would have been the answer of a Christian parent to this agonizing question; but on Bladud's mother the heavenly light of Revelation had never shone. She knew not how to speak comfort to the breaking heart of her son, in those cheering words of Holy Writ, which would have been so applicable to his case in that hour of desertion: When thy father and thy mother forsake thee, I will take thee up. She could only weep with her son, and try to soothe his sorrow by whispering a hope, which she was far from feeling, that the day might come, when he could return to his father's court, cured of the malady which was the cause of his banishment.

"But years may pass away before that happy day, if it ever should come," replied the weeping boy; "and I shall be altered in stature and in features; the tones of my voice will have become strange to your ears, my mother! Toil and sorrow will have set their hard marks upon my brow. These garments, now so brightly stained with figures that denote my royal birth and princely station, will be worn bare, or exchanged for the sheep-skin vest of indigence. How, then, will you know that I am indeed your son, should I ever present myself before you cleansed of this dreadful leprosy?"

"My son," replied the queen, taking a royal ring of carved agate from her finger, and placing it on a stand before him, for so great was the terror of contagion from those afflicted with leprosy, that even the affectionate mother of Bladud avoided the touch of her child,—"this ring was wrought by the master-hand of a Druid, a skilful worker in precious stones, within the sacred circle of Stonehenge. It was placed upon my finger before the mystic altar, when I became the wife of the king your father, and was saluted by the Arch-Druid as Queen of Britain. In the whole world, there is not another like unto it; and, should you bring it back to me, by that token shall I know you to be my son, even though the lapse of thrice ten years shall have passed away, and the golden locks of my princely boy shall be darkened with toil and time, and no longer wave over a smooth, unfurrowed brow."

The Druids, one of whom I have mentioned, were a peculiar people, who constituted the priesthood among the heathen Britons. They dwelt in circular houses, in the recesses of dark deep groves, where they practised barbarous rites of worship, and once a year sacrificed to their idols human victims, enclosed in gigantic wicker-work figures, made in a rude resemblance to the form of man. These Druids, however, were acquainted with astronomy, or the knowledge of the stars; they possessed a certain skill in medicine and surgery, and they understood the arts of cutting and polishing stones. Curious beads and rings, made by them from the agate stone, are even at the present time occasionally dug out of the earth, in which they have been buried for many hundred years, and are preserved in the cabinets of the curious.

Some stupendous evidences of the skill and knowledge of the Druids, as well as of the impostures which they practised on the unenlightened and idolatrous Britons, are still to be seen in various parts of our country. Among these is Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, consisting of huge blocks of stone, which, nearly two thousand years ago, formed part of a mystic circle, that surrounded one of their heathen temples, which has long since fallen into ruin and decay.

Among the other remains of the works of the Druids, are the great moving masses, principally found in Cornwall, and called Loggan-Stones, or Rocking Stones. These consist of a large block of stone, so finely balanced on one small point, that though it stands securely, which, in fact, it has done for many hundreds of years, yet it can be moved, and made to rock, by a...