ENGAGEMENT OFF FLAMBOROUGH HEAD.

(From a contemporary print.)

could keep longer afloat. With all expedition her crew abandoned her, and went on board the Serapis, of which Paul Jones took the command. The Bon Homme Richard sank almost immediately, with a large sum of money belonging to Jones, and many valuable papers. The prize-ships were now conveyed by him to the Texel, a proceeding which led to a demand being made by the English ambassador at the Hague for the delivery of the captured vessels, and the surrender of Jones himself as a pirate. This application to the Dutch authorities was ineffectual, but it served as one of the predisposing causes of the war which not long afterwards ensued with England After remaining for a while at the Texel, the Serapis was taken to the port of L'Orient, in France, where she appears subsequently to have been disarmed and broken up, whilst the Countess of Scarborough was conveyed to Dunkirk. Meantime, Jones proceeded to France, with the view of arranging as to his future movements; but before quitting Texel, he returned to Captain Pearson his sword, in recognition, as he says, of the bravery which he had displayed on board the Serapis. Pearson's countrymen seem to have entertained the same estimate of his merits, as, on his subsequent return to England, he was received with great distinction, was knighted by George III., and presented with a service of plate and the freedom of their corporations, by those boroughs on the east coast which lay near the scene of the naval engagement. In France, honours no less flattering were bestowed on Paul Jones. At the opera and all public places, he received enthusiastic ovations, and Louis XVI. presented him with a gold-hilted' sword, on which was engraved, Vindicati maris Ludovicus XVI. remunerator strenuo vindici' (From Louis XVI., in recognition of the services of the brave maintainer of the privileges of the sea).

It may be noted that the true name of Paul Jones was John Paul, and that he made the change probably at the time when he entered the American service. His career was altogether a most singular one, presenting phases to the full as

OFF FLAMBOROUGH HEAD.

romantic as any of those undergone by a hero of fiction. The son of a small farmer near Dumfries, we find him manifesting from his boyhood a strong predilection for the sea, and at the age of twelve commencing life as a cabin-boy, on board the Friendship of Whitehaven, trading to Virginia. After completing his apprenticeship, he made several voyages in connection with the slave-trade to the West Indies, and rose to the position of master. He speedily, however, it is said, conceived a disgust to the traffic, and abandoned it. We find him, about 1775, accepting a commission in the American navy, then newly formed in opposition to that of Britain. What inspired Paul with such feelings of rancour against his native country, cannot now be ascertained; but to the end of his life he seemed to retain undiminished the most implacable resentment towards the British nation. The cause of the colonies against the mothercountry, now generally admitted to have been a just one, was adopted by him with the utmost enthusiasm, and certainly he contrived to inflict a considerable amount of damage on British shipping in the course of his cruises.

To the British nation, and to Scotchmen more especially, the name of Paul Jones has heretofore only been suggestive of a daring pirate or lawless adventurer. He appears, in reality, to have been a sincere and enthusiastic partisan of the cause of the colonists, many of whom were as much natives of Britain as himself, and yet have never been specially blamed for their partisanship. In personal respects, he was a gallant and resolute man, of romantically chivalrous feelings, and superior to everything like a mean or shabby action. It is particularly pleasant to remark his disinterestedness in restoring, in afteryears, to the Countess of Selkirk, the family-plate which the necessity of satisfying his men had compelled him to deprive her of, on the occasion of his descent on the Scottish coast, and for which he paid them the value out of his own resources. The letters addressed by him on this subject to the countess and her husband, do great credit both to his generosity and abilities in point of literary composition. By the Americans, Admiral Paul Jones is regarded as one of their most distinguished naval celebrities.

money, which I then supposed, by feeling, to be a shilling; but when I had light, I found it a twentyshilling piece of gold. I did a little reflect how it might come there, yet could not satisfy my own thoughts, for I had no client then, it being several years before I was called to the bar, and I had few visitors that could drop it there, and no friends in town that might designedly lay it there as a bait, to encourage me at my studies; and although I was the master of some gold, yet I had so few pieces, I well knew it was none of my number; but, however, this being the first time I found gold, I supposed it left there by some means I could not guess at. About three weeks after, coming again into my chamber in the dark, and laying down my gloves at the same place in my study, I felt under my hand a piece of money, which also proved a twenty-shilling piece of gold; this moved me to further consideration; but, after all my thoughtfulness, I could not imagine any probable way how the gold could come there, but I do not remember that I ever found any, when I went with those expectations and desires. About a month after the second time, coming into my chamber, in the dark, and laying down my gloves upon the same place, on the table in my study, I found two pieces of money under my hand, which, after I had lighted my candle, I found to be two twenty-shilling pieces; and, about the distance of six weeks after, in the same place, and in the dark, I found another piece of gold, and this about the distance of a month, or five or six weeks. I several times after, at the same place, and always in the dark, found twenty-shilling pieces of gold; at length, being with my cousin Langton, grandmother to my cousin Susan Skipwith, lately married to Sir John Williams, I told her this story, and I do not remember that I ever found any gold there after, although I kept that chamber above two years longer, before I sold it to Mr Anthony Weldon, who now hath it (this being 23d September 1673). Thus I have, to the best of my remembrance, truly stated this fact, but could never know, or have any probable conjecture, how that gold was laid there.'

The relationship that existed between cousin Langton and cousin Skipwith does not seem very clear, according to our modern method of reckoning kindred; but it must be recollected that, in former times, the title of cousin was given to any collateral relative more remote than a brother or sister. Prob

ably, cousin Langton was Mr Bowes's grandmother as well as Miss Skipwith's, and, if she liked, could have solved the mystery. For the writer has known more than one instance of benevolent old ladies making presents of money to young relatives, in a similarly stealthy and eccentric manner.

SEPTEMBER 24.

St Rusticus or Rotiri, bishop of Auvergne, 5th century. St Chuniald or Conald, priest and missionary. St Germer or Geremar, abbot, 658. St Gerard, bishop of Chonad, martyr, 1046.

Born.-Sharon Turner, historian, 1768, London. Died.-Pepin, king of France, 768; Michael III., Greek emperor, assassinated, 867; Pope Innocent II., 1143; William of Wykeham, founder of Winchester

THE FEAST OF INGATHERING.

School, 1404, South Waltham; Samuel Butler, author of Hudibras, 1680, London; Henry, Viscount Hardinge, governor-general and commander in India, 1856, South Park, near Tunbridge.

The Feast of Ingathering.

Wherever, throughout the earth, there is such a thing as a formal harvest, there also appears an inclination to mark it with a festive celebration. The wonder, the gratitude, the piety felt towards the great Author of nature, when it is brought before us that, once more, as it has ever been, the ripening of a few varieties of grass has furnished food for earth's teeming millions, insure that there should every where be some sort of feast of ingathering. In England, this festival passes generally under the endeared name of HarvestHome. In Scotland, where that term is unknown, the festival is hailed under the name of the Kirn. In the north of England, its ordinary designation is the Mell-Supper. And there are perhaps other local names. But every where there is a thankful joy, a feeling which pervades all ranks and conditions of the rural people, and for once in the year brings all upon a level. The servant sympathises with the success of his master in the great labours of the year.

The employer looks kindly down upon his toiling servants, and feels it but due to them that they should have a banquet furnished out of the abundance which God has given himone in which he and his family should join them, all conventional distinctions sinking under the overpowering gush of natural, and, it may be added, religious feeling, which so well befits the time.

Most of our old harvest-customs were connected with the ingathering of the crops, but some of them began with the commencement of harvest-work. Thus, in the southern counties, it was customary for the labourers to elect, from among themselves, a leader, whom they denominated their lord.' To him all the rest were required to give precedence, and to leave all transactions respecting their work. He made the terms with the farmers for mowing, for reaping, and for all the rest of the harvestwork; he took the lead with the scythe, with the sickle, and on the carrying days; he was to be the first to eat, and the first to drink, at all their refreshments; his mandate was to be law to all the rest, who were bound to address him as 'My Lord,' and to shew him all due honour and respect. Disobedience in any of these particulars was punished by imposing fines according to a scale previously agreed on by the lord' and all his vassals. In some instances, if any of his men swore or told a lie in his presence, a fine was inflicted. In Buckinghamshire and other counties, a lady' was elected as well as 'a lord,' which often added much merriment to the harvest-season. For, while the lady was to receive all honours due to the lord from the rest of the labourers, he (for the lady was one of the workmen) was required to pass it on to the lord. For instance, at drinking-time, the vassals were to give the horn first to the lady, who passed it to the lord, and when he had drunk, she drank next, and then the others indiscriminately. Every departure from this rule incurred a fine. The blunders which led to fines, of course, were frequent, and produced great merriment.

In the old simple days of England, before the natural feelings of the people had been checked and chilled off by Puritanism in the first place, and what may be called gross Commercialism in the second, the harvest-home was such a scene as Horace's friends might have expected to see at his Sabine farm, or Theocritus described in his Idylls. Perhaps it really was the very same scene which was presented in ancient times. The grain last cut was brought home in its wagon-called the Hock Cart-surmounted by a figure formed of a sheaf with gay dressings a presumable representation of the goddess Ceres-while a pipe and tabor went merrily sounding in front, and the reapers tripped around in a hand-in-hand ring, singing appropriate songs, or simply by shouts and cries giving vent to the excitement of the day.

'Harvest-home, harvest-home,

We have ploughed, we have sowed,
We have reaped, we have mowed,
We have brought home every load,

Hip, hip, hip, harvest-home!'

So they sang or shouted. In Lincolnshire and other districts, hand-bells were carried by those riding on the last load, and the following rhymes were sung:

'The boughs do shake, and the bells do ring,
So merrily comes our harvest in,
Our harvest in, our harvest in,
So merrily comes our harvest in!
Hurrah!'

Troops of village children, who had contributed in various ways to the great labour, joined the throng, solaced with plum-cake in requital of their little services. Sometimes, the image on the cart, instead of being a mere dressed-up bundle of grain, was a pretty girl of the reaping-band, crowned with flowers, and hailed as the Maiden. Of this we have a description in a ballad of Bloomfield's:

'Home came the jovial Hockey load,
Last of the whole year's crop,

And Grace among the green boughs rode,
Right plump upon the top.

This way and that the wagon reeled,
And never queen rode higher;
Her cheeks were coloured in the field,
And ours before the fire.'

In some provinces-we may instance Buckinghamshire-it was a favourite practical joke to lay an ambuscade at some place where a high bank or a tree gave opportunity, and drench the hock-cart party with water. Great was the merriment, when this was cleverly and effectively done, the riders laughing, while they shook themselves, as merrily as the rest. Under all the rustic jocosities of the occasion, there seemed a basis of pagan custom; but it was such as not to exclude a Christian sympathy. Indeed, the harvest-home of Old England was obviously and beyond question a piece of natural religion, an ebullition of jocund gratitude to the divine source of all earthly blessings.

Herrick describes the harvest-home of his epoch (the earlier half of the seventeenth century) with his usual felicity of expression.

'Come, sons of summer, by whose toile
We are the Lords of wine and oile;
By whose tough labours, and rough hands,
We rip up first, then reap our lands,

THE FEAST OF INGATHERING.

Crown'd with the eares of corne, now come,

And, to the pipe, sing harvest-home.
Come forth, my Lord, and see the cart,
Drest up with all the country art.
See here a maukin, there a sheet
As spotlesse pure as it is sweet:
The horses, mares, and frisking fillies,
Clad, all, in linnen, white as lillies,
The harvest swaines and wenches bound
For joy, to see the hock-cart crown'd.
About the cart heare how the rout
Of rural younglings raise the shout;
Pressing before, some coming after,
Those with a shout, and these with laughter.
Some blesse the cart; some kisse the sheaves;
Some prank them up with oaken leaves:
Some crosse the fill-horse; some with great
Devotion stroak the home-borne wheat:
While other rusticks, lesse attent
To prayers than to merryment,
Run after with their breeches rent.
Well, on, brave boyes, to your Lord's hearth
Glitt'ring with fire, where, for your mirth,
You shall see first the large and cheefe
Foundation of your feast, fat beefe:
With upper stories, mutton, veale,
And bacon, which makes full the meale;
With sev'rall dishes standing by,
As here a custard, there a pie,
And here all-tempting frumentie.
And for to make the merrie cheere
If smirking wine be wanting here,

There's that which drowns all care, stout beere,
Which freely drink to your Lord's health,
Then to the plough, the commonwealth;
Next to your flailes, your fanes, your fatts,
Then to the maids with wheaten hats;
To the rough sickle, and the crookt sythe
Drink, frollick, boyes, till all be blythe,
Feed and grow fat, and as ye eat,
Be mindfull that the lab'ring neat,
As you, may have their full of meat;
And know, besides, ye must revoke
The patient oxe unto the yoke,
And all goe back unto the plough

And harrow, though they're hang'd up now.
And, you must know, your Lord's word's true,
Feed him ye must, whose food fils you.

And that this pleasure is like raine,
Not sent ye for to drowne your paine.
But for to make it spring againe.'

a

her, I have her, I have her! (Every sentence is repeated three times.) Second: What hast thee? What hast thee? What hast thee? First: A mare, a mare, a mare! Second: Whose is her? Whose is her? Whose is her? First: A. B.'s (naming their master, whose corn is all cut. Second: Where shall we send her? &c. First: To C. D. (naming some neighbour whose corn is still standing). And the whole concludes with a joyous shout of both bands united.

In the south-eastern part of Shropshire, the ceremony is performed with a slight variation. The last few stalks of the wheat are left standing; all the reapers throw their sickles, and he who cuts it off, cries: "I have her, I have her, I have her!" on which the rustic mirth begins; and it is practised in a manner very similar in Devonshire. The latest farmer in the neighbourhood, whose reapers therefore cannot send her to any other person, is said to keep her all the winter. This rural ceremony, which is fast wearing away, evidently refers to the time when, our county lying all open in common fields, and the corn consequently exposed to the depredations of the wild mares, the season at which it was secured from their ravages was a time of rejoicing, and of exulting over a tardier neighbour.' Mr Bray describes the same custom as practised in Devonshire, and the chief peculiarity in that instance is, that the last handful of the standing grain is called the Nack. On this being cut, the reapers assemble round it, calling at the top of their voices, 'Arnack, arnack, arnack! we have'n, we have'n, we have'n,' and the firkin is then handed round; after which the party goes home dancing and shouting. Mr Bray considers it a relic of Druidism, but, as it appears to us, without any good reason. He also indulges in some needlessly profound speculations regarding the meaning of the words used. 'Arnack' appears to us as simply Our nag,' an idea very nearly corresponding to 'the Mare;' and 'we have'n' seems to be merely

'we have him.'

In the evening of harvest-home, the supper takes place in the barn, or some other suitable place, the master and mistress generally presiding. This feast is always composed of substantial viands, with an abundance of good ale, and human nature insures that it should be a scene of intense enjoyment. Some one, with better voice than his neighbours, leads off a song of thanks to the host and hostess, in something like the following strain

Here's a health to our master,
The lord of the feast;

God bless his endeavours,

And send him increase!

May prosper his crops, boys,
And we reap next year;
Here's our master's good health, boys,
Come, drink off your beer!

Now harvest is ended,

And supper is past;

Here's our mistress's health, boys, Come, drink a full glass.

For she's a good woman,
Provides us good cheer;

Here's your mistress's good health, boys,
Come, drink off your beer?

:

THE FEAST OF INGATHERING.

One of the rustic assemblage, being chosen to act as 'lord,' goes out, puts on a sort of disguise, and comes in again, crying in a prolonged note, Lar-gess! He and some companions then go about with a plate among the company, and collect a little money with a view to further regalements at the village ale-house. With these, protracted usually to a late hour, the harvest-feast ends.

In Scotland, under the name of the Kirn or Kirn Supper (supposed to be from the churn of cream usually presented on the occasion), harvesthome ends in like manner. The description of the feast given by Grahame, in his British Georgics, includes all the characteristic features:

And pause of rural labour, far and near.
'The fields are swept, a tranquil silence reigns,
Responsive cock-crows, in the distance heard,
Deep is the morning's hush; from grange to grange
Distinct as if at hand, soothe the pleased ear;
And oft, at intervals, the flail, remote,
Sends faintly through the air its deafened sound.

Bright now the shortening day, and blithe its close,
When to the Kirn the neighbours, old and young,
Come dropping in to share the well-earned feast.
The smith aside his ponderous sledge has thrown,
Raked up his fire, and cooled the hissing brand.
His sluice the miller shuts; and from the barn
The threshers hie, to don their Sunday coats.
Simply adorned, with ribands, blue and pink,
Bound round their braided hair, the lasses trip
To grace the feast, which now is smoking ranged
On tables of all shape, and size, and height,
Joined awkwardly, yet to the crowded guests
A seemly joyous show, all loaded well:
But chief, at the board-head, the haggis round
Attracts all eyes, and even the goodman's grace
Prunes of its wonted length. With eager knife,
The quivering globe he then prepares to broach;
While for her gown some ancient matron quakes,
Her gown of silken woof, all figured thick
on azure ground-her grannam's wedding-garb,
With roses white, far larger than the life,
Old as that year when Sheriffmuir was fought.
Old tales are told, and well-known jests abound,
Which laughter meets half-way as ancient friends,
Nor, like the worldling, spurns because threadbare

When ended the repast, and board and bench
Vanish like thought, by many hands removed,
Up strikes the fiddle; quick upon the floor
The youths lead out the half-reluctant maids,
Bashful at first, and darning through the reels
With timid steps, till, by the music cheered,
With free and airy step, they bound along,
Then deftly wheel, and to their partner's face,
Turning this side, now that, with varying step.
Sometimes two ancient couples o'er the floor,
Skim through a reel, and think of youthful years.

Meanwhile the frothing bickers,* soon as filled,
Are drained, and to the gauntrees + oft return,
Where gossips sit, unmindful of the dance.
Salubrious beverage! Were thy sterling worth
But duly prized, no more the alembic vast
Would, like some dire volcano, vomit forth
Its floods of liquid fire, and far and wide
Lay waste the land; no more the fruitful boon
Of twice ten shrievedoms, into poison turned,
Would taint the very life-blood of the poor,
Shrivelling their heart-strings like a burning scroll.'

* Beakers.

+ Wooden frames on which beer casks are set.