served, and to see that the napery is white, "for we will dyn and
daunce." At "Christis Kirk on the Green" there is a similar description,
the lasses coming out as before, "weshen clean," in their new grey
kirtles "well prest with many plaits," with their gloves of doeskin and
morocco shoes. All these incidental traits, and the atmosphere of the
merry ballads, though both end in a fray, contradict with vigour the
cold and wretched picture given by outsiders of a country where the
people warmed themselves by burning sulphureous stones dug out of the
ground, where the houses had a cow's hide stretched for a door, and all
was squalid misery and nakedness. There was plenty of fighting going on
it is evident--not a lowland fair without its broken heads (a habit
that, according to Sir Walter Scott, no mean authority, lasted into the
nineteenth century)--and much oppression, the great lords reigning like
absolute tyrants in the midst of subjects without resource or
protection; but the case of the peasantry notwithstanding all these
evils does not seem to have been a bad one. A certain vigorous capacity
of revival, which history shows us continually as existing on the broad
level of the soil, must have brought them back to rough ease and
comfort, and the freedom of the natural healthful atmosphere which makes
itself apparent in transcripts of life so little likely to be forced or
optimistic. In all times and circumstances there can be little doubt
that the amount of simple enjoyment to be got out of life, especially by
the young, who form at least the half of every community, far exceeds
the elements of wellbeing which outsiders see in it. And the protection
of the Church, the comparative quiet to be enjoyed on church lands, the
charities and succour of the cloister, must have made an incalculable
addition to the possibilities of existence. Everything in James's reign
was calculated to increase the stability and good order which are the
best guarantees of national life; even his severities cultivating a
sense of security in the weak and a wholesome consciousness of the
necessity of self-restraint in the strong. For the first time for many
generations the nobles were kept within bounds, and exceptional
cruelties became if not impossible, yet of so certain discovery and
punishment that lesser tyrants at least must have trembled. The law that
might makes right fell into temporary disuse, and a better law, that of
the courts that sa