The Argosy — page 328: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

399 A ROMANTIC WEDDING. A SOUTH WALES LEGEND. By ANNE BEALE. M OST of the ancient mansions of South Wales have their legends. Some of these relate to ghosts and fairies, others to romantic incidents marvellous as they. Before the steam-whistle shrieked amid the hills and vales, these traditions were religiously believed, not only by the illiterate and superstitious peasant, but by the more cultivated proprietor, and even in this nineteenth century many are loth to acknowledge them to be mere creations of distorted imagina- tion. A lady, since dead, gave the writer several strange stories which may not be without interest for readers curious in such details. She was born and died in one such old mansion, and herself put faith in the friends from whom she heard them, who in their turn believed in those who related them. Thus traditions descend from generation to generation, until we fail to eliminate the true from the false, the real from the ideal. Wecan only “tell the tale as it was told to us,” which was, after all, much what Homer must have done in his * Tliad ” and ‘‘ Odyssey.” The following is not only certified but dated, and was received as “authorised” by the descendants of the heroine. In the year 1724 a daughter and heiress was born to a Squire of high degree. But her birth cost the life of her mother. The chimes that had been set a-pealing in the old church tower as soon as the news spread that the infant drew breath, soon changed to the clang of the passing bell. All the villagers who were agape with delight one instant, cried “Lord have mercy on her soul” the next, and listened with silent awe as, minute by minute, eighteen solemn warn- ings fell from the iron tongue of the ruler of the belfry. ‘‘Gone! and not yet out of her teens!” cried the people. ‘ What will the Squire do without her ?” The Squire consoled himself. Scarcely had twelve months rolled away, when the joy-bells pealed forth again, and he brought a second bride to his castle, and a step-mother to his pretty baby, Ermentrude. Hitherto the child had been the sole joy of his heart, and the light of his lonely mansion; now, a proud and haughty dame ruled him and his dependents. The new wife looked with jealous eyes on the child of the old. ‘I will give to my lord a son who shall displace the puling infant,” she said; but no son came. For six weary years the stately lady’s jealousy of the little Ermen- trude and longing for children of her own lasted ; but spite and hope econniclooolks (C(O)