Chapter 25 - Page 2

"Handfasted?"--repeated Warden.

"Knowest thou not that rite, holy man?" said Avenel, in the same tone
of derision; "then I will tell thee. We Border-men are more wary than
your inland clowns of Fife and Lothian--no jump in the dark for us--no
clenching the fetters around our wrists till we know how they will
wear with us--we take our wives, like our horses, upon trial. When we
are handfasted, as we term it, we are man and wife for a year and
day--that space gone by, each may choose another mate, or, at their
pleasure, may call the priest to marry them for life--and this we call
handfasting." [Footnote: This custom of handfasting actually prevailed
in the upland days. It arose partly from the want of priests. While
the convents subsisted, monks were detached on regular circuits
through the wilder districts, to marry those who had lived in this
species of connexion. A practice of the same kind existed in the Isle
of Portland.]

"Then," said the preacher, "I tell thee, noble Baron, in brotherly
love to thy soul, it is a custom licentious, gross, and corrupted,
and, if persisted in, dangerous, yea, damnable. It binds thee to the
frailer being while she is the object of desire--it relieves thee when
she is most the subject of pity--it gives all to brutal sense, and
nothing to generous and gentle affection. I say to thee, that he who
can meditate the breach of such an engagement, abandoning the deluded
woman and the helpless offspring, is worse than the birds of prey; for
of them the males remain with their mates until the nestlings can take
wing. Above all, I say it is contrary to the pure Christian doctrine,
which assigns woman to man as the partner of his labour, the soother
of his evil, his helpmate in peril, his friend in affliction; not as
the toy of his looser hours, or as a flower, which, once cropped, he
may throw aside at pleasure."

"Now, by the Saints, a most virtuous homily!" said the Baron;
"quaintly conceived and curiously pronounced, and to a well-chosen
congregation. Hark ye, Sir Gospeller! trow ye to have a fool in hand?
Know I not that your sect rose by bluff Harry Tudor, merely because ye
aided him to change _his_ Kate; and wherefore should I not use
the same Christian liberty with _mine?_ Tush, man! bless the good
food, and meddle not with what concerns thee not--thou hast no gull in
Julian Avenel."

"He hath gulled and cheated himself," said the preacher, "should he
even incline to do that poor sharer of his domestic cares the
imperfect justice that remains to him. Can he now raise her to the
rank of a pure and uncontaminated matron?--Can he deprive his child of
the misery of owing birth to a mother who has erred? He