The outward appearance of these two men formed scarce a stronger

contrast than their look and demeanour. That of the serf, or bondsman,

was sad and sullen; his aspect was bent on the ground with an appearance

of deep dejection, which might be almost construed into apathy, had

not the fire which occasionally sparkled in his red eye manifested that

there slumbered, under the appearance of sullen despondency, a sense of

oppression, and a disposition to resistance. The looks of Wamba, on

the other hand, indicated, as usual with his class, a sort of vacant

curiosity, and fidgetty impatience of any posture of repose, together

with the utmost self-satisfaction respecting his own situation, and the

appearance which he made. The dialogue which they maintained between

them, was carried on in Anglo-Saxon, which, as we said before, was

universally spoken by the inferior classes, excepting the Norman

soldiers, and the immediate personal dependants of the great feudal

nobles. But to give their conversation in the original would convey but

little information to the modern reader, for whose benefit we beg to

offer the following translation:

"The curse of St Withold upon these infernal porkers!" said the

swine-herd, after blowing his horn obstreperously, to collect together

the scattered herd of swine, which, answering his call with notes

equally melodious, made, however, no haste to remove themselves from the

luxurious banquet of beech-mast and acorns on which they had fattened,

or to forsake the marshy banks of the rivulet, where several of them,

half plunged in mud, lay stretched at their ease, altogether regardless

of the voice of their keeper.

"The curse of St Withold upon them and

upon me!" said Gurth; "if the two-legged wolf snap not up some of them

ere nightfall, I am no true man. Here, Fangs! Fangs!" he ejaculated at

the top of his voice to a ragged wolfish-looking dog, a sort of lurcher,

half mastiff, half greyhound, which ran limping about as if with the

purpose of seconding his master in collecting the refractory grunters;

but which, in fact, from misapprehension of the swine-herd's signals,

ignorance of his own duty, or malice prepense, only drove them hither

and thither, and increased the evil which he seemed to design to remedy.

"A devil draw the teeth of him," said Gurth, "and the mother of mischief

confound the Ranger of the forest, that cuts the foreclaws off our dogs,

and makes them unfit for their trade! [8] Wamba, up and help me an thou

be'st a man; take a turn round the back o' the hill to gain the wind

on them; and when thous't got the weather-gage, thou mayst drive them

before thee as gently as so many innocent lambs."




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