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The clear little streams that in Summer-time murmured musically down the slopes, under canopies of nodding roses and fragrant sweet-brier, were now turbid torrents, brawling like churls drunken with much wine, and tearing out with savage wantonness their banks, matted with the roots of the blue violets, and the white-flowered puccoon.
Formerly these people would have been vilified, called cannibals, churls, and sycophants, and Gomorrah would have been hinted at as their natal place.
His father's marriage had been viewed as a MESALLIANCE, and though the knight of Maisonforte had been honourable and kindly, and the Lady Elftrud had fared better than many a Saxon bride, still the French and the Breton dames of the neighbourhood had looked down on her, and the retainers had taught her son to look on the English race as swine, boors, and churls, ignorant of all gentle arts, of skill and grace.
The churls and thralls, sadly thinned by the sword, followed behind their lady and her two children, Wilfred and Edith. They placed the bier before the high altar while the requiem mass was sung, six monks kneeling beside it, three on each side, with lighted tapers.
"This is no time for it at least," said Fitzurse "the approaching crisis renders the favour of the multitude indispensable, and Prince John cannot refuse justice to any one who injures their favourites." "Let him grant it, if he dare," said De Bracy; "he will soon see the difference betwixt the support of such a lusty lot of spears as mine, and that of a heartless mob of Saxon churls.
Then the king rode unto them, and bade them: Flee, churls! then were they afeard when they saw a knight, and fled. O Merlin, said Arthur, here hadst thou been slain for all thy crafts had I not been. Nay, said Merlin, not so, for I could save myself an I would; and thou art more near thy death than I am, for thou goest to the deathward, an God be not thy friend.
Here is a company of common, everyday people, he said, and if I am to make you see these people, if they are to be living and real to you, I must make them act and speak as such common people would act and speak. They are churls, and they must speak like churls and not like fine folk, and if you don't like the tale, turn over the leaf and choose another.
So he returned to the Mill, and there the damsel Lirette made him to understand that these three churls were long time enemies of the Mill, and sought ever to destroy it and to do despite to her and her father. One of them was Ignis, and another was Ventus, and these were the twain that he had smitten.
While these solemn sounds, accented by a thousand voices, were prolonged amongst the waste hills, Claverhouse looked with great attention on the ground, and on the order of battle which the wanderers had adopted, and in which they determined to await the assault. "The churls," he said, "must have some old soldiers with them; it was no rustic that made choice of that ground."
The relation in which the minority stood to the majority resembled the relation in which the followers of William the Conqueror stood to the Saxon churls, or the relation in which the followers of Cortes stood to the Indians of Mexico.
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