Chapter 7.12 - Shirley

Half-bitter? Is that wrong? No. It should be bitter. Bitterness is strength. It is a tonic. Sweet, mild force, following acute suffering you find nowhere. To talk of it is delusion. There may be apathetic exhaustion after the rack. If energy remains, it will be rather a dangerous energy, deadly when confronted with injustice. Who has read the ballad of pure Mary Lee, that old Scotch ballad, written I know not in what generation nor by what hand? Mary had been ill-used, probably in being made to believe that truth which was falsehood. She is not complaining, but she is sitting alone in the snowstorm, and you hear her thoughts. They are not the thoughts of a model heroine under her circumstances. But they are those of a deeply feeling, strongly resentful peasant girl. Anguish has driven her from the Ingle Nook of home to the white-shrouded and icy hills. Crouched under the cold drift, she recalls every image of horror. The yellow-wimed ask, the hairy adder, the old moon-bowing tyke, the geese that yin, the sore bullyster, the milk on the tade's back. She hates these, but, whore, she hates Robin Arie. Oh, once I lived happily by yon bonnie barn, the world was in love wi' me. But now I'm on sit, neath the cold drift and morn, and curse black Robin Arie. Then whirrer away, thou bitter-biting blast, and suff through the scrunty tree, and smur me up in the snore fure fast, and ne'er let the sun me see. Oh, never melt awa, thou wreath o' snow, that seek kind engraving me, but hide me fra the scorn and guffaw of villains like Robin Arie.