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The Luck of Edenhall

Beverley and Felix King are introduced to the King Orchard. There is an heirloom cup at the old well:

“There’s a cup just like the one that used to be here in father’s time,” exclaimed Felix, pointing to an old-fashioned shallow cup of clouded blue ware on a little shelf inside the curb.

“It is the very same cup,” said the Story Girl impressively. “Isn’t it an amazing thing? That cup has been here for forty years, and hundreds of people have drunk from it, and it has never been broken. Aunt Julia dropped it down the well once, but they fished it up, not hurt a bit except for that little nick in the rim. I think it is bound up with the fortunes of the King family, like the Luck of Edenhall in Longfellow’s poem. It is the last cup of Grandmother King’s second best set. Her best set is still complete. Aunt Olivia has it. You must get her to show it to you. It’s so pretty, with red berries all over it, and the funniest little pot-bellied cream jug. Aunt Olivia never uses it except on a family anniversary.”

-The Story Girl ch.3

The Luck of Edenhall
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

From Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology (London: H. G. Bohn, 1850), p. 292.

“In this house (Eden Hall, a seat of the Musgraves,) are some good old-fashioned, apartments. An old painted drinking glass, called the Luck of Eden Hall, is preserved with great care. In the garden near to the house is a well of excellent spring water, called St. Cuthbert’s Well. (The church is dedicated to that saint.) This glass is supposed to have been a sacred chalice; but the legendary tale is, that the butler, going to draw water, surprised a company of fairies, who were amusing themselves upon the green near the well; he seized the glass which was standing upon its margin. They tried to recover it; but, after an ineffectual struggle, flew away, saying:

If that glass either break or fall,

Farewell the luck of Eden Hall.

From the German of [Ludwig] Uhland

The tradition upon which this ballad is founded, and the “shards of the Luck of Edenhall,” still exist in England. The goblet is in the possession of Sir Christopher Musgrave, Bart., of Eden Hall, Cumberland; and is not so entirely shattered as the ballad leaves it [note by Longfellow].

Of Edenhall, the youthful Lord
Bids sound the festal trumpet’s call.
He rises at the banquet board,
And cries, ‘mid the drunken revellers all,
“Now bring me the Luck of Edenhall!”

The butler hears the words with pain,
The house’s oldest seneschal,
Takes slow from its silken cloth again
The drinking glass of crystal tall;
They call it The Luck of Edenhall.

Then said the Lord, “This glass to praise,
Fill with red wine from Portugal!”
The graybeard with trembling hand obeys;
A purple light shines over all,
It beams from the Luck of Edenhall.

Then speaks the Lord, and waves it light:
“This glass of flashing crystal tall
Gave to my sires the Fountain-Sprite;
She wrote in it, If this glass doth fall,
Farewell then, O Luck of Edenhall!

“‘Twas right a goblet the Fate should be
Of the joyous race of Edenhall!
Deep draughts drink we right willingly:
And willingly ring, with merry call,
Kling! klang! to the Luck of Edenhall!”

First rings it deep, and full, and mild,
Like to the song of a nightingale
Then like the roar of a torrent wild;
Then mutters at last like the thunder’s fall,
The glorious Luck of Edenhall.

“For its keeper takes a race of might,
The fragile goblet of crystal tall;
It has lasted longer than is right;
King! klang!–with a harder blow than all
Will I try the Luck of Edenhall!”

As the goblet ringing flies apart,
Suddenly cracks the vaulted hall;
And through the rift, the wild flames start;
The guests in dust are scattered all,
With the breaking Luck of Edenhall!

In storms the foe, with fire and sword;
He in the night had scaled the wall,
Slain by the sword lies the youthful Lord,
But holds in his hand the crystal tall,
The shattered Luck of Edenhall.

On the morrow the butler gropes alone,
The graybeard in the desert hall,
He seeks his Lord’s burnt skeleton,
He seeks in the dismal ruin’s fall
The shards of the Luck of Edenhall.

“The stone wall,” saith he, “doth fall aside,
Down must the stately columns fall;
Glass is this earth’s Luck and Pride;
In atoms shall fall this earthly ball
One day like the Luck of Edenhall!”

The goblet is at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.