Gay is thy glen, Corrie,
With all thy groves flowering;
Green is thy glen, Corrie,
When July is showering;
And sweet is yon wood where
The small birds are bowering,
And there dwells the sweet one
Whom I am adoring.
Her round neck is whiter
Than winter when snowing;
Her meek voice is milder
Than Ae in its flowing;
The glad ground yields music
Where she goes by the river;
One kind glance would charm me
For ever and ever.
The proud and the wealthy
To Phemie are bowing;
No looks of love win they
With sighing or suing;
Far away maun I stand
With my rude wooing,
She's a flow'ret too lovely
Too bloom for my pu'ing.
Oh were I yon violet
On which she is walking;
Oh were I yon small bird
To which she is talking;
Or yon rose in her hand,
With its ripe ruddy blossom;
Or some pure gentle thought
To be blest with her bosom.
This minstrel interruption, while it established Phemie Irving's claim to
grace and to beauty, gave me additional confidence to pursue the story.
"But minstrel skill and true love-tale seemed to want their usual
influence when they sought to win her attention; she was only observed to
pay most respect to those youths who were most beloved by her brother;
and the same hour that brought these twins to the world seemed to have
breathed through them a sweetness and an affection of heart and mind
which nothing could divide. If, like the virgin queen of the immortal
poet, she walked 'in maiden meditation fancy free,' her brother Elphin
seemed alike untouched with the charms of the fairest virgins in Corrie.
He ploughed his field, he reaped his grain, he leaped, he ran, and
wrestled, and danced, and sang, with more skill and life and grace than
all other youths of the district; but he had no twilight and stolen
interviews; when all other young men had their loves by their side, he
was single, though not unsought, and his joy seemed never perfect save
when his sister was near him. If he loved to share his time with her,
she loved to share her time with him alone, or with the beasts of the
field, or the birds of the air. She watched her little flock late, and
she tended it early; not for the sordid love of the fleece, unless it was
to make mantles for her brother, but with the look of one who had joy in
its company. The very wild creatures, the deer and the hares, seldom
sought to shun her approach, and the bird forsook not its nest, nor
stinted its song, when she drew nigh; such is the confidence which maiden
innocence and beauty inspire.
"It happened one summer, about three years after they became orphans,
that rain had been for a while withheld from the earth, the hillsides
began to parch, the grass in the vales to wither, and the stream of
Corrie was diminished between its banks to the size of an ordinary rill.
The shepherds drove their flocks to moorlands, and marsh and tarn had
their reeds invaded by the scythe to supply the cattle with food. The
sheep of his sister were Elphin's constant care; he drove them to the
moistest pastures during the day, and he often watched them at midnight,
when flocks, tempted by the sweet dewy grass, are known to browse
eagerly, that he might guard them from the fox, and lead them to the
choicest herbage. In these nocturnal watchings he sometimes drove his
little flock over the water of Corrie, for the fords were hardly ankle-
deep; or permitted his sheep to cool themselves in the stream, and taste
the grass which grew along the brink. All this time not a drop of rain
fell, nor did a cloud appear in the sky.
"One evening, during her brother's absence with the flock, Phemie sat at
her cottage-door, listening to the bleatings of the distant folds and the
lessened murmur of the water of Corrie, now scarcely audible beyond its
banks. Her eyes, weary with watching along the accustomed line of road
for the return of Elphin, were turned on the pool beside her, in which
the stars were glimmering fitful and faint. As she looked she imagined
the water grew brighter and brighter; a wild illumination presently shone
upon the pool, and leaped from bank to bank, and suddenly changing into a
human form, ascended the margin, and, passing her, glided swiftly into
the cottage. The visionary form was so like her brother in shape and
air, that, starting up, she flew into the house, with the hope of finding
him in his customary seat. She found him not, and, impressed with the
terror which a wraith or apparition seldom fails to inspire, she uttered
a shriek so loud and so piercing as to be heard at Johnstone Bank, on the
other side of the vale of Corrie."
An old woman now rose suddenly from her seat in the window-sill, the
living dread of shepherds, for she travelled the country with a brilliant
reputation for witchcraft, and thus she broke in upon the narrative: "I
vow, young man, ye tell us the truth upset and down-thrust. I heard my
douce grandmother say that on the night when Elphin Irving
disappeared--disappeared I shall call it, for the bairn can but be gone
for a season, to return to us in his own appointed time--she was seated
at the fireside at Johnstone Bank; the laird had laid aside his bonnet to
take the Book, when a shriek mair loud, believe me, than a mere woman's
shriek--and they can shriek loud enough, else they're sair wranged--came
over the water of Corrie, so sharp and shrilling, that the pewter plates
dinneled on the wall; such a shriek, my douce grandmother said, as rang
in her ear till the hour of her death, and she lived till she was aughty-
and-aught, forty full ripe years after the event. But there is another
matter, which, doubtless, I cannot compel ye to believe: it was the
common rumour that Elphin Irving came not into the world like the other
sinful creatures of the earth, but was one of the kane-bairns of the
fairies, whilk they had to pay to the enemy of man's salvation every
seventh year. The poor lady-fairy--a mother's aye a mother, be she
elves' flesh or Eve's flesh--hid her elf son beside the christened flesh
in Marion Irving's cradle, and the auld enemy lost his prey for a time.
Now, hasten on with your story, which is not a bodle the waur for me. The
maiden saw the shape of her brother, fell into a faint, or a trance, and
the neighbours came flocking in--gang on with your tale, young man, and
dinna be affronted because an auld woman helped ye wi 't."
"It is hardly known," I resumed, "how long Phemie Irving continued in a
state of insensibility. The morning was far advanced, when a
neighbouring maiden found her seated in an old chair, as white as
monumental marble; her hair, about which she had always been solicitous,
loosened from its curls, and hanging disordered over her neck and bosom,
her hands and forehead. The maiden touched the one, and kissed the
other; they were as cold as snow; and her eyes, wide open, were fixed on
her brother's empty chair, with the intensity of gaze of one who had
witnessed the appearance of a spirit. She seemed insensible of any one's
presence, and sat fixed and still and motionless. The maiden, alarmed at
her looks, thus addressed her:--'Phemie, lass, Phemie Irving! Dear me,
but this be awful! I have come to tell ye that seven of your pet sheep
have escaped drowning in the water; for Corrie, sae quiet and sae gentle
yestreen, is rolling and dashing frae bank to bank this morning. Dear
me, woman, dinna let the loss of the world's gear bereave ye of your
senses. I would rather make ye a present of a dozen mug-ewes of the
Tinwald brood myself; and now I think on 't, if ye'll send over Elphin, I
will help him hame with them in the gloaming myself. So, Phemie, woman,
be comforted.'
"At the mention of her brother's name she cried out, 'Where is he? Oh,
where is he?' gazed wildly round, and, shuddering from head to foot, fell
senseless on the floor. Other inhabitants of the valley, alarmed by the
sudden swell of the river, which had augmented to a torrent, deep and
impassable, now came in to inquire if any loss had been sustained, for
numbers of sheep and teds of hay had been observed floating down about
the dawn of the morning. They assisted in reclaiming the unhappy maiden
from her swoon; but insensibility was joy compared to the sorrow to which
she awakened. 'They have ta'en him away, they have ta'en him away,' she
chanted, in a tone of delirious pathos; 'him that was whiter and fairer
than the lily on Lyddal Lee. They have long sought, and they have long
sued, and they had the power to prevail against my prayers at last. They
have ta'en him away; the flower is plucked from among the weeds, and the
dove is slain amid a flock of ravens. They came with shout, and they
came with song, and they spread the charm, and they placed the spell, and
the baptised brow has been bowed down to the unbaptised hand. They have
ta'en him away, they have ta'en him away; he was too lovely, and too
good, and too noble, to bless us with his continuance on earth; for what
are the sons of men compared to him?--the light of the moonbeam to the
morning sun, the glowworm to the eastern star. They have ta'en him away,
the invisible dwellers of the earth. I saw them come on him with
shouting and with singing, and they charmed him where he sat, and away
they bore him; and the horse he rode was never shod with iron, nor owned
before the mastery of human hand. They have ta'en him away over the
water, and over the wood, and over the hill. I got but ae look of his
bonnie blue ee, but ae; ae look. But as I have endured what never maiden
endured, so will I undertake what never maiden undertook, I will win him
from them all. I know the invisible ones of the earth; I have heard
their wild and wondrous music in the wild woods, and there shall a
christened maiden seek him, and achieve his deliverance.' She paused,
and glancing around a circle of condoling faces, down which the tears
were dropping like rain, said, in a calm and altered but still delirious
tone: 'Why do you weep, Mary Halliday? and why do you weep, John Graeme?
Ye think that Elphin Irving--oh, it's a bonnie, bonnie name, and dear to
many a maiden's heart, as well as mine--ye think he is drowned in Corrie;
and ye will seek in the deep, deep pools for the bonnie, bonnie corse,
that ye may weep over it, as it lies in its last linen, and lay it, amid
weeping and wailing in the dowie kirkyard. Ye may seek, but ye shall
never find; so leave me to trim up my hair, and prepare my dwelling, and
make myself ready to watch for the hour of his return to upper earth.'
And she resumed her household labours with an alacrity which lessened not
the sorrow of her friends.
"Meanwhile the rumour flew over the vale that Elphin Irving was drowned
in Corriewater. Matron and maid, old man and young, collected suddenly
along the banks of the river, which now began to subside to its natural
summer limits, and commenced their search; interrupted every now and then
by calling from side to side, and from pool to pool, and by exclamations
of sorrow for this misfortune. The search was fruitless: five sheep,
pertaining to the flock which he conducted to pasture, were found drowned
in one of the deep eddies; but the river was still too brown, from the
soil of its moorland sources, to enable them to see what its deep
shelves, its pools, and its overhanging and hazelly banks concealed. They
remitted further search till the stream should become pure; and old man
taking old man aside, began to whisper about the mystery of the youth's
disappearance; old women laid their lips to the ears of their coevals,
and talked of Elphin Irving's fairy parentage, and his having been
dropped by an unearthly hand into a Christian cradle. The young men and
maids conversed on other themes; they grieved for the loss of the friend
and the lover, and while the former thought that a heart so kind and true
was not left in the vale, the latter thought, as maidens will, on his
handsome person, gentle manners, and merry blue eye, and speculated with
a sigh on the time when they might have hoped a return for their love.
They were soon joined by others who had heard the wild and delirious
language of his sister: the old belief was added to the new assurance,
and both again commented upon by minds full of superstitious feeling, and
hearts full of supernatural fears, till the youths and maidens of
Corrievale held no more love trysts for seven days and nights, lest, like
Elphin Irving, they should be carried away to augment the ranks of the
unchristened chivalry.
"It was curious to listen to the speculations of the peasantry. 'For my
part,' said a youth, 'if I were sure that poor Elphin escaped from that
perilous water, I would not give the fairies a pound of hiplock wool for
their chance of him. There has not been a fairy seen in the land since
Donald Cargil, the Cameronian, conjured them into the Solway for playing
on their pipes during one of his nocturnal preachings on the hip of the
Burnswark hill.'
"'Preserve me, bairn,' said an old woman, justly exasperated at the
incredulity of her nephew, 'if ye winna believe what I both heard and saw
at the moonlight end of Craigyburnwood on a summer night, rank after rank
of the fairy folk, ye'll at least believe a douce man and a ghostly
professor, even the late minister of Tinwaldkirk. His only son--I mind
the lad weel, with his long yellow locks and his bonnie blue eyes--when I
was but a gilpie of a lassie, _he_ was stolen away from off the horse at
his father's elbow, as they crossed that false and fearsome water, even
Locherbriggflow, on the night of the Midsummer fair of Dumfries. Ay, ay,
who can doubt the truth of that? Have not the godly inhabitants of
Almsfieldtown and Tinwaldkirk seen the sweet youth riding at midnight, in
the midst of the unhallowed troop, to the sound of flute and of dulcimer,
and though meikle they prayed, naebody tried to achieve his deliverance?'
"'I have heard it said by douce folk and sponsible,' interrupted another,
'that every seven years the elves and fairies pay kane, or make an
offering of one of their children, to the grand enemy of salvation, and
that they are permitted to purloin one of the children of men to present
to the fiend--a more acceptable offering, I'll warrant, than one of their
own infernal brood that are Satan's sib allies, and drink a drop of the
deil's blood every May morning. And touching this lost lad, ye all ken
his mother was a hawk of an uncanny nest, a second cousin of Kate Kimmer,
of Barfloshan, as rank a witch as ever rode on ragwort. Ay, sirs, what's
bred in the bone is ill to come out of the flesh.'
"On these and similar topics, which a peasantry full of ancient tradition
and enthusiasm and superstition readily associate with the commonest
occurrences of life, the people of Corrievale continued to converse till
the fall of evening, when each, seeking their home, renewed again the
wondrous subject, and illustrated it with all that popular belief and
poetic imagination could so abundantly supply.
"The night which followed this melancholy day was wild with wind and
rain; the river came down broader and deeper than before, and the
lightning, flashing by fits over the green woods of Corrie, showed the
ungovernable and perilous flood sweeping above its banks. It happened
that a farmer, returning from one of the border fairs, encountered the
full swing of the storm; but mounted on an excellent horse, and mantled
from chin to heel in a good grey plaid, beneath which he had the further
security of a thick greatcoat, he sat dry in his saddle, and proceeded in
the anticipated joy of a subsided tempest and a glowing morning sun. As
he entered the long grove, or rather remains of the old Galwegian forest,
which lines for some space the banks of the Corriewater, the storm began
to abate, the wind sighed milder and milder among the trees, and here and
there a star, twinkling momentarily through the sudden rack of the
clouds, showed the river raging from bank to brae. As he shook the
moisture from his clothes, he was not without a wish that the day would
dawn, and that he might be preserved on a road which his imagination
beset with greater perils than the raging river; for his superstitious
feeling let loose upon his path elf and goblin, and the current
traditions of the district supplied very largely to his apprehension the
ready materials of fear.
"Just as he emerged from the wood, where a fine sloping bank, covered
with short greensward, skirts the limit of the forest, his horse made a
full pause, snorted, trembled, and started from side to side, stooped his
head, erected his ears, and seemed to scrutinise every tree and bush. The
rider, too, it may be imagined, gazed round and round, and peered warily
into every suspicious-looking place. His dread of a supernatural
visitation was not much allayed when he observed a female shape seated on
the ground at the root of a huge old oak-tree, which stood in the centre
of one of those patches of verdant sward, known by the name of 'fairy
rings,' and avoided by all peasants who wish to prosper. A long thin
gleam of eastern daylight enabled him to examine accurately the being
who, in this wild place and unusual hour, gave additional terror to this
haunted spot. She was dressed in white from the neck to the knees; her
arms, long and round and white, were perfectly bare; her head, uncovered,
allowed her long hair to descend in ringlet succeeding ringlet, till the
half of her person was nearly concealed in the fleece. Amidst the whole,
her hands were constantly busy in shedding aside the tresses which
interposed between her steady and uninterrupted gaze down a line of old
road which wound among the hills to an ancient burial-ground.
"As the traveller continued to gaze, the figure suddenly rose, and,
wringing the rain from her long locks, paced round and round the tree,
chanting in a wild and melancholy manner an equally wild and delirious
song.