The small bird's head is under its wing,
The deer sleeps on the grass;
The moon comes out, and the stars shine down,
The dew gleams like the glass:
There is no sound in the world so wide,
Save the sound of the smitten brass,
With the merry cittern and the pipe
Of the fairies as they pass.
But oh! the fire maun burn and burn,
And the hour is gone, and will never return.
The green hill cleaves, and forth, with a bound,
Comes elf and elfin steed;
The moon dives down in a golden cloud,
The stars grow dim with dread;
But a light is running along the earth,
So of heaven's they have no need:
O'er moor and moss with a shout they pass,
And the word is spur and speed--
But the fire maun burn, and I maun quake,
And the hour is gone that will never come back.
And when they came to Craigyburnwood,
The Queen of the Fairies spoke:
"Come, bind your steeds to the rushes so green,
And dance by the haunted oak:
I found the acorn on Heshbon Hill,
In the nook of a palmer's poke,
A thousand years since; here it grows!"
And they danced till the greenwood shook:
But oh! the fire, the burning fire,
The longer it burns, it but blazes the higher.
"I have won me a youth," the Elf Queen said,
"The fairest that earth may see;
This night I have won young Elph Irving
My cupbearer to be.
His service lasts but seven sweet years,
And his wage is a kiss of me."
And merrily, merrily, laughed the wild elves
Round Corris's greenwood tree.
But oh! the fire it glows in my brain,
And the hour is gone, and comes not again.
The Queen she has whispered a secret word,
"Come hither my Elphin sweet,
And bring that cup of the charmed wine,
Thy lips and mine to weet."
But a brown elf shouted a loud, loud shout,
"Come, leap on your coursers fleet,
For here comes the smell of some baptised flesh,
And the sounding of baptised feet."
But oh! the fire that burns, and maun burn;
For the time that is gone will never return.
On a steed as white as the new-milked milk,
The Elf Queen leaped with a bound,
And young Elphin a steed like December snow
'Neath him at the word he found.
But a maiden came, and her christened arms
She linked her brother around,
And called on God, and the steed with a snort
Sank into the gaping ground.
But the fire maun burn, and I maun quake,
And the time that is gone will no more come back.
And she held her brother, and lo! he grew
A wild bull waked in ire;
And she held her brother, and lo! he changed
To a river roaring higher;
And she held her brother, and he became
A flood of the raging fire;
She shrieked and sank, and the wild elves laughed
Till the mountain rang and mire.
But oh! the fire yet burns in my brain,
And the hour is gone, and comes not again.
"O maiden, why waxed thy faith so faint,
Thy spirit so slack and slaw?
Thy courage kept good till the flame waxed wud,
Then thy might begun to thaw;
Had ye kissed him with thy christened lip,
Ye had wan him frae 'mang us a'.
Now bless the fire, the elfin fire,
That made thee faint and fa';
Now bless the fire, the elfin fire,
The longer it burns it blazes the higher."
"At the close of this unusual strain, the figure sat down on the grass,
and proceeded to bind up her long and disordered tresses, gazing along
the old and unfrequented road. 'Now God be my helper,' said the
traveller, who happened to be the laird of Johnstone Bank, 'can this be a
trick of the fiend, or can it be bonnie Phemie Irving who chants this
dolorous sang? Something sad has befallen that makes her seek her seat
in this eerie nook amid the darkness and tempest; through might from
aboon I will go on and see.' And the horse, feeling something of the
owner's reviving spirit in the application of spur-steel, bore him at
once to the foot of the tree. The poor delirious maiden uttered a yell
of piercing joy as she beheld him, and, with the swiftness of a creature
winged, linked her arms round the rider's waist, and shrieked till the
woods rang. 'Oh, I have ye now, Elphin, I have ye now,' and she strained
him to her bosom with a convulsive grasp. 'What ails ye, my bonnie
lass?' said the laird of Johnstone Bank, his fears of the supernatural
vanishing when he beheld her sad and bewildered look. She raised her
eyes at the sound, and seeing a strange face, her arms slipped their
hold, and she dropped with a groan on the ground.
"The morning had now fairly broke; the flocks shook the rain from their
sides, the shepherds hastened to inspect their charges, and a thin blue
smoke began to stream from the cottages of the valley into the
brightening air. The laird carried Phemie Irving in his arms, till he
observed two shepherds ascending from one of the loops of Corriewater,
bearing the lifeless body of her brother. They had found him whirling
round and round in one of the numerous eddies, and his hands, clutched
and filled with wool, showed that he had lost his life in attempting to
save the flock of his sister. A plaid was laid over the body, which,
along with the unhappy maiden in a half-lifeless state, was carried into
a cottage, and laid in that apartment distinguished among the peasantry
by the name of the chamber. While the peasant's wife was left to take
care of Phemie, old man and matron and maid had collected around the
drowned youth, and each began to relate the circumstances of his death,
when the door suddenly opened, and his sister, advancing to the corpse,
with a look of delirious serenity, broke out into a wild laugh and said:
'Oh, it is wonderful, it's truly wonderful! That bare and death-cold
body, dragged from the darkest pool of Corrie, with its hands filled with
fine wool, wears the perfect similitude of my own Elphin! I'll tell
ye--the spiritual dwellers of the earth, the fairyfolk of our evening
tale, have stolen the living body, and fashioned this cold and inanimate
clod to mislead your pursuit. In common eyes this seems all that Elphin
Irving would be, had he sunk in Corriewater; but so it seems not to me.
Ye have sought the living soul, and ye have found only its garment. But
oh, if ye had beheld him, as I beheld him to-night, riding among the
elfin troop, the fairest of them all; had you clasped him in your arms,
and wrestled for him with spirits and terrible shapes from the other
world, till your heart quailed and your flesh was subdued, then would ye
yield no credit to the semblance which this cold and apparent flesh bears
to my brother. But hearken! On Hallowmass Eve, when the spiritual
people are let loose on earth for a season, I will take my stand in the
burial-ground of Corrie; and when my Elphin and his unchristened troop
come past, with the sound of all their minstrelsy, I will leap on him and
win him, or perish for ever.'
"All gazed aghast on the delirious maiden, and many of her auditors gave
more credence to her distempered speech than to the visible evidence
before them. As she turned to depart, she looked round, and suddenly
sank upon the body, with tears streaming from her eyes, and sobbed out,
'My brother! Oh, my brother!' She was carried out insensible, and again
recovered; but relapsed into her ordinary delirium, in which she
continued till the Hallow Eve after her brother's burial. She was found
seated in the ancient burial-ground, her back against a broken
gravestone, her locks white with frost-rime, watching with intensity of
look the road to the kirkyard; but the spirit which gave life to the
fairest form of all the maids of Annandale was fled for ever."
Such is the singular story which the peasants know by the name of "Elphin
Irving, the Fairies' Cupbearer"; and the title, in its fullest and most
supernatural sense, still obtains credence among the industrious and
virtuous dames of the romantic vale of Corrie.