SCENE I.--_A Street--the Market-place_.

WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS AND OF SCOTLAND.

HISTORICAL, TRADITIONARY, & IMAGINATIVE.

WITH A GLOSSARY.

REVISED BY ALEXANDER LEIGHTON,

_One of the Original Editors and Contributors_.

VOL. XXIV.

LONDON: WALTER SCOTT, 14 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, AND

NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE. 1884

CONTENTS.

THE MINSTREL'S TALES--

I. EDMUND AND HELEN, (_John Mackay Wilson_), 5

II. THE ROMAUNT OF SIR PEREGRINE AND THE

LADY ETHELINE,...... (_Alexander Leighton_), 43

III. THE LEGEND OF ALLERLEY HALL, _(Alexander

Leighton_),................................. 52

IV. THE LEGEND OF THE LADY KATHARINE,

(_Alexander Leighton_),..................... 57

V. THE BALLAD OF AILIE FAA,.......(_Alexander

Leighton_),................................. 67

VI. THE LEGEND OF THE FAIR EMERGILDE,

(_Alexander Leighton_),..................... 72

VII. THE ROMAUNT OF THE CASTLE OF WEIR,

(_Alexander Leighton_),..................... 78

VIII. THE ROMAUNT OF ST. MARY'S WYND,

(_Alexander Leighton_),..................... 87

IX. THE LEGEND OF MARY LEE,.......(_Alexander

_Leighton_),................................ 98

X. THE BALLAD OF AGE AND YOUTH,...(_Alexander

Leighton_),................................. 107

XI. THE LEGEND OF CRAIGULLAN,.....(_Alexander

_Leighton_),................................ 113

XII. THE HERMIT OF THE HILLS,...(_John Mackay

Wilson_),................................... 119

XIII. THE BALLAD OF RUMBOLLOW,....(_Alexander

Leighton_),................................. 123

XIV. THE LEGEND OF THE BURNING OF MRS. JAMPHRAY,

................(_Alexander Leighton_),..... 133

XV. THE BALLAD OF BALLOGIE'S DAUGHTERS,........

(_Alexander Leighton_),..................... 141

XVI. THE LEGEND OF DOWIELEE,........(_Alexander

Leighton_),................................. 145

XVII. THE BALLAD OF MAID MARION,....(_Alexander

Leighton_),.................................. 154

XVIII. THE BALLAD OF ROSEALLAN CASTLE,.........

(_Alexander Leighton_),...................... 158

XIX. THE BALLAD OF THE TOURNAY,.....(_Alexander

Leighton_),.................................. 160

XX. THE BALLAD OF GOLDEN COUNSEL,...(_Alexander

Leighton_),.................................. 164

XXI. THE BALLAD OF MATRIMONY,......._(Alexander

_Leighton_),................................. 168

XXII. THE SONG OF ROSALIE, .........(_Alexander

Leighton_),.................................. 171

XXIII. THE BALLAD OF THE WORLD'S VANITY,.......

(_Alexander Leighton_),...................... 173

XXIV. THE SIEGE: A DRAMATIC TALE,........(_John

_Mackay Wilson_),............................ 177

XXV. FAREWELL TO A PLACE ON THE BORDERS,.......

(_Rev. W.G._),............................... 207

GLOSSARY,...................................... 211

GENERAL INDEX,................................. 251

WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS, AND OF SCOTLAND.

THE MINSTREL'S TALES.

I.

EDMUND AND HELEN.

CANTO FIRST.

Come, sit thee by me, love, and thou shalt hear

A tale may win a smile and claim a tear--

A plain and simple story told in rhyme,

As sang the minstrels of the olden time.

No idle Muse I'll needlessly invoke--

No patron's aid, to steer me from the rock

Of cold neglect round which oblivion lies;

But, loved one, I will look into thine eyes,

From which young poesy first touched my soul,

And bade the burning words in numbers roll;--

They were the light in which I learned to sing;

And still to thee will kindling fancy cling--

Glow at thy smile, as when, in younger years,

I've seen thee smiling through thy maiden tears,

Like a fair floweret bent with morning dew,

While sunbeams kissed its leaves of loveliest hue.

Thou wert the chord and spirit of my lyre--

Thy love the living voice that breathed--"aspire!"--

That smoothed ambition's steep and toilsome height,

And in its darkest paths was round me, light.

Then, sit thee by me, love, and list the strain,

Which, but for thee, had still neglected lain.

II.

Didst thou e'er mark, within a beauteous vale,

Where sweetest wild-flowers scent the summer gale,

And the blue Tweed, in silver windings, glides,

Kissing the bending branches on its sides,

A snow-white cottage, one that well might seem

A poet's picture of contentment's dream?

Two chestnuts broad and tall embower the spot,

And bend in beauty o'er the peaceful cot;

The creeping ivy clothes its roof with green,

While round the door the perfumed woodbine's seen

Shading a rustic arch; and smiling near,

Like rainbow fragments, blooms a rich parterre;

Grey, naked crags--a steep and pine-clad hill--

A mountain chain and tributary rill--

A distant hamlet and an ancient wood,

Begirt the valley where the cottage stood.

That cottage was a young Enthusiast's home,

Ere blind ambition lured his steps to roam;

He was a wayward, bold, and ardent boy,

At once his parents' grief--their hope and joy.

Men called him Edmund.--Oft his mother wept

Beside the couch where yet her schoolboy slept,

As, starting in his slumbers, he would seem

To speak of things of which none else might dream.

III.

Adown the vale a stately mansion rose,

With arboured lawns, like visions of repose

Serene in summer loveliness, and fair

As if no passion e'er was dweller there

Save innocence and love; for they alone

Within the smiling vale of peace were known.

But fairer and more lovely far than all,

Like Spring's first flowers, was Helen of the Hall--

The blue-eyed daughter of the mansion's lord,

And living image of a wife adored,

But now no more; for, ere a lustrum shed

Its smiles and sunshine o'er the infant's head,

Death, like a passing spirit, touched the brow

Of the young mother; and the father now

Lived as a dreamer on his daughter's face,

That seemed a mirror wherein he could trace

The long lost past--the eyes of love and light,

Which his fond soul had worshipped, ere the night

Of death and sorrow sealed those eyes in gloom--

Darkened his joys, and whelmed them in the tomb.

IV.

Young Edmund and fair Helen, from the years

Of childhood's golden joys and passing tears,

Were friends and playmates; and together they

Across the lawn, or through the woods, would stray.

While he was wont to pull the lilies fair,

And weave them, with the primrose, round her hair;--

Plait toys of rushes, or bedeck the thorn

With daisies sparkling with the dews of morn;

While she, these simple gifts would grateful take---

Love for their own and for the giver's sake.

Or, they would chase the butterfly and bee

From flower to flower, shouting in childish glee;

Or hunt the cuckoo's echo through the glade,

Chasing the wandering sound from shade to shade.

Or, if she conned the daily task in vain,

A word from Edmund made the lesson plain.

V.

Thus years rolled by in innocence and truth,

And playful childhood melted into youth,

As dies the dawn in rainbows, ray by ray

In blushing beauty stealing into day.

And thus too passed, unnoticed and unknown,

The sports of childhood, fleeting one by one.

Like broken dreams, of which we neither know

From whence they come, nor mark we when they go.

Yet would they stray where Tweed's fair waters glide,

As we have wandered--fondly side by side;

And when dun gloaming's shadows o'er it stole

As silence visible--until the soul

Grew tranquil as the scene--then would they trace

The deep'ning shadows on the river's face--

A voiceless world, where glimmered, downward far,

Inverted mountain, tree, and cloud, and star.

'Twas Edmund's choicest scene, and he would dwell

On it, till he grew eloquent, and tell

Its beauties o'er and o'er, until the maid

Knew every gorgeous tint and mellowed shade

Which evening from departed sunbeams threw,

And as a painter on the waters drew.

VI.

Or, when brown Autumn touched the leaves with age,

The heavens became the young Enthusiast's page

Wherein his fancy read; and they would then,

Hand locked in hand, forsake the haunts of men;

Communing with the silver queen of night,

Which, as a spirit, shone upon their sight,

Full orbed in maiden glory; and her beams

Fell on their hearts, like distant shadowed gleams

Of future joy and undefinèd bliss--

Half of another world and half of this.

Then, rapt in dreams, oft would he gazing stand,

Grasping in his her fair and trembling hand,

And thus exclaim, "Helen, when I am gone,

When that bright moon shall shine on you alone,

And but _one_ shadow on the river fall--

Say, wilt thou then these heavenly hours recall?

Or read, upon the fair moon's smiling brow

The words we've uttered--those we utter now?

Or think, though seas divide us, I may be

Gazing upon that glorious orb with thee

At the same moment--hearing, in its rays,

The hallowed whisperings of early days!

For, oh, there is a language in its calm

And holy light, that hath a power to balm

The troubled spirit, and like memory's glass,

Make bygone happiness before us pass."

VII.

Or, they would gaze upon the evening star,

Blazing in beauteous glory from afar,

Dazzling its kindred spheres, and bright o'er all,

Like LOVE on the Eternal's coronal;

Until their eyes its rays reflected, threw

In glances eloquent--though words were few;

For well I ween, it is enough to feel

The power of such an hour upon us steal,

As if a holy spirit filled the air,

And nought but love and silence might be there--

Or whispers, which, like Philomel's soft strains,

Are only heard to tell that silence reigns.

Yet, he at times would break the hallowed spell,

And thus in eager rhapsodies would dwell

Upon the scene: "O'er us rolls world on world,

Like the Almighty's regal robes unfurled;--

O'erwhelming, dread, unbounded, and sublime--

Eternity's huge arms that girdle time

And roll around it, marking out the years

Of this dark spot of sin amidst the spheres!

For, oh, while gazing upon worlds so fair,

'Tis hard to think that sin has entered there;

That those bright orbs which now in glory swim,

Should e'er for man's ingratitude be dim!

Bewildered, lost, I cast mine eyes abroad,

And read on every star the name of GOD!

The thought o'erwhelms me!--Yet, while gazing on

Yon star of love, I cannot feel alone;

For wheresoe'er my after lot may be,

That evening star shall speak of home and thee.

Fancy will view it o'er yon mountain's brow

That sleeps in solitude before us now;

While memory's lamp shall kindle at its rays,

And light the happy scenes of other days--

Such scenes as this; and then the very breeze

That with it bears the odour of the trees,

And gathers up the meadow's sweet perfume,

From off my clouded brow, shall chase the gloom

Of sick'ning absence; for the scented air

To me wafts back remembrance, as the prayer

Of lisping childhood is remembered yet,

Like living words, which we can ne'er forget."

VIII.

Till now, their life had been one thought of joy,

A vision time was destined to destroy--

As dies the dewy network on the thorn,

Before the sunbeams, with the mists of morn.

Thus far their lives in one smooth current ran--

They loved, yet knew not when that love began,

And hardly knew they loved; though it had grown

A portion of their being, and had thrown

Its spirit o'er them; for its shoots had sprung

Up in their hearts, while yet their hearts were young;

Even like the bright leaves of some wandering seed,

Which Autumn's breezes bear across the mead,

O'er naked wild and mountain, till the wind,

Dropping its gift, a stranger flower we find.

And with their years the kindling feeling grew,

But grew unnoticed, and no change they knew;

For it had grown, even as a bud displays

Its opening beauties--one on which we gaze,

Yet note no seeming change from hour to hour,

But find, at length, the bud a lovely flower.

IX.

Thus, thrice six golden summers o'er them fled,

And on their hearts their rip'ning influence shed;

Till one fair eve, when from the gorgeous west,

Cloud upon cloud in varied splendour pressed

Around the setting sun, which blinding shone

On the horizon like its Maker's throne,

Till veiled in glory, and its parting ray

Fell as a blessing on the closing day;

Or, like the living smile of Nature's God

Upon his creatures, shedding peace abroad.

The early lark had ceased its evening song,

And silence reigned amidst the feathered throng,

Save where the chaffinch, with unvarying strain,

Its short, sweet line of music trilled again;

Or where the stock-dove, from the neighbouring grove,

Welcomed the twilight with the voice of love:

Then Edmund wandered by the trysting-tree,

Where, at that hour, the maid was wont to be;

But now she came not. Deepening shade on shade,

The night crept round him; still he lonely strayed,

Gazed on the tree till grey its foliage grew,

And stars marked midnight, ere he slow withdrew.

Another evening came--a third passed on--

And wondering, fearing, still he stood alone,

Trembling and gazing on her father's hall,

Where lights were glittering as a festival;

And, as with cautious step he ventured near,

Sounds of glad music burst upon his ear,

And figures glided in the circling dance,

While wild his love and poverty at once

Flashed through his bursting heart, and smote him now

As if a thunderbolt had scorched his brow,

And scathed his very spirit; as he stood,

Mute as despair--the ghost of solitude!

X.

Strange guests were revelling at the princely hall--

Proud peers and ladies fair; but, chief of all,

A rich and haughty knight, from Beaumont side,

Who came to woo fair Helen as his bride;

Or rather from her father ask her hand,

And woo no more, but deem consent command.

He too was young, high-born, and bore a name

Sounding with honours bought, though not with fame;

And the consent he sought her father gave,

Nor feared the daughter of his love would brave

In aught his wishes, or oppose his will;

For she had ever sought it, as the rill

Seeketh the valley or the ocean's breast;

And ere his very wishes were expressed,

She strove to trace their meaning in his eyes,

Even as a seaman readeth on the skies

The coming breeze, the calm, or brooding gale,

Then spreads the canvas wide, or reefs the sail.

Nor did he doubt that still her heart was free

As the fleet mountain deer, which as a sea

The wilderness surrounds; for she had grown

Up as a desert flower, that he alone

Had watched and cherished; and the blinding pride

Of wealth and ancestry had served to hide

From him alone, what long within the vale

Had been the rustic gossip's evening tale.

That such presumptuous love could e'er employ

The secret fancies of the cottage boy,

He would have held impossible, or smiled

At the bold madness of a thought so wild---

Reading his daughter's spirit by his own,

Which reared an ancient name as virtue's throne,

And only stooped to look on meaner things,

Whose honours echoed not the breath of kings.

XI.

Wild were the passions, fierce the anguish now,

Which tore the very soul, and clothed the brow

Of the Enthusiast; while gaunt despair

Its heavy, cold, and iron hand laid bare,

And in its grasp of torture clenched his heart,

Till, one by one, the life-drops seemed to start

In agony unspeakable: within

His breast its freezing shadow--dark as sin,

Gloomy as death, and desolate as hell--

Like starless midnight on his spirit fell,

Burying his soul in darkness; while his love,

Fierce as a whirlwind, in its madness strove

With stern despair, as on the field of wrath

The wounded war-horse, panting, strives with death.

Then as the conflict weakened, hope would dash

Across his bosom, like the death-winged flash

That flees before the thunder; yet its light

Lived but a moment, leaving deeper night

Around the strife of passions; and again

The struggle maddened, and the hope was vain.

XII.

He heard the maidens of the valley say,

How they upon their lady's wedding-day

Would strew her path with flowers, and o'er the lawn

Join in the dance, to eve from early dawn;

While, with a smile and half deriding glance,

Some sought him as their partner in the dance:

And peasant railers, as he passed them by,

Laughed, whispered, laughed again, and mocked a sigh.

But he disdained them; and his heaving breast

Had no room left to feel their vulgar jest,

For it ran o'er with agony and scorn,

As water dropping on a rock was borne.

XIII.

Twas a fair summer night, and the broad moon

Sailed in calm glory through the skies of June,

Pouring on earth its pale and silv'ry light,

Till roughest forms were softened to the sight;

And on the western hills its faintest ray

Kissed the yet ruddy streaks of parted day.

The stars were few, and, twinkling, dimly shone,

For the bright moon in beauty reigned alone.

One cloud lay sleeping 'neath the breathless sky,

Bathed in the limpid light; while, as the sigh

Of secret love, silent as shadows glide,

The soft wind played among the leafy pride

Of the green trees, and scarce the aspen shook;

A babbling voice was heard from every brook,

And down the vale, in murmurs low and long,

Tweed poured its ancient and unwearied song.

Before, behind, around, afar, and near,

The wakeful landrail's watchword met the ear.

Then Edmund leaned against the hallowed tree,

Whose shade had been their temple, and where he

Had carved their names in childhood, and they yet

Upon the rind were visible. They met

Beneath its branches, spreading as a bower,

For months--for years; and the impassioned hour

Of silent, deep deliciousness and bliss,

Pure as an angel's, fervid as the kiss

Of a young mother on her first-born's brow,

Fled in their depth of joy they knew not how;

Even as the Boreal meteor mocks the eye,

Living a moment on the gilded sky,

And dying in the same, ere we can trace

Its golden hues, its form, or hiding-place.

But now to him each moment dragged a chain,

And time itself seemed weary. The fair plain,

Where the broad river in its pride was seen,

With stately woods and fields of loveliest green,

To him was now a wilderness; and even

Upon the everlasting face of heaven

A change had passed--its very light was changed,

And shed forth sickness; for he stood estranged

From all that he had loved, and every scene

Spoke of despair where love and joy had been.

Thus desolate he stood, when, lo! a sound

Of voices and gay laughter echoed round.

Then straight a party issued from the wood,

And ere he marked them all before him stood.

He gazed, he startled, shook, exclaimed aloud,

"Helen!" then burst away, and as a shroud

The sombre trees concealed him; but a cry

Of sudden anguish echoed a reply

To his wild word of misery, though he

Heard not its tone of heart-pierced agony.

She, whom his fond soul worshipped as its bride,

He saw before him by her wooer's side,

'Midst other proud ones. 'Twas a sight like death--

Death on his very heart. The balmy breath

Of the calm night struck on his brow with fire;

For each fierce passion, burning in its ire,

Raged in his bosom as a with'ring flame,

And scarce he knew he madly breathed her name;

But, as a bark before the tempest tost,

Rushed from the scene, exclaiming wildly, "Lost!"

XIV.

Two days of sorrow slowly round had crept,

And Helen lonely in her chamber wept,

Shunning her father's guests, and shunning, too,

The glance of rage and scorn which now he threw

Upon the child that e'er to him had been

Dear as immortal hope, when o'er the scene

Of human life, death, slow as twilight, lowers.

She was the sunlight of his widowed hours--

The all he loved, the glory of his eye,

His hope by day, the sole remaining tie

That linked him with the world; and rudely now

That link seemed broken; and upon his brow

Wrath lay in gloom; while, from his very feet,

He spurned the being he was wont to meet

With outstretched arms of fondness and of pride,

While all the father's feelings in a tide

Of transport gushed. But now she wept alone,

Shunning and shunned; and still the bitter tone

In which she heard her Edmund breathe her name,

Rang in her heaving bosom; and the flame

That lit his eye with frenzy and despair,

Upon her naked spirit seemed to glare

With an accusing glance; yet, while her tears

Were flowing silently, as hours and years

Flow down the tide of time, one whom she loved,

And who from childhood's days had faithful proved,

Approached her weeping, and within her hand

A packet placed, as Edmund's last command!

Wild throbbed her heart, and tears a moment fled,

While, tremblingly, she broke the seal, and read;

Then wept, and sobbed aloud, and read again,

These farewell words, of passion and of pain.

XV.

EDMUND'S LETTER.

Helen!--_farewell_!--I write but could not speak

That parting word of bitterness; the cheek

Grows pale when the tongue utters it; the knell

Which tells "the grave is ready!" and doth swell

On the dull wind, tolling--"the dead--the dead!"

Sounds not more desolate. It is a dread

And fearful thing to be of hope bereft,

As if the soul itself had died, and left

The body living--feeling in its breast

The death of deaths, its everlasting guest!

Such is my cheerless bosom; 'tis a tomb

Where Hope lies buried in eternal gloom,

And Love mourns o'er it--yes, my Helen--Love--

Like the sad wailings of a widowed dove

Over its rifled nest. Yet blame me not,

That I, a lowly peasant's son, forgot

The gulf between our stations. Could I gaze

Upon the glorious sun, and see its rays

Fling light and beauty round me, and remain

Dead to its power, while on the lighted plain

The humblest weed looked up in love, and spread

Its leaves before it! The vast sea doth wed

The simple brook; the bold lark soars on high,

Bounds from its humble nest and woos the sky;

Yea, the frail ivy seeks and loves to cling

Round the proud branches of the forest's king:

Then blame me not;--thou wilt not, canst not blame;

Our sorrows, hopes, and joys have been the same--

Been one from childhood; but the dream is past,

And stern realities at length have cast

Our fates asunder. Yet, when thou shalt see

Proud ones before thee bend the suppliant knee,

And kiss thy garment while they woo thy hand,

Spurn not the peasant boy who dared to stand

Before thee, in the rapture of his heart,

And woo thee as thine equal. Courtly art

May find more fitting phrase to charm thine ear,

But, dearest, mayst thou find them as sincere!

And, oh! by every past and hallowed hour!

By the lone tree that formed our trysting bower!

By the fair moon, and all the stars of night,

That round us threw love's holiest, dearest light!

By infant passion's first and burning kiss!

By every witness of departed bliss!

Forget me not, loved one! forget me not!

For, oh, to know that I am not forgot--

That thou wilt still retain within thy breast

Some thought of him who loved you first and best--

To know but this, would in my bosom be

Like one faint star seen from the pathless sea

By the bewildered mariner. Once more,

Maid of my heart, farewell! A distant shore

Must be thy Edmund's home--though where the soul

Is as a wilderness; from pole to pole

The desolate in heart may ceaseless roam,

Nor find on earth that spot of heaven--a home!

But be thou happy!--be my Helen blessed!--

_Thou wilt be happy_! Oh! those words have pressed

Thoughts on my brain on which I may not dwell!

Again, farewell!--my Helen, fare-thee-well!

XVI.

A gallant bark was gliding o'er the seas,

And, like a living mass, before the breeze,

Swept on majestic, as a thing of mind

Whose spirit held communion with the wind,

Rearing and rising o'er the billowed tide,

As a proud steed doth toss its head in pride.

Upon its deck young Edmund silent stood--

A son of sadness; and his mournful mood

Grew day by day, while wave on wave rolled by,

And he their homeward current with a sigh

Followed with fondness. Still the vessel bore

The wanderer onward from his native shore,

Till in a distant land he lonely stood

'Midst city crowds in more than solitude.

XVII.

There long he wandered, without aim or plan,

Till _disappointment_ whispered, _Act as man!_

But though it cool the fever of the brain,

And shake, untaught, presumption's idle reign,

Bring folly to its level, and bid hope

Before the threshold of attainment stop,

Still--when its blastings thwart our every scheme,

When humblest wishes seem an idle dream,

And the bare bread of life is half denied--

Such disappointments humble not our pride;

But do they change the temper of the soul,

Change every word and action, and enrol

The nobler mind with things of basest name--

With idleness, dishonesty, and shame!

It hath its bounds, and thus far it is well

To check presumption--visions wild to quell;

Then 'tis the chastening of a father's hand--

All wholesome, all expedient. But to stand

Writhing beneath the unsparing lash, and be

Trampled on veriest earth, while misery

Stems the young blood, or makes it freeze with care,

And on the tearless eyeballs writes, _Despair!_

Oh! this is terrible!--and it doth throw

Upon the brow such early marks of woe,

That men seem old ere they have well been young;

Their fond hopes perish, and their hearts are wrung

With such dark feelings--misanthropic gloom,

Spite of their natures, haunts them to the tomb.

XVIII.

Now, Edmund 'midst the bustling throng appears

One old in wretchedness, though young in years;

For he had struggled with an angry world,

Had felt misfortune's billows o'er him hurled,

And strove against its tide--where wave meets wave

Like huge leviathans sporting wild, and lave

Their mountain breakers round with circling sweep,

Till, drawn within the vortex of their deep,

The man of ruin struggleth--but in vain;

Like dying swimmers who, in breathless pain

Despairing, strike at random!--It would be

A subject worth the schoolmen's scrutiny,

To trace each simple source from whence arose

The strong and mingled stream of human woes.

But here we may not. It is ours alone

To make the lonely wanderer's fortunes known;

And now, in plain but faithful colours dressed,

To paint the feelings of his hopeless breast.

XIX.

His withered prospects blacken--wounds await--

The grave grows sunlight to his darker fate.

All now is gall and bitterness within,

And thoughts, once sternly pure, half yield to sin.

His sickened soul, in all its native pride,

Swells 'neath the breast that tattered vestments hide

Disdained, disdaining; while men flourish, he

Still stands a stately though a withered tree.

But, Heavens! the agony of the moment when

Suspicion stamped the smiles of other men;

When friends glanced _doubts_, and proudly prudent grew,

His counsellors, and his accusers too!

XX.

Picture his pain, his misery, when first

His growing wants their proud concealment burst;

When the first tears start from his stubborn soul.

Big, burning, solitary drops, that roll

Down his pale cheek--the momentary gush

Of human weakness--till the whirlwind rush

Of pride, of shame, had dashed them from his eye,

And his swollen heart heaved mad with agony!

Then, then the pain--the infinity of feeling--

Words fail to paint its anguish. Reason, reeling,

Staggered with torture through his burning brain,

While his teeth gnashed with bitterness and pain;

Reflection grew a scorpion, speech had fled,

And all but madness and despair were dead.

XXI.

He slept to dream of death, or worse than death;

For death were bliss, and the convulsive wrath

Of living torture peace, to the dread weight

That pressed upon sensation, while the light

Of reason gleamed but horror, and strange hosts

Of hideous phantasies, like threatening ghosts.

Grotesquely mingled, preyed upon his brain:

Then would he dream of yesterdays again,

Or view to-morrow's terrors thick surround

His fancy with forebodings. While the sound

Of his own breath broke frightful on his ear,

He, bathed in icy sweat, would start in fear,

Trembling and pale; then did his glances seem

Sad as the sun's last, conscious, farewell gleam

Upon the eve of judgment. Such appear

His days and nights whom hope has ceased to cheer

But grov'llers know it not. The supple slave

Whose worthiest record is a nameless grave,

Whose truckling spirit bends and bids him kneel,

And fawn and vilely kiss a patron's heel--

Even _he_ can cast the cursed suspicious eye,

Inquire the _cause_ of _this_--the _reason why_?

And stab the sufferer. Then, the tenfold pain

To feel a gilded butterfly's disdain!--

A kicking ass, without an ass's sense,

Whose only virtue is, pounds, shillings, pence;

And now, while ills on ills beset him round,

The scorn of such the hopeless Edmund found.

XXII.

But hope returned, and on the wanderer's ear

Breathed its life-giving watchword, _Persevere_!

And torn by want, and struggling with despair,

These were his words, his fixed resolve and prayer,

"Hail perseverance, rectitude of heart,

Through life thy aid, thy conquering power impart;

Repulsed and broken, blasted, be thou ever

A portion of my spirit! Leave me never;

Firm, fixed in purpose, watchful, unsubdued,

Until my hand hath grasped the prize pursued."

CANTO SECOND.

I.

Now, list thee, love, again, and I will tell

Of other scenes, and changes which befell

The hero of our tale. A wanderer still,

Like a lost sheep upon a wintry hill--

Wild through his heart rush want and memory now,

Like whirlwinds meeting on a mountain's brow;

Slow in his veins the thin blood coldly creeps;

He starts, he dreams, and as he walks, he sleeps!

He is a stranger--houseless, fainting, poor,

Without the shelter of one friendly door;

The cold wind whistles through his garments bare,

And shakes the night dew from his freezing hair.

You weep to hear his woes, and ask me why,

When sorrows gathered and no aid was nigh,

He sought not then the cottage of his birth,

The peace and comforts of his father's hearth?

That also thou shalt hear. Scarce had he left

His parents' home, ere ruthless fortune reft

His friend and father of his little all.

Crops failed, and friends proved false; but, worse than all,

The wife of his young love, bowed down with grief

For her sole child, like an autumnal leaf

Nipped by the frosts of night, drooped day by day,

As a fair morning cloud dissolves away.

Her eyes were dimmed with tears, and o'er her cheek,

Like a faint rainbow, broke a fitful streak,

Coming and vanishing. She weaker grew,

And scarce the half of their misfortunes knew,

Until the law's stern minions, as their prey,

Relentless seized the bed on which she lay.

"My husband! Oh my son!" she faintly cried;

Sank on her pillow, and before them died.

Even they shed tears. The widowed husband, there,

Stood like the stricken ghost of dumb despair;

Then sobbed aloud, and, sinking on the bed,

Kissed the cold forehead of his sainted dead.

Then went he forth a lone and ruined man;

But, ere three moons their circling journeys ran,

Pride, like a burning poison in his breast,

Scorched up his life, and gave the ruined rest;

Yet not till he, with tottering steps and slow,

Regained the vale where Tweed's fair waters flow,

And there, where pines around the churchyard wave,

He breathed his last upon his partner's grave!

II.

I may not tell what ills o'er Edmund passed;

Enough to say that fortune smiled at last.

In the far land where the broad Ganges rolls;

Where nature's bathed in glory, and the souls

Of me alone dwell in a starless night,

While all around them glows and lives in light:

There now we find him, honoured, trusted, loved,

For from the humblest stations he had proved

Faithful in all, and trust on trust obtained,

Till, if not wealth, he _independence_ gained--

Earth's noblest blessing, and the dearest given

To man beneath the sacred hope of heaven.

And still, as time on silent pinions flew,

His fortunes flourished and his honours grew;

But as they grew, an anxious hope, that long

Had in his bosom been but as the song

Of viewless echo, indistinct, and still

Receding from us, grew as doth a rill

Embraced by others and increasing ever,

Till distant plains confess the sweeping river.

And, need I say, that hope referred alone

To her who in his heart had fixed her throne,

And reigned within it still, the sovereign queen.

Yet darkest visions oft would flit between

His fondest fancies, as the thought returned

That she for whom his soul still restless burned,

Would be another's now, while haply he,

Lost to her heart, would to her memory be

As the remembrance of a pleasing dream,

Vague and forgotten half, but which we deem

Worthy no waking thought. Thus years rolled by;

Hope wilder glowed and brightened in his eye.

Nor knew he why he hoped; but though despair

The Enthusiast's heart may madly grasp, and glare

Even on his soul, it may not long remain

A dweller on his breast, for hope doth reign

There as o'er its inheritance; and he

Lives in fond visions of futurity.

III.

Twelve slow and chequered years had passed.--Again

A stately vessel ploughed the pathless main,

And waves and days together glided by,

Till, as a cloud on the Enthusiast's eye,

His island home rose from the ocean's breast--

A thing of strength, of glory, and of rest--

The giant of the deep!--while on his sight

Burst the blue hills, and cliffs of dazzling white--

Stronger than death! and beautiful as strong!

Kissed by the sea, and worshipped with its song!

"Home of my fathers!" the Enthusiast cried;

"Their home--ay, and their grave!" he said and sighed.

But gazing still upon its glorious strand,

Again he cried, "My own, my honoured land!

Fair freedom's home and mine! Britannia! hail!

Queen of the mighty seas; to whom each gale

From every point of heaven a tribute brings,

And on thy shores earth's farthest treasure flings!

Land of my heart and birth! at sight of thee

My spirit boundeth, like a bird set free

From long captivity! Thy very air

Is fragrant with remembrance! Thou dost bear,

On thy Herculean cliffs, the rugged seal

Of godlike Liberty! The slave might kneel

Upon thy shore, bending the willing knee,

To kiss the sacred earth that sets him free!

Even I feel freer as I reach thy shore,

And my soul mingles with the ocean's roar

That hymns around thee! Birthplace of the brave!

My own--my glorious home!--the very wave,

Rolling in strength and beauty, leaps on high,

As if rejoicing on thy beach to die!

My loved--my father-land! thy faults to me

Are as the specks which men at noontide see

Upon the blinding sun, and dwindle pale

Beneath thy virtue's and thy glory's veil.

Land of my birth! where'er thy sons may roam,

Their pride--their boast--their passport is their home!"

IV.

'Twas early spring; and winter lingered still

On the cold summit of the snow-capt hill;

The day was closing, and slow darkness stole

Over the earth as sleep steals on the soul,

Sealing the eyelids up--unconscious, slow,

Till sleep and darkness reign, and we but know,

On waking, that we slept--but may not tell;

Nor marked we when sleep's darkness on us fell.

A lonely stranger then bent anxious o'er

A rustic gate before the cottage door--

The snow-white cottage where the chestnuts grew,

And o'er its roof their arching branches threw.

It was young Edmund, gazing, through his tears,

On the now cheerless home of early years--

While as the grave of buried joys it stood,

Its white walls shadowed through the leafless wood;

The once arched woodbine waving wild and bare;

The parterre, erst the object of his care,

With early weeds o'ergrown; and slow decay

Had changed or swept all else he loved away.

Upon the sacred threshold, once his own,

He silent stood, unwelcomed and unknown;

Gazed, sighed, and turned away; then sadly strayed

To the cold, dreamless churchyard, where were laid

His parents, side by side. A change had come

O'er all that he had loved: his home was dumb,

And through the vale no accent met his ear

That he was wont in early days to hear;

While childhood's scenes fell dimly on his view,

As a dull picture of a spot we knew,

Where we but cold and lifeless forms can trace.

But no bold truth, nor one familiar face.

V.

Night sat upon the graves, like gloom to gloom,

As silent treading o'er each lowly tomb,

Thoughtful and sad, he lonely strove to trace,

Amidst the graves, his father's resting-place.

And well the spot he knew; yea, it alone

Was all now left that he might call his own

Of all that was his kindred's; and although

He looked for no proud monument to show

The tomb he sought, yet mem'ry marked the spot

Where slept his ancestors; and had it not,

He deemed--he felt--that if his feet but trode

Upon his parents' dust, the voice of God,

As it of old flashed through a prophet's breast,

Would in his bosom whisper, "Here they rest!"

'Twas an Enthusiast's thought;--but, oh! to tread,

With darkness round us, 'midst the voiceless dead,

With not an eye but Heaven's upon our face--

At such a moment, and in such a place,

Seeking the dead we love--who would not feel.

Yea, and believe as he did then, and kneel

On friend or father's grave, and kiss the sod

As in the presence of our father's God!

VI.

He reached the spot; he startled--trembled--wept;

And through his bosom wildest feelings swept.

He sought a nameless grave, but o'er the place

Where slept the generations of his race,

A marble pillar rose. "Oh Heaven!" he cried,

"Has avaricious Ruin's hand denied

The parents of my heart a grave with those

Of their own kindred?--have their ruthless foes

Grasped this last, sacred spot we called our own?

If but a weed upon that grave had grown,

I would have honoured it!--have called it brother!

Even for my father's sake, and thine, my mother!

But that cold marble freezes up my heart,

And seems to tell me that I have no part

With its proud dead; while through the veil of night

The name it bears yet mocks my anxious sight."

Thus cried he bitterly; then, trembling, placed

His finger on the marble, while he traced

Its letters one by one, and o'er and o'er;--

Grew blind with eagerness, and shook the more,

As with each touch, the feeling o'er him came--

The unseen letters formed his father's name!

VII.

While thus, with beating heart, pursuing still

His anxious task, slow o'er a neighbouring hill

The broad moon rose, by not a cloud concealed,

Lit up the valley, and the tomb revealed!--

His parents' tomb!--and now, with wild surprise,

He saw the column burst upon his eyes--

Fair, chaste, and beautiful; and on it read

These lines in mem'ry of his honoured dead:

"Beneath repose the virtuous and the just,

Mingled in death, affection's hallowed dust.

In token of their worth, this simple stone

Is, as a daughter's tribute, reared by one

Who loved them as such, and their name would save

As virtue's record o'er their lowly grave."

"Helen!" he fondly cried, "thy hand is here!"

And the cold grave received his burning tear;

Then knelt he o'er it--clasped his hands in prayer;

But, while yet lone and fervid kneeling there,

Before his eyes, upon the grave appear

Primroses twain--the firstlings of the year,--

And bursting forth between the blossomed two,

Twin opening buds in simple beauty grew.

He gazed--he loved them as a living thing;

And wondrous thoughts and strange imagining

Those simple flowers spoke to his listening soul

In superstition's whispers; whose control

The wisest in their secret moments feel,

And blush at weakness they may not reveal.

VIII.

He left the place of death; and, rapt in thought,

The trysting-tree of love's young years he sought;

And, as its branches opened on his sight,

Bathing their young buds in the pale moonlight,

A whispered voice, melodious, soft, and low,

As if an angel mourned for mortal woe,

Borne on the ev'ning breeze, came o'er his ear:

He knew the voice--his heart stood still to hear!

And each sense seem'd a listener; but his eye

Sought the sad author of the wand'ring sigh;

And 'neath the tree he loved, a form as fair

As summer in its noontide, knelt in prayer.

He clasped his hands--his brow, his bosom burned;

He felt the past--the buried past returned!

Still, still he listened, till, like words of flame,

Through her low prayer he heard his whispered name!

"Helen!" he wildly cried--"my own--my blest!"

Then bounded forth.--I cannot tell the rest.

There was a shriek of joy: heart throbbed on heart,

And hands were locked as though they ne'er might part;

Wild words were spoken--bliss tumultuous rolled,

And all the anguish of the past was told.

IX.

Upon her love long had her father frowned,

Till tales of Edmund's rising fortunes found

Their way across the wilderness of sea,

And reached the valley of his birth. But she,

With truth unaltered, and with heart sincere,

Through the long midnight of each hopeless year

That marked his absence, shunned the proffered hand

Of wealth and rank; and met her sire's command

With tears and bended knees, until his breast

Again a father's tenderness confessed.

X.

'Twas May--bright May: bird, flower, and shrub, and tree,

Rejoiced in light; while, as a waveless sea

Of living music, glowed the clear blue sky,

And every fleecy cloud that floated by

Appeared an isle of song!--as all around

And all above them echoed with the sound

Of joyous birds, in concert loud and sweet,

Chanting their summer hymns. Beneath their feet

The daisy put its crimson liv'ry on;

While from beneath each crag and mossy stone

Some gentle flower looked forth; and love and life

Through the Creator's glorious works were rife,

As though his Spirit in the sunbeams said,

"Let there be life and love!" and was obeyed.

Then, in the valley danced a joyous throng,

And happy voices sang a bridal song;

Yea, tripping jocund on the sunny green,

The old and young in one glad dance were seen;

Loud o'er the plain their merry music rang,

While cripple granddames, smiling, sat and sang

The ballads of their youth; and need I say

'Twas Edmund's and fair Helen's wedding-day?

Then, as he led her forth in joy and pride,

A hundred voices blessed him and his bride.

Yet scarce he heard them; for his every sense,

Lost in delight and ecstasy intense,

Dwelt upon her; and made their blessings seem

As words breathed o'er us in a wand'ring dream.

XI.

Now months and years in quick succession flew,

And joys increased, and still affection grew.

For what is youth's first love to wedded joy?

Or what the transports of the ardent boy

To the fond husband's bliss, which, day by day,

Lights up his spirit with affection's ray?

Man knows not what love is, till all his cares

The partner of his bosom soothes and shares--

Until he find her studious to please--

Watching his wishes!--Oh, 'tis acts like these

That lock her love within his heart, and bind

Their souls in one, and form them of one mind.

Love flowed within their bosoms as a tide,

While the calm rapture of their own fireside

Each day grew holier, dearer; and esteem

Blended its radiance with the glowing beam

Of young affection, till it seemed a sun

Melting their wishes and their thoughts as one.

XII.

Eight years passed o'er them in unclouded joy,

And now by Helen's side a lovely boy,

Looked up and called her, Mother; and upon

The knee of Edmund climbed a little one--

A blue-eyed prattler--as her mother fair.

They were their parents' joy, their hope, their care;

But, while their cup with happiness ran o'er,

And the long future promised joys in store,

Death dropped its bitterness within the cup,

And its late pleasant waters mingled up

With wailing and with woe. Like early flowers,

Which the slow worm with venomed tooth devours,

The roses left their two fair children's cheeks,

Or came and went like fitful hectic streaks,

As day by day they drooped: their sunny eyes

Grew lustreless and sad; and yearning cries--

Such as wring life-drops from a parent's heart--

Their lisping tongues now uttered. The keen dart

Of the unerring archer, Death, had sunk

Deep in their bosoms, and their young blood drunk;

Yet the affection of the children grew,

As its dull, wasting poison wandered through

Their tender breasts; and still they ever lay

With their arms round each other. On the day

That ushered in the night on which they died,

The boy his mother kissed, and fondly cried,

"Weep not, dear mother!--mother, do not weep!

You told me and my sister, death was sleep--

That the good Saviour, who from heaven came down,

And who for our sake wore a thorny crown--

You often told us how He came to save

Children like us, and conquered o'er the grave;

And I have read in his blessed book,

How in his hand a little child He took,

And said that such in heaven should greatest be:

Then, weep not, mother--do not weep for me;

For if I be angel when I die,

I'll watch you, mother--I'll be ever nigh;

Where'er you go, I'll hover o'er your head;

Then, though I'm buried, do not think me dead!

But let my sister's grave and mine be one,

And lay us by the pretty marble stone,

To which our father dear was wont to go,

And where, in spring, the sweet primroses blow;

Then, weep not, mother!" But she wept the more;

While the sad father his affliction bore

Like one in whom all consciousness was dead,

Save that he wrung his hands and rocked his head,

And murmured oft this short and troubled prayer--

"O God! look on me, and my children spare!"

XIII.

Their little arms still round each other clung,

When their last sleep death's shadow o'er them flung!

And still they slept, and fainter grew their breath--

Faint and more faint, until their sleep was death.

Deep, but unmurmured was the mother's grief,

For in her FAITH she sought and found relief;

Yea, while she mourned a daughter and a son,

She looked to heaven, and cried, "Thy will be done!"

But, oh! the father no such solace found--

Dark, cheerless anguish wrapt his spirit round;

He was a stranger to the Christian's hope,

And in bereavement's hour he sought a prop

On which his pierced and stricken soul might lean;

Yet, as he sought it, doubts would intervene--

Doubts which for years had clouded o'er his soul--

Doubts that, with prayers he struggled to control;

For though a grounded faith he ne'er had known,

He was no prayerless man; but he had grown

To thinking manhood from his dreaming youth,

A _seeker_ still--a _seeker after truth!_--

An earnest seeker, but his searching care

Sought more in books and nature than by prayer;

And vain he sought, nor books nor nature gave

The hope of hopes that animates the grave!

Though, to have felt that hope, he would have changed

His station with the mendicant who ranged

Homeless from door to door and begged his bread,

While heaven hurled its tempest round his head.

For what is hunger, pain, or piercing wind,

To the eternal midnight of the mind?

Or what on earth a horror can impart,

Like his who feels engraven on his heart

The word, _Annihilation!_ Often now

The sad Enthusiast would strike his brow,

And cry aloud, with deep and bitter groans,

"How have I sinned, that both my little ones--

The children of my heart--should be struck down!

O Thou Almighty Spirit! if thy frown

Is now upon me, turn aside thy wrath,

And guide me--lead, oh lead me in the path

Of heaven's own truth; direct my faith aright,

Teach me to hope, and lend thy Spirit's light."

XIV.

Thus, long his soul as a frail bark was tossed

On a dark sea, with helm and compass lost,

Till she who ever to his breast had been

The star of hope and love, with brow serene,

As if no sorrow e'er her heart had riven,

But her eye calmly looked through time to heaven--

Soothed his sad spirit, and with anxious care

Used much of reason, and yet more of prayer;

Till bright'ning hope dawned gently o'er his soul,

Like the sun's shadow at the freezing pole,

Seen by the shiv'ring Greenlander, or e'er

Its front of fire does his horizon cheer;

While brighter still that ardent hope became,

Till in his bosom glowed the living flame

Of Christian faith--faith in the Saviour sent,

By the eternal God, to preach, "Repent

And be ye saved."---Then peace, as sunshine, fell

On the Enthusiast's bosom, and the swell

Of anguish died away, as o'er the deep

The waves lie down when winds and tempests sleep.

XV.

Time glided on, and wedded joys still grew

As beauty deepens on an autumn view

With tinges rich as heaven! and, though less green,

More holy far than summer's fairest scene.

Now o'er the happy pair, at life's calm eve

Age like a shadow fell, and seemed to weave

So fair a twilight round each silvered brow,

That they ne'er felt so young, so blest as now;

Though threescore winters o'er their path had fled,

And left the snow of years on either head.

For age drew round them, but they knew it not--

The once bright face of youth was half forgot;

But still the young, the unchanged heart was there,

And still his aged Helen seemed as fair

As when, with throbbing heart and giddy bliss,

He from her lips first snatched the virgin kiss!

XVI.

Last scene of all: An old and widowed man,

Whose years had reached life's farthest, frailest span,

And o'er whose head, as every moment flew,

Eternity its dark'ning twilight threw,

Lay in his silent chamber, dull and lone,

Watching the midnight stars, as one by one

They as slow, voiceless spirits glided past

The window of his solitude, and cast

Their pale light on his brow; and thus he lay

Till the bright star that ushers in the day

Rose on his sight, and, with its cheering beams,

Lit in his bosom youth's delicious dreams;

Yea, while he gazed upon that golden star,

Rolling in light, like love's celestial car,

He deemed he in its radiance read the while

His children's voices and his Helen's smile;

And as it passed, and from his sight withdrew,

His longing spirit followed it! and flew

To heaven and deathless bliss--from earth and care--

To meet his Helen and his children there!

THE ROMAUNT OF SIR PEREGRINE AND THE LADY ETHELINE.

I.

Of a maiden's beauty the world-wide praise

Was a thing of duty in chivalrous days,

When her envied name was a nation's fame,

And raised in knights' breasts an emulous flame,

Which lighted to honour and grand emprise--

Things always so lovely in ladies' eyes;

For a true woman's favour will ever be won

By that which is noble and nobly done.

Sir Peregrine sounded his bugle horn

With a note of love and a blast of scorn;

Of love to the Ladye Etheline

Up in yon Castle of Eaglestein,

Whose beauty had passed o'er Christian land

As a philter to nerve the resolute hand

Of many a knight in the goodly throng

Who gathered round Godfrey of Buglion,

With Richard, and Raymond, and Leopold,

And thousands of others as brave and bold;

And a blast of scorn to every knight

Who would dare to challenge his envied right.

The porte yields quick to the warder's hand

By the Yerl's consent, by the Yerl's command;

And the ladye, who knew the winding sound,

As the tra-la-la rang all around,

Has opened her casement up on high,

And thrown him the kiss of her courtesy.

II.

"I am come, fair ladye, to beg of thee,

As here I crave upon bended knee,

That thou wilt grant unto my prayer

A single lock of thy golden hair,

To wear in a lockheart over my breast,

And carry with me to the balmy East--

The land where the Saviour met his death,

The sacred Salem of saving faith,

Which holds the sepulchre of our Lord,

Defiled by a barbarous Paynim horde.

Grant me the meed for which I burn,

And, by our Ladye, on my return,

We will wedded be in the sacred bands

Of a sacrament sealed by holy hands."

The ladye has, with a gesture bland,

Taken her scissors into her hand,

And clipt a lock of her auburn hair,

And yielded it to his ardent prayer;

But a pearly drop from her weeping eyes

Hath fallen upon the golden prize.

"Ah! blessed drop," said the knight, and smiled--

"This tear was from thine heart beguiled,

And I take it to be an omen of good,

For tears, my love, are purified blood,

That impart a beauty to female eyes,

And vouch for her kindly sympathies."

"Ah! no, ah! no," the maid replied--

"An omen of ill," and she heavily sighed;

Then a flood came gushing adown her cheek,

Nor further word could the damoiselle speak.

Then said Sir Peregrine, smiling still,

"If tears, my love, are an omen of ill,

The way to deprive them of evil spell

Is to kiss them away, and--all is well!"

And he took in his arms the yielding maid,

And kissed them away, as he had said.

The warder has oped the porteluse again,

To let Sir Peregrine forth with his train.

Loud spoke the horn o'er fell and dell,

"Fare thee--fare thee--fare thee well;"

But Etheline, as she waved her hand,

Could not those flowing tears command,

And thought the bugle in sounds did say,

"Fare thee--fare thee well for aye."

III.

A year has passed: at Eaglestein

There sat the Ladye Etheline;

Her eyes were wet, and her cheek was pale,

Her sweet voice dwindled into a wail;

For though through the world's busy crowd

The deeds of the war were sung aloud,

And the name of Sir Peregrine was enrolled

With Godfrey's among the brave and bold,

No letter had come from her knight so dear,

To belie the spell of the lock and tear.

The Countess would weep, and the Yerl would say,

"Alas! for the hour when he went away."

But the womb of old Time is everly full,

And the storm-wind bloweth after a lull.

Hark! a horn has sounded both loud and clear,

And echoed around both far and near;

It is Sir Ronald from Palestine--

Sir Ronald, a suitor of Etheline.

"I have come," said he, "through pain and peril,

To tell unto thee, most noble Yerl:

Woe to the sword of the fierce Soldan,

Who slew our most gallant capitan!

Sir Peregrine, in an unhappy hour,

Fell wounded before High Salem's tower,

And ere he died he commissioned me

To bear to Scotland, and give to thee,

This bit of the genuine haly rood

Dipt in his heart's outpouring blood,

That thou mightst give it to Etheline,

As a relic of dead Sir Peregrine."

IV.

All Eaglestein vale is yellow and sere,

The ancient elms seem withered and bare,

The river asleep in its rushy bed,

The waters are green, and the grass is red,

The roses are dead in the sylvan bowers,

Where oft in the dewy evening hours,

Ere yet the fairies had sought the dell,

And the merle was singing her day-farewell,

The Lady Etheline would recline

And think of her dear Sir Peregrine:

All was cheerless now, forlorn,

As if they missed her at early morn;

At noontide and at evening fall

They sorrowed for her, the spirit of all.

In the solary, up in the western wing,

The Countess and Yerl sat sorrowing

For one so young, so gentle, and fair,

Their only child, lying ailing there,

Waning and waning slowly away,

Yet waxing more beautiful every day,

As if she were drawing from spheres above,

Before she got there, the spirit of love,

Which shone as a light through the silken lire,

Pure as was that of the vestal fire;

And ever she kissed in hysterical mood

The bit of the cross all red with blood.

"Oh mother dear! I wish--I fear

The time of my going is drawing near:

Last night, at the mirk and midnight hour,

A voice seemed to come through my chamber door--

For the ear of the dying is tender and fine--

And three times it sounded Etheline;

And it is true, as I've heard say,

Such voices are calls to come away--

The voices of angels hovering near,

Who wish us to join them in yonder sphere."

"Oh! no, oh! no, my own dear child,

Thine overfine ears have thee beguiled:

It was the Yerl, when in a dream,

Who three times called thy dear-loved name;

I heard the call as awake I lay,

And thou mayst believe what now I say."

"Oh mother! oh mother! what do I hear?

It is the nightingale singing clear;

I have heard the notes in Italian clime,

And remember them since that early time;

And it is true, as I've heard say,

That when the nightingale sings by day,

The dying who hears it will pass away."

"No, no, my child, the song you hear

Is that of the throstle-cock singing clear:

I see him upon the linden tree,

And you, if you like, may also see.

I know its speckled breast too well;

It is not, dear child, the nightingale."

When this she heard, the maiden sighed,

As if she were vexed she was denied

The hope of passing quickly away

To yon regions bright of eternal day.

"Oh mother! list, what do I hear?

Sir Peregrine's horn is winding clear;

Ah, I know the sound, as it seems to say

In its windings, 'Hali-hali-day;'

And it is true, as I've heard tell,

When a dead man's horn sounds loud and shrill,

It is a true sign to his earthly bride,

He will wait for her spirit at evening tide."

The Countess turned her face to the Yerl;

It was true what was said by the dying girl;

It _was_ Sir Peregrine's horn they heard,

And they both sat mute, nor whispered a word,

For they wondered much, and were sore afraid

Of mysteries working about the maid,

Who, as she lay in her ecstasie,

Kept muttering slow an Ave Marie:

"Oh, Lady sweet! the sign hath come,

Happy the maid whom her knight calls home;

It is the nightingale that I hear,

The golden sun is shining clear;

And I've heard tell in time past gone,

Blessed is the bier that the sun shines on."

And, as they listened, there came to their ear

The grating of the portcullis gear,

And a cry of fear from the ballion green,

As if the retainers a ghost had seen:

Tramp and tramp on the scalière,

And along the corridor leading there;

The door is opened, and lo! comes in

The leal and the living Sir Peregrine.

"Holy Maria!" the Countess cried,

"Holy Maria!" the Yerl replied;

The maid looked up, then sank her head,

As an Ave Marie again she said:

"Ave Marie! my sweet ladye,

Ave Marie! I come to thee.

Ah, soft and clear those eyes of thine,

That look so kindly into mine;

Oh Ladye sweet! stretch forth thy hand

To welcome me to yon happy land;

Oh Virgin! open thy bosom fair,

That thy poor child may nestle there;"

Then she laid her arms across her breast,

And gently, softly, sank to rest.

The throstle-cock's voice rang out more clear

On the linden tree there growing near,

And the sun burst forth with brighter ray

On the couch where her spirit had passed away.

V.

Over hollow, and over height,

Sir Peregrine sought that caitiff knight

Who had wrought such woe to Eaglestein--

To him and the Lady Etheline.

The time has come and the wish made good,

The villain he met in the Calder Wood.

"Hold, hold, thou basest dastard Theou,

For Ceorl's a name thou'rt far below;

Ten lives like thine would not suffice

To be to my soul a sacrifice;

There is the glaive, it is thine to try.

Or with it or without it thou must die."

But the caitiff laughed a laugh of scorn:

"Come on, thou bastard of bastards born."

Their falchions are gleaming in bright mid-day:

They rushed like tigers upon their prey;

Sir Peregrine's eyes flashed liquid fire,

The caitiff's shone out with unholy ire;

But victory goes not aye with right,

Nor the race to those the quickest in flight.

Sir Peregrine's fury o'ershot his aim:

His sword breaks through--his arm is maim!

With nothing to wield, with nothing to ward.

No word of mercy or quarter heard;

With a breast-wound deep as his heart he lies,

A look of scorn--Sir Peregrine dies.

Behind the crumbling walls of Eaglestein,

The tomb of the old Yerls may still be seen,

And there long mouldering lay close side by side,

Sir Peregrine the bold and his fair bride;

Their ashes scattered now and blown away,

As thine and mine will be some coming day.

This world is surely an enchanted theme,

A thing of seims and shows--a wild fantastic dream.

III.

THE LEGEND OF ALLERLEY HALL.

The tower-bell has sounded the midnight hour,

Old Night has unfolded her sable pall,

Darkness o'er hamlet, darkness o'er hall,

Loud screams the raven on Allerley Tower;[A]

A glimmering gleam from yon casement high

Is all that is seen by the passer-by.

[Footnote A: In Ayrshire, as I have heard, but I know of no

trace of the family. The old distich may be traced to some other

county:

"The Allerley oak stands high, abune trees;

When the raven croaks there, an Allerley dees."

Such rhymes have generally something to rest upon, but I cannot

associate this with any county, far less a family.]

All things are neglected, time-smitten there,

Crazy and cobwebbed, mildewed and worn,

Moth-eaten, weeviled, dusty, forlorn,

Everything owning to waning and wear;

From the baron's hall to the lady's bower

NEGLECT is the watchword in Allerley Tower.

There is silence within old Allerley Hall,

Save the raven without with her "croak, croak,"

And the cricket's "click, click," in the panels of oak,

Behind the dim arras that hangs on the wall;

So silent and sad in the midnight hour,

Yet life may still linger in Allerley Tower.

An old woman sits by a carved old bed--

The drape of green silk, all yellow and sere,

The gold-coloured fringes dingy and drear;

And she nods and nods her silvery head,

And sometimes she looks with a half-drowsy air.

To notice how Death may be working there.

Lord William lies there, care-worn and pale,

All his sunlight of spirit has passed away,

And left to him only that twilight of grey

Which ushers men into the long dark vale;

Fast ebbing his life, yet feeling no pain,

Save a memory working within his brain.

He had sought the world's crowd for forty years,

But only a little relief to borrow

From the heartfelt pangs of that early sorrow

Which had drawn him away from his gay compeers,

And made him oft sigh, with a pain-begot scorn,

That into this world he ever was born.

But being brought in, as a victim, to tarry,

With him, as with all, it is how to get out

With no more of pain than you can't go without,

Where all have original sin to carry;

But his memory brightened, as strength waxed low,

Of the grief he had borne forty years ago.

There is silence and sadness in Allerley Tower;

The taper is glimmering with murky snot,

The raven croak-croaking with rusty throat,

And the cricket click-clicking at midnight hour;

And the woman mope-moping by the bed,

Still nodding and nodding her drowsy head.

"Now bring me, old nurse, from that escritoire,

A packet tied up with a ribbon of blue;"

Ah! well, though now faded, that ribbon he knew,

Which his fingers had bound forty years before.

He shuddered to look, yet afraid to wait,

Lest Death might render his vision too late.

That ribbon he drew in a calm despair:

Behold now revealed to his wondering eyes

A face of all beautiful harmonies,

Set fair among ringlets of golden hair;

With eyes so blue and a smile of heaven,

Which haply some angel to her had given.

Beside that miniature lay a scroll,

As written by him forty years before:

He read every word of it o'er and o'er,

And every word of it flashed through his soul,

In a flood of that bright and awakened light

Which slumbers and sleeps through a long, long night.

THE SCROLL.

"I loved my love early, the young Lady May;

I saw her bloom rarely in youth's rosy day;

But her eye looked afar to some orb that was shining,

As if for that sphere her spirit was pining.

"Faint in the light of day seemed what was near her;

Visions far, far away, clearer and clearer;

Still, as flesh wears away spirits that bear it,

Eyeing yon milky way, sigh to be near it.

"Lady May, she is dying--she hears some one whisper,

Near where she's lying, 'Come away, sister'--

Draw down each silky lid--draw them down over

Eyes whose last light on earth shone on her lover.

"My lost Lady May in yon vault now is sleeping;

Her sisters who go to pray come away weeping;

And while I yet linger here, some one elates me,

Whispering into my ear, 'Yonder she waits thee.'"

And thus they had waited until this last day,

But the hour of their meeting was coming apace;

And as he still gazed on that beautiful face,

His spirit so weary passed gently away;

And the nurse would unfold those fingers so cold,

Which still of that picture retained the hold.

There's the silence of death in Allerley Tower,

The taper gone out with its murky smoke,

The raven has finished her croak-croak,

The cricket is silent at midnight hour;

The last of the Allerley lords lies there,

And Allerley goes to a distant heir.

In yon tomb where was laid his young Lady May,

Lord William sleeps now by the side of her bier;

And the Allerley lords and ladies lie near.

But nearest of neighbours they nothing can say:

No "Good morrow, my lord," when the day is begun,

No "My lady, good night," when the day it is done.

IV.

THE LEGEND OF THE LADY KATHARINE.

I.

'Twas at a time now long past gone,

And well gone if 'twill stay,

When our good land seemed made alone

For lords and ladies gay;

When brown bread was the poor man's fare,

For which he toiled and swet,

When men were used as nowt or deer.

And heads were only worth the wear

When crowned with coronet.

There was a right good noble knight,

Sir Bullstrode was his name[A]--

A name which he acquired by fight,

And with it meikle fame.

Upon his burnished shield he bore

A head of bull caboshed

(For so they speak in herald lore),

And for his crest he aptly wore

Two bones of marrow crossed.

[Footnote A: A knight called Bullstrode, as having got his name

in the way set forth, is mentioned by Guillim; but whether he is

the same as he who figures in the Scotch legend I do not know.]

For he had slain in tournay set

Full many a blazoned fool;

Nor would he deem his praise complete

Till he had slain a bull.

He threw the gauntlet at the brute,

Which was received with scorn,

For Taurus straight the gauntlet took,

Then in the air the bauble shook,

And tossed it on his horn.

To fight they went with might and main,

And fought a good long hour;

The knight's long lance was broke in twain--

Sir Bull had now the power;

The ladies laughed, the barons too,

As they Sir Bull admired!

But where fair ladies are to view,

Who may declare what knight may do,

By noble emprise fired?

The knight he paused amid the claque,

And threw a look of scorn:

Sir Bull has Bullstrode on his back,

Who held by either horn;

And round the ring, and round the ring,

Rushed bull in wild affray,

Stamping, roaring, bellowing,--

And, stumbling, gave his neck a wring,

And Bullstrode won the day.

This valiant knight, by love inspired,

Next sued fair Katharine,

The daughter of Sir Ravensbeard,

A man of ancient line;

And he had known the reason good

Sir Bullstrode got his name,

And wished--if Kate could be subdued--

To mix his blue and blazoned blood

With one of such a fame.

II.

But when the knights are thus employeed,

The lady is in yon glen,

There seated by the river side

With one, the flower of men--

George Allan--a rich yeoman's heir,

Who leased her father's land.

Yet, though beloved by all the fair,

Young Allan might not surely dare

To claim this envied hand.

Yet hearts will work, and hearts will steal

What high commands deny;

And beauty is a thing to feel,

Self-chosen by the eye:

Nor would fair Katharine had gi'en

A touch of Allan's hand

For all the honours she could gain

From duke or earl, lord or thane,

Or knight in all the land.

She knew the price she had to pay

For this her secret love;

But where's a will there is a way,

And Kate she would it prove.

The will we know, the way's obscure,

Deep in her soul confined;

What quick invention might secure,

With love for the inspiring power,

Was in that maiden's mind.

"Now, Allan," she said, with a silent laugh,

In eyes both quaint and keen,

"Thou must not fear, for here I swear

By Coz. Saint Catharine,

'Twas easier for this doughty knight

To hold these horns he dared,

Than take for wife by a father's right,

Against the spurn of a maiden's spite,

The daughter of Ravensbeard."

"No, no, fair lady," George Allan said--

With tears his eyes were full--

"'Tis easier to force the will of a maid,

Than hold by the horns a bull."

"Yes! yes! of the maids who say a prayer,

Like sisters of orders grey;

But Kate admits no craven fear,

And she can do what they cannot dare,

For she's quicker of parts than they."

III.

It's up in yon chamber well bedight

Of the castle of Invercloyd,

A maiden sits with a grim sir knight

Seated on either side.

"I come to thee by a father's right,

To issue my last command,

That thou concede to this gallant knight,

What his noble nature will requite,

The guerdon of thy hand."

"And here, upon my bended knee,"

Sir Bullstrode blandly said,

"I pray thee, in knightly courtesie,

The grace thy sire hath pled."

"Oh yes! a guerdon let it remain,

I give thee free consent;

But I have a mind, and will maintain,

This knight shall only my favour gain

In knightly tournament."

"What meaneth the wench?" the father cried,

With a fire-flaught in his eye,

"What other knight would'st thou invite

Sir Bullstrode to defy?

Is he a lover? I grant no parle,

For I am resolved to know,

And wish, by my sword, no better a quarrel;

And be he a ceorl, or be he an earl,

He goes to shades below."

"No lover is he, my father dear,

My champion who shall be;

A stranger knight shall for me fight,

And shall my fate decree."

"Well done! well done!" cried Sir Bullstrode,

"That goeth with my gree;

May the carrion crow be then abroad,

All hungry to feed upon carrion food,

That day he fights with me."

"But let this contract," said the maid,

"Be written on parchment skin,

And signed, and sealed, and witnessèd,

That surety I may find."

Again the father knit his brow,

Yet could not he complain,

Because Sir Bullstrode wished it so,

That all the world might come to know

His honour he could maintain.

IV.

It's up in yon chamber tapestried,

Sits the Lady Katharine;

She smiled at a woman's art applied

Her own true love to win.

And lo! who comes in a tearful way,

But her pretty tire-woman,

"Hey! hey! what now? good lack-a-day!

Such cheeks so pale, and lips like clay;

What ails maid Lilian?"

"Oh it is, it is, young mistress mine,

All about this valiant knight,

Who came to me all drunk with wine,

At the dead hour of the night.

He seized me struggling to get free,

And swore by the goat of Jove,

He would me fee, if I would be,

La! my lady! I fear to tell it to thee,

_His left-hand lady-love_."

"Ho! ho! my maid, a pretty scene!

A brute of noble parts!

But 'tis easier to turn a bull by each horn,

Than rule two women's hearts.

No harems have we in western land,

Where a woman's soul is free,

To rule weak man by her high command,

And rouse by a wave of her wizard wand

The fire of his chivalrie."

V.

Lo! round the lists, and round the lists,

Bedecked with pennons gay,

Environed there with ladies fair,

Sir Bullstrode held his way.

High mounted on a gallant steed,

And armed a-cap-a-pie,

His lance well graced by a pennon red,

A white plume nodded o'er his head,

With ribbons at his knee.

"Why mounts not Kate the dais seat?"

The father loudly cried.

"She hath not finished her robing yet,"

A lady quick replied.

And now a shout rang all about,

Ho! ho! there comes apace,

A Cataphract[A] of noble mien,

With armour bright as silver sheen,

And eke of gentle grace.

[Footnote A: A knight completely equipped; a word in common use in

the times of chivalry.]

He bore for his escochion

Dan Cupid with his dart,

And for his crest there was impressed

A well-skewered bleeding heart;

His yellow streamer on his spear,

Flew fluttering in the wind,

And thrice he waved it in the air,

As if to fan the ladies there,

And thrice his head inclined.

"Who's he, who's he?" cried Ravensbeard;

But no one there could say.

"Knowest thou him?" cried some who heard;

But each one answered Nay.

"I am Sir Peveril," said the knight,

"If you my name would learn,

And I will for fair Katharine fight,

A lady's love, and a lady's right,

And a lady's choice to earn."

The gauntlet thrown upon the ground,

Sir Bullstrode laughed with joy:

"Short work," said he, "I'll make of thee--

Methinks a beardless boy."

Nor sooner said than in he sprang

And aimed a mortal blow,

The crenel upon the buckler rang,

And having achieved an echoing clang,

It made no more ado.

The stranger knight wheeled quick as light,

And charging with gratitude,

Gave him good thank on his left flank,

And lo! a stream of blood!

Shall he this knight, so dread in fight,

Cede to this beardless foe,

And feel in his pain, returned again,

That vaunt of his so empty and vain,

That vaunt of the carrion crow?

Stung by the wound, not less by shame,

He gathered all his force,

And sprang again, with desperate aim,

His enemy to unhorse;

But he who watched the pointed lance

A dexterous movement made,

And saw his foe, as he missed the blow,

Rock in his selle both to and fro,

And vault o'er his horse's head.

Sore fainting from the loss of blood,

He lay upon the ground,

Nor e'er a leech within his reach

Can stop that fatal wound.

And there with many an honour full,

That brave and doughty knight,

Sir Bullstrode, who once strode the bull,

And killed (himself one) many a fool,

Has closed his eyes in night.

VI.

And now within the ballion court

There sits Sir Ravensbeard:

"Who shall me say what popinjay

Hath earned this proud reward?"

And there stands Katharine all confessed

In maiden dignity;

"'Twas I, in 'fence of life sore pressed,

'Twas I, at honour's high behest,

This bad man made to die.

"For hear me, sire, restrain your ire,

This knight you so admired,

A plan had laid to ruin my maid,

While he for my love aspired.

I claim the contract by his hand,

Whereto thou'rt guarantee,

And this young Allan is the man,

And he alone of all Scotland,

Thy Katharine's lord shall be."

V.

THE BALLAD OF AILIE FAA.

I.

Sir Robert has left his castle ha',

The castle of fair Holmylee,

And gone to meet his Ailie Faa,

Where no one might be there to see.

He has sounded shrill his bugle horn,

But not for either horse or hound;

And when the echoes away were borne,

He listened for a well-known sound.

He hears a rustling among the leaves,

Some pattering feet are drawing near;

Like autumn's breathings among the sheaves,

So sweet at eventide to hear:

His Ailie Faa, who is sweeter far

Than the white rose hanging upon the tree,

Who is fairer than the fairies are

That dance in moonlight on the lea.

Oh! there are some flowers, as if in love,

Unto the oak their arms incline;

And tho' the tree may rotten prove,

They still the closer around it twine:

So has it been until this hour,

And so in coming time 'twill be,

Wherever young love may hang a flower,

'Twill think it aye ane trusty tree.

He has led her into a summer bower,

For he was fond and she was fain,

And there with all of a lover's power

He whispered that old and fatal strain,

Which those who sing it and those who hear

Have never sung and never heard,

But they have shed the bitter tear

For every soft delusive word.

He pointed to yon castle ha',

And all its holts so green and fair;

And would not she, poor Ailie Faa,

Move some day as a mistress there?

As the parchèd lea receives the rains,

Her ears drank up the sweet melodie;

A gipsy's blood flowed in her veins,

A gipsy's soul flashed in her eye.

Oh! it's time will come and time will go,

That which has been will be again;

This strange world's ways go to and fro,

This moment joy, the next is pain.

A sough has thro' the hamlet spread,

To Ailie's ear the tidings came,

That Holmylee will shortly wed

A lady fair of noble name.

II.

In yon lone cot adown the Lynne

A widowed mother may think it long

Since there were lightsome words within,

Since she has heard blithe Ailie's song.

A gloomy shade sits on Ailie's brow,

At times her eyes flash sudden fires,

The same she had noticed long ago,

Deep flashing in her gipsy sire's.

When the wind at even was low and loun,

And the moon paced on in her majesty

Thro' lazy clouds, and threw adown

Her silvery light o'er turret and tree,

Then Ailie sought the green alcove,

That place of fond lovers' lone retreat,

Where she for the boon of gentle love,

Had changed the meed of a deadly hate.

She sat upon "the red Lynne stone,"

Where she between the trees might see,

By yon pale moon that shone thereon,

The goodly turrets of Holmylee.

And as she felt the throbbing pains,

And as she heaved the bursting sigh,

A gipsy's blood burned in her veins,

A gipsy's soul flashed in her eye.

If small the body that thus was moved,

So like the form that fairies wear,

It was that slenderness he loved,

So tiny a thing he might not fear.

But there is an insect skims the air,

Bedecked with azure and green and gold,

Whose sting is a deadlier thing by far

Than dagger of yon baron bold.

III.

She sat upon the red Lynne stone,

The midnight sky was overcast,

The winds are out with a sullen moan,

The angry Lynne is rolling past.

What then? there was no lack of light,

Full fifteen windows blazing shone

Up on the castle on the height,

While Ailie Faa sat there alone.

For there is dancing and deray

In the ancient castle of Holmylee,

And barons bold and ladies gay

Are holding high-jinks revelry.

Sir Robert has that day been wed,

'Midst sounding trumpets of éclat,

And one that night will grace his bed

Of nobler birth than Ailie Faa.

Revenge will claim its high command,

And Ailie is on her feet erect,

She passes nervously her hand

Between her jupe and jerkinet.

_There_ lies a charm for woman's wrong,

Concealed where beats the bursting heart,

Which, ere an hour hath come and gone,

Will play somewhere a fatal part.

IV.

Up in the hall of Holmylee

Still sound the revel, the dance, and song,

And through the open doors and free

There pours the gay and stately throng;

But of all the knights and barons there,

The bridegroom still the foremost stood,

And she the fairest of the fair,

The bride who was of noble blood.

It was when feet were tripping

The mazes of the dance,

It was when lips were sipping

The choicest wines of France,

A wild scream rose within the hall,

Which pierced the roofen tree,

And in the midst was seen to fall

The Baron of Holmylee.

"To whom belongs this small stilette.

By whom our host is slain?"

Between a jupe and jerkinet

That weapon long had lain.

Each on his sword his hand did lay,

This way and that they ran;

But she who did the deed is away,

Ho! catch her if you can.

VI.

THE LEGEND OF THE FAIR EMERGILDE

I.

Thou little god of meikle sway,

Who rul'st from pole to pole,

And up beyond yon milky way,

Where wondrous planets roll:

Oh! tell me how a power divine,

That tames the creatures wild,

Whose touch benign makes all men kin,

Could slay sweet Emergilde?

It's up the street, and down the street,

And up the street again,

And all the day, and all the way,

She looks at noble men;

But him she seeks she cannot find

In all that moving train;

No one can please that anxious gaze,

And own to "Ballenden."

From the high castle on the knowe,

Adown the Canongate,

And from the palace in the howe,

Up to the castle yett,

A hizzy here, a cadie there,

She stops with modest mien;

All she can say four words convey:

"I seek for Ballenden."

Nor more of our Scotch tongue she knew,

For she's of foreign kin,

And all her speech can only reach

"I seek for Ballenden."

No Ballenden she yet could find,

No one aught of him knew;

She sought at night dark Toddrick's Wynd,

Next morn to search anew.

II.

And who is she, this fair ladye,

To whom our land is strange?

Why all alone, to all unknown,

Within this city's range?

Her face was of the bonnie nut-brown

Our Scotch folk love to view,

When 'neath it shows the red, red rose,

Like sunlight shining through.

Her tunic was of the mazerine,

Of scarlet her roquelaire,

And o'er her back, in ringlets black,

Fell down her raven hair.

Her eyes, so like the falling sterns,

Seen on an August night,

Had surely won from eastern sun

Some rayons of his light.

And still she tried, and still she plied,

Her task so sad and vain,

The words still four--they were no more--

"I seek for Ballenden."

No Ballenden could she yet find,

No one aught of him knew,

And still at night down Toddrick's Wynd,

Next morn to search anew.

III.

In Euphan Barnet's lowly room,

Adown that darksome wynd,

A ladye fair is lying there,

In illness sair declined;

Her cheeks now like the lily pale,

The roses waned away,

Her eyes so bright have lost their light,

Her lips are like the clay.

On her fair breast a missal rests,

Illumed with various dyes,

In which were given far views of heaven

In old transparencies.

There hangs the everlasting cross

Of emerald and of gold,

That cross of Christ so often kissed

When she her beads had told.

Those things are all forgotten now,

Far other thoughts remain;

And as she dreams she ever renes,

"I seek for Ballenden."

Oh Ballenden! oh Ballenden!

Whatever, where'er thou be,

That ladye fair is dying there,

And all for love of thee.

IV.

In the old howf of the Canongate

There is a little lair,

And on it grows a pure white rose,

By love implanted there;

And o'er it hangs a youthful man,

With a cloud upon his brow,

And sair he moans, and sair he groans,

For her who sleeps below.

No noble lord nor banneret,

Nor courtly knight is he,

No more than a simple advocate,

Who pleadeth for his fee.

He holds a letter in his hand,

On which bleared eyes are bent,

It came afar from Almanzar,

The Duke of Bonavent--

A noble duke whom he had seen

In his castle by the sea,

When for one night he claimed the right

Of his high courtesie;

And that letter said, "Kind sir, I write

In sorrow, sooth to say,

That my dear child, fair Emergilde,

Hath from us flown away;

"And all the trace that I can find

Is this, and nothing more,

She took to sea at Tripoli

For Scotland's distant shore.

It is a feat of strange conceit

That fills us with alarms:

Oh seek about, and find her out,

And send her to our arms."

V.

And who is he this letter reads

With tears the words atween?

Yea! even he she had sought to see,

The sair-sought Ballenden.

Yet little little had he thought,

When away in that far countrie,

That a look she had got of a humble Scot

Would ever remembered be.

But tho' he had deemed himself forgot

By one so far away,

Her image had still, against his will,

Him haunted night and day.

And when he laid him on his bed,

And sair inclined to sleep,

That face would still, against his will,

Its holy vigil keep.

Oh gentle youth, thou little thought,

When away in our north countrie,

That up and down, thro' all the town,

That ladye sought for thee.

And little little did thou wot

What in Euphan's room was seen,

Where, as she died, she whispering sighed,

"I die for Ballenden."[A]

[Footnote A: The reader will remember the romantic story of the

English A'Becket; but it would seem our Scottish advocate was

even more highly favoured. Nor is the romance in such cases

limited to the ladies. I may refer to the pathetic story of

Geoffrey Rudel, a gentleman of Provence, and a troubadour, who,

having heard from the knights returned from the Holy Land of the

hospitality of a certain countess of Tripoli, whose grace and

beauty equalled her virtue, fell deeply in love with her without

ever having seen her. In 1162 he quitted the court of England

and embarked for the Holy Land. On his voyage he was attacked by

a severe illness, and had lost the power of speech when he

arrived at the port of Tripoli. The countess, being informed

that a celebrated poet was dying of love for her on board a

vessel, visited him on shipboard, took him by the hand, and

attempted to cheer him. Rudel recovered his speech sufficiently

to thank the countess for her humanity, and to declare his

passion, when his expressions of gratitude were silenced by the

convulsions of death. He was buried at Tripoli, beneath a tomb

of porphyry which the countess raised to his memory. His verses

"On Distant Love" were well known. They began thus:

Angry and sad shall be my way

If I behold not her afar,

And yet I know not when that day

Shall rise, for still she dwells afar.

God, who has formed this fair array

Of worlds, and placed my love afar,

Strengthen my heart with hope, I pray,

Of seeing her I love afar.

]

VII.

THE ROMAUNT OF THE CASTLE OF WEIR.

I.

The baron has gone to the hunting green,

All by the ancient Castle of Weir,

With his guest, Sir Hubert, of Norman kin,

And a maiden, his only daughter dear--

The Ladye Tomasine, famed around

For beauty as well as for courtesie,

Wherever might sensible heads be found,

Or ears to listen, or eyes to see.

Nor merely skin-deep was she fair:

She had a spirit both true and leal,

As all about the Castle of Weir

Were many to know, and many to tell.

Right well she knew what it was to feel

Grim poverty in declining day,

With a purse to ope, and a hand to deal,

And tears to bless what she gave away;

Yet she was blithe and she was gay.

And now she has gone to the hunting green,

All on this bright and sunshiny day,

To fly her favourite peregrine,

With her hunting coat of the baudykin,

Down which there flowed her raven hair,

And her kirtle of the red sendal fine,

With an eagle's plume in her heading gear.

II.

If the knight had not a hawk on his wrist,

He had kestrel eyes both cunning and keen,

And the quarry of which he was in quest

Was the heart of the lovely Tomasine;

But the ladye thought him a kestrel kite,

With a grovelling eye to the farmer's coop,

And wanted the bold and daring flight

That mounts to the sun to make a swoop.

The Baron of Weir points to the sky,

"Ho! ho! a proud heron upon the wing!

Unhood, my Tomasine dear, untie!

Off with the jesses--away him fling!"

"Up! up! my Guy," cried the laughing maid,

As with nimble fingers she him unjessed,

"Up! up! and away! and earn thy bread,

Then back to thy mistress to be caressed."

Up sprang the bird with a joyful cry,

And eyed his quarry, yet far away,

Still up and up in the dark blue sky,

That he might aim a swoop on his prey;

Then down as the lightning bolt of Jove

On the heron, who, giving a scream of fear,

Shoots away from his enemy over above,

And makes for the rushing Water of Weir.

III.

The Water of Weir is rushing down,

Foaming and furious, muddy and brown,

From the heights where the laughing Näiads dwell,

And cascades leap from the craggy fell,

Where the mountain streamlets brattle and brawl,

'Midst the mountain maidens' echoing call,

Through pools where the water-kelpies wait

For the rider who dares the roaring spate.

Rain-fed, proud, turgid, and swollen,

Now foaming wild, now sombre and sullen;

Dragging the rushes from banks and braes,

Tearing the drooping branches of trees,

Rolling them down by scallop and scaur,

Involving all in a watery war--

Turned, and whirled, and swept along,

Down to the sea to be buried and gone.

The peregrine, fixed on the wader's back,

Is carried along in her devious track,

As with a weak and a wailing scream

The victim crosses the raging stream.

"I will lose, I will lose my gay peregrine!"

Cried shrilly the Ladye Tomasine:

She will hurry across the bridge of wood,

With its rail of wattle which long hath stood;

Her nimble feet are upon the plank

That will bear her over from bank to bank;

She has crossed it times a thousandfold:

Time brings youth and Time makes old;

The wattles have rotted while she was growing,

The wind is up and the waters rowing,

And to keep her feet she must use her hand.

"Come back! come back!" was the baron's command,

Too late!--go wattles--a piercing scream!

And the maid falls into the roaring stream!

Round and round, in eddying whirl,

Who shall save the perishing girl?

Round and round, and down and away,

Nothing to grasp, and nothing to stay.

The baron stands fixed and wrings his hands,

And looks to Sir Hubert, who trembling stands.

Sir Hubert! one moment now is thine--

The next! and a power no less than divine

Can save this maid of so many charms

From the grasp of Death's enfolding arms.

Spring! spring! Sir Hubert, the moment is thine

To save a life, and a love to win.

No! no! the dastard kestrel kite

Aye hugs the earth in his stealthy flight.

Hope gone! the pool at the otter's cave

Will prove the Ladye Tomasine's grave.

Ho! ho! see yonder comes rushing down

A lithe young hind, though a simple clown--

Off bonnet and shoes, and coat and vest,

A plunge! and he holds her round the waist!

Three strokes of his arm, with his beautiful prize

All safe, although faint, on the bank she lies!

A cottager's wife came running down,

"Take care of the ladye," said the clown.

He has donned his clothes, and away he has gone,

His name unuttered, his home unknown.

IV.

Up in the ancient Castle of Weir

Sat the baron, the knight, and the fair Tomasine;

And the baron he looked at his daughter dear,

While the salt tears bleared his aged eyne;

And then to the steward, with hat in hand:

"Make known unto all, from Tweed to Tyne,

A hundred rose nobles I'll give to the man

Who saved the life of my Tomasine."

Sir Hubert cried out, in an envious vein,

"Who is he that will vouch for the lurdan loon?

There's no one to say he would know him again,

And another may claim the golden boon."

Then said the ladye, "My eyes were closed,

And I never did see this wondrous man;

And the cottar woman she hath deposed

He was gone ere his features she could scan."

"Ho!" cried the baron, "I watched him then,

As I stood on the opposite bank afeared;

Of a hundred men I would ken him again,

Though he were to doff his dun-brown beard."

A year has passed at the Castle of Weir,

Yet no one has claimed the golden don;

Most wonderful thing to tell or to hear!

Was he of flesh and blood and bone?

Though golden nobles might not him wile,

Was there not something more benign?

Was not for him a maiden's smile?

Was not that maiden Tomasine?

V.

The ladye sat within her summer bower

Alone, deep musing, in the still greenwood;

Sadly and slowly passed the evening hour,

Sad and sorrowful was her weary mood,

For she had seen, beneath a shadowing tree,

All fast asleep a beauteous rural swain,

Whom she had often sighed again to see,

But never yet had chanced to see again;--

So beautiful that, if the time had been

In a long mythic age now past and gone,

She might have deemed that she had haply seen

The all-divine Latona's fair-haired son

Come down upon our earth to pass a day

Among the daughters fair of earth-born men,

And had put on a suit of sober grey,

To appear unto them as a rural swain.

With features all so sweet in harmony,

You might have feigned they breathed a music mild,

With lire so peachy, fit to charm the eye,

And lips right sure to conquer when they smiled,

All seen through locks of lustrous auburn hair,

Which wanton fairies had so gaily thrown

To cover o'er a face so wondrous fair,

Lest Dian might reclaim him as her own.

In the still moonlit hour there steals along,

And falls upon her roused and listening ear

The notes of some night-wandering minstrel's song,

And oh! so sweet and sad it was to hear.

You might have deemed it came from teylin sweet,

Touched by some gentle fairy's cunning hand,

To tell us of those joys that we shall meet

In some far distant and far happier land;

And oft at night, as time still passed away,

That hopeless song throughout the greenwood came,

And oft she heard repeated in the lay

The well-known sound of her own maiden name;

And often did she wish, and often sighed,

That bashful minstrel for once more to see,

To know if he were him she had espied

All fast asleep beneath the greenwood tree.

VI.

Alace! and alace! for that false pride

In the hearts of those of high degree,

And that gentle love should be decried

By its noblest champion, Chivalrie.

If the baron shall hear a whispered word

Of that fond lover's sweet minstrelsie,

That love-lorn heart and his angry sword

May some night better acquainted be.

Woe! woe! to the viper's envenomed tongue

That obeys the hest of a coward's heart,

Who tries to avenge his fancied wrong

By getting another to act his part.

Sir Hubert has lisped in the baron's ear,

When drinking wine at the evening hour,

That a minstrel clown met his daughter dear

At night in her lonely greenwood bower.

"Hush! hush! Sir Hubert, thy words are fires;

Elves are about us that hear and see,

Who may tell to the ghost of my noble sires

Of a damned blot on our pedigree."

And the baron frowned with darkened brow,

And by the bones of his fathers swore

That from that night this minstrel theou,

To his daughter would warble his love no more.

VII.

That night the minstrel sang in softer flow,

Waxing and waning soft and softer still,

Like autumn's night winds breathing loun and low,

Or evening murmur of the wimpling rill;

But there was heard that night no farewell strain,

As in foretime there ever used to be--

A stop! and then no more was heard again

That bashful lover's hapless minstrelsie.

Next morn the maid, with purpose to enjoy

The forest flowers and wild birds' early song,

Unto the greenwood went; and to employ

Her weary musing as she went along,

Love's magic memory from its depths upbrought

The notes that ever still so sweetly hung

About her heart; and as she gaily thought,

She sung them o'er as she had heard them sung.

Onward she moved: her dreamy, listless eye

Had leant upon a fragrant wild-rose bed,

And, glancing farther, what does she descry?

Stretched stiff and bloody, his sad spirit fled,

Yea, him whom when asleep she once had seen,

And had so often wished again to see,

Now dead and cold 'mong the leaves so green,

And all beneath the well-known greenwood tree.

"Good day, my ladye," then some one said--

It was Sir Hubert there close behind;

"He will sing no more, or I am belied,

For the reason, I wot, that he wanteth wind."

Up came the baron in angry vein;

He casts his eye on the body there;

He scans the features again and again

With a look of doubt and shudder of fear;

His hands he wrings with a groan of pain,

He rolls his eyeballs with gesture wild--

"Great God! by a villain's counsel I've slain

The youth who saved my darling child!"

Among yon hoary elms that o'er him grow

A harp is hung to catch the evening gale,

That sings to him in accents soft and low,

And soothes the maiden with its sorrowful wail,

Who, as she sits within her greenwood bower,

And listens to the teylin's solemn strain,

Bethinks her, in her tears, of every hour

That gentle youth had sung to her in vain.

VIII.

THE ROMAUNT OF ST. MARY'S WYND.

I.

Of Scotland's cities, still the rarest

Is ancient Edinburgh town;

And of her ladies, still the fairest

There you see walk up and down:

Be they gay, or be they gayless,

There they beck and there they bow,

From the Castle to the Palace,

In farthingale and furbelow.

Says Lady Jane to Lady Janet,

"Thy gown, I vow, is stiff and grand;

Though there were feint a body in it,

Still I trow that it would stand."

And Lady Janet makes rejoinder:

"Thy boddice, madam, is sae tend,

The bonny back may crack asunder,

But, by my faith, it winna bend."

But few knew one both fairer, kinder,

The fair maid of St. Mary's Wynd;

Among the great you will not find her,

For she was of the humbler kind.

For her minnie spinning, plodding,

She wore no ribbons to her shune,

No mob-cap on her head nid-nodding,

But aye the linsey-woolsey gown.

No Lady Jane in silks and laces,

How fair soever she might be,

Could match the face--the nature's graces

Of this poor, humble Marjorie:

Her eyes they were baith mirk and merry,

Her lire was as the lily fair,

Her lips were redder than the cherry,

And flaxen was her glossy hair.

Ye bucks who wear the coats silk-braided,

With satin ribbons at your knee,

And cambric ruffles starched and plaited,

With cockèd bonnets all ajee,

Who walk with mounted canes at even,

Up and down so jauntilie,

Ye would have given a blink of heaven

For one sweet smile from Marjorie.

But Marjory's care was aye her minnie,

And day by day she sat and span;

Nor did she think it aught but sin aye,

To bear the stare of gentleman:

She doated on her own dear Willie,

For dear to her fond heart was he,

Who, though his sire was poor, yet still he

Was far above the low degree.

It was aye said his father's father

Did claim some Spanish pedigree,

Which many well believed, the rather

That he was not of our countrie:

His skin was brown as nut of hazel,

His eye was black as Scottish sloe,

And all so bright that it would dazzle

The eye that looked that eye into.

There came into his head a notion,

Which wrought and wrought within his brain,

That he would cross th' Atlantic Ocean,

And seek the land of Spanish Main;

And there amass a routh of treasure,

And then come back with bosom leal

To his own Marjory, and release her

From rock and reel and spinning wheel.

Up spake the minnie--it did not please her

That he should "gae sae far frae hame:"

"Thou'lt reap less in yon Abiezer

Than thou wilt glean in this Ephraim;

For there's a proverb faileth never;

A lintie safe within the hand,

Though lean and lank, is better ever

Than is a fat finch on the wand."

Then Marjory, with eye so tearful,

Whispered in dark Willie's ear,

"Thou wilt not go and leave me careful,

Friendless, lanely, starving here;

My minnie God hath gien a warning,

And I can do nae mair than spin,

And slowly, slowly comes the earning

That with my wheel I daily win."

"Oh fear not, Marjory dear--content ye,

Blackfriar John hath to me sworn,

That man of God will kindly tent ye

Until that I again return;

And he has promised fair to write me

Of how ye live and prosper twain,

And I will faithfully requite ye

With my true love to you again."

II.

Dark Willie took his sad departure,

And left at home his Marjory dear

To doubt and fear from every quarter,

Weep--weeping sadly on the pier;

And o'er the sea, all dangers scorning,

And o'er the sea he boldly sailed,

Until upon the fortieth morning

The promised land at length he hailed.

Now! thou one of the fateful sisters

That spins for man the silver thread,

Spin one of gold that glints and glisters

For one who stands in meikle need;

Spin it quick and spin it finely,

Till Willie's golden fortune's made,

And send him back to Marjory kindly,

Who spins at home for daily bread.

There was a rich old Spanish señor,

Who bore dark Willie's Spanish name,

And came to feel the kindly tenor

Of plighted friendship's sacred claim:

He gave his right hand to dark Willie,

With shares of a great companie,

Which sent forth goods far o'er the billow,

In ships that sailed on every sea.

Don Pedro had an only daughter,

The Donna Clara, passing fair,

Who, when her sire took his departure,

Would be her father's only heir:

Her eyes, so like two sterns of even,

Shining the murky clouds among,

And black her ringlets as the raven,

That o'er her marble shoulders hung.

Oh Willie! Willie! have thou care, man!

And give unto thine heart a stay,

For there are witcheries working there, man,

May steal that heart of thine away.

No need! to him blue eyes are glowing,

To him most beautiful of all,

No need! for flaxen hair is flowing

To keep his loving heart in thrall.

III.

A year had passed, and he had written

Of loving letters more than one,

The while gold pieces still remitting

All to holy Blackfriar John;

Yet still no answer had he gotten;

And as the days still passed away,

He fell to musing, and deep thought on

What had caused the strange delay.

What now to him those golden pieces

That he so fastly now could earn?

Ah, love like his gives no releases,

However Clara's eyes might yearn;

He wandered hither, wandered thither,

By sad forebodings nightly tossed;

He wandered now, he wandered ever,

In mournful musing sadly lost.

But time would tell: there came a letter

That filled his soul with dire dismay,

And told him his dark fears' abettor,

His Marjory's health had flown away:

Even as the clay her cheek was paling,

Her azure eyes were waxing dim,

Her hair unkemp't, and loose, and trailing,

And all for hopeless love of him.

Sad harbinger of things to harrow,

Another came, ah! soon a day,

To tell him his dear winsome marrow

From this sad world had passed away.

No more for him those eyes so merry,

That were to him so sweet to see!

No more those lips red as the cherry,

That were to him so sweet to pree!

IV.

Alas! there are of things--we see them

Without the aid of wizard's spell;

But there are other things--we dree them,

No art of wizard can foretell:

Strange thing the heart where love has power,

So tossed with joy or racked with pain!

Dark Willie from that fatal hour

Seemed fated ne'er to smile again.

In vain now Clara, sembling gladness,

Plies the magic of her wile,

To draw him off from his great sadness,

And cheat him of a loving smile:

The more her sympathy she tenders,

The more he will by art defy

All beauty which but contrast renders

With his own dear lost Marjory.

V.

Now Time's big silent, solemn billow

Rolls quietly on from year to year:

Don Pedro lies on his green pillow,

With love-lorn Clara sleeping near.

But, ere he died, he did declare it

His pleasure when his days were told,

And Clara dead, with none to share it,

Don William should heir all his gold.

Gift vain, oh vain! would wealth restore him

His long-lost Marjory to his arms?

Nay, would it wake and bring before him

One only of her envied charms?

No, it might cause another courtship,

A love he could not now control:

Great Mammon lured him to his worship,

And lorded in his inmost soul.

What though ten years away had stolen?

'Twas not to him all weary time,

Who every day was pleased to roll in

The tempting Mammon's golden shrine.

But when he laid him on his pillow,

His fancy sought the farthest east,

And conjured up some lonely willow

That waved o'er her he loved the best.

Change still--a passion changed to pity!

No other solace would he have--

A wish to see his native city,

And sit and weep o'er Marjory's grave.

To see that house, yea, buy the sheiling

In that old wynd of St. Marie,

A hermit there to live and dwell in,

Then sleep beside his Marjorie.

VI.

Blow soft, ye winds, and tender-hearted

This hermit waft to yonder shore,

From which for sordid gold he parted

Ten weary years and one before.

Ho! there's the pier where last he left her,

That dear, loved one, to weep alone,

And for that love of gold bereft her

Of all the pleasures she could own.

He's now within the ancient borough!

He sought the well-known White Horse Inn,

And there he laid him down in sorrow,

Some strengthening confidence to win;

Then up the street, with none to greet him,

He held his sad and sorrowing way,

When lo! who should be there to meet him

But Friar John?--who slunk away.

Strange thing! but lo! the sacred sheiling

In that old wynd of St. Marie--

The window where with mirthful feeling

He tap't the sign to Marjorie.

He sought the lobby dark and narrow,

Groped gently for the well-known door,

Where he might hear of his winsome marrow,

Who died there many years before.

He drew the latch, and quietly entered;

There some one spinning merrilie!

A faltering question then he ventured:

"My name, kind sir, is Marjorie."

"Great God!" he cried, in voice all trembling,

And sank upon a crazy chair,

And tried to trace a strange resembling

In her who sat beside him there.

A maiden she still young and buxom,

Nor change but what ten years may bring,

Her hair still of the glossy flaxen,

Her eyes still blue as halcyon's wing.

He traced the lines, he knew each feature

Of all her still unfaded charms;

And now this long lost, worshipped creature

Is locked fast in his loving arms.

"Look up! look up! thy fear controlling,

It is thy Willie's voice that calls:"

She oped her eyes--now wildly rolling

All o'er his face the lustrous balls--

"It is, it is---oh, powers most holy!

And I had heard that thou wert dead;

And here, in spite of melancholy,

I still spin for my daily bread."

"'Twas Friar John wrote me a letter,

He said he saw thee on thy bier;

And sore I mourned with tears, oh bitter!

For one I ever loved so dear."

"Oh, wae befa' that wicked friar,

Who sairly tried my love to gain;

Wae, wae befa' that wicked liar,

Wha brought on us sae meikle pain."

Then Willie said, with tears encumbered,

"Cheer up, cheer up, dear Marjorie,

For I have gold in sums unnumbered,

And it shall all belong to thee."

"And art thou true, and still unmarried?

And is thy bodie not a seim?

And is it true my ears have carried,

Or is it a' a lying dream?"

"All, all is true, my dearest hinny,

What thou'rt to me I am to thee,

Our years on earth may still be many,

And quickly we shall wedded be."

"Ah, weel! ah, weel!" and sighing, sobbing,

She on his breast her head hath lain;

And as he felt her bosom throbbing,

He kissed her ower and ower again.

And he has bought a noble mansion,

And stocked it with all things genteel

Of costly price--nor need we mention

The rock and reel and spinning-wheel;

And he has bought a noble carriage,

With servants in gay liverie,

I trow there was an unco marriage

In the ancient wynd of Saint Marie.

IX.

THE LEGEND OF MARY LEE.[A]

_(Another Version.)_

[Footnote A: See the strange song of the same name in the

_Scottish Gallovidean Encyclopædia_, from which I borrow

some of the maledictory epithets. Grotesque they may be, but

they are justified by the vocabulary of our old witch-sibyls

used in curses and incantations, as we find in books of

diablerie.]

Though Robert was heir to broad Kildearn,

He had often with gipsies roved,

And from gipsies he came a name to earn,

Which was dear to the maid he loved.

To ladies fair he was Robert St. Clair,

When he met them in companie;

To a certain one, and to her alone,

He was only Robin-a-Ree.[2]

[Footnote 2: Kingly, or royal, in the gipsy tongue.]

Through Kildearn's woods they were wont to rove,

And they knew well the trysting tree;

The green sward was their bed of love,

And the green leaves their canopie.

But the love of the virgin heart is shy,

And hangs between hope and fear;

It is fed by the light of a lover's eye,

And it trusts thro' the willing ear.

"My Mary! I swear by yon Solway tide,

Which is true to the queen of night,

That thou shalt be my chosen bride

When I come to my lawful right:

My father is now an aged man,

And but few years more can see;

And when he dies, old Kildearn's land

Belongs to Robin-a-Ree."

"Oh Robin, oh Robin," and Mary sighed,

"Aye faithfu' to you I hae been,

As true as ever yon Solway tide

Is true to yon silvery queen.

And faithfu' and true I will ever prove

Till that happy day shall be,

When I will be in honoured love

The wife o' Robin-a-Ree."

Green be thy leaves, thou "tree of troth,"

And thy rowan berries red,

Where he has sworn that holy oath,

If he stand to what he has said.

But black and blasted may thou be,

And thy berries a yellow green,

If he prove false to Mary Lee,

Who so faithful to him has been.

For a woman's art and a woman's wile

A man may well often slight,

At the worst they are but nature's guile

To procure what is nature's right.

But a woman's wrath, when once inflamed

By a sense of fond love betrayed,

No cunning device by cunning framed

Has ever that passion laid.

II.

Passions will range and passions will change,

And they leave no mortal in peace,

There is nothing in man that to us seems strange

That to passion you may not trace.

The heart that will breathe the warmest love

Is the first oft to cease its glow,

The fairest flower in the forest grove

Is often the first to dow.

A woman's eye is aye quick to see

The love of a lover decay:

And why from the trusty trysting tree

Does Robin now stay away?

There are other trees in the wood as green,

With as smooth a sward below,

Where lovers may lie in the balmy e'en,

And their love to each other show.

'Twas when the moon in an autumn night

Threw shadows throughout the wood,

She heard some sounds; and with footsteps light,

Where no one could see, she stood.

She listened, and with an anxious ear,

To know who these there might be:

A youth was there with his mistress dear,

And the youth was Robin-a-Ree.

Silent and gloomy she wandered home,

And went to her bed apart,

No softening tear to her eye would come,

No sigh from her aching heart.

The balmy milk of a woman's breast

Waxed curdled green and sour,

And Mary Lee was by all confessed

As changed from that fatal hour.

At times, when the moon gave little light,

She sat by the Solway side,

And thought, as she sat, of that happy night

When he swore by the Solway tide.

Far sweeter to her the roaring wind,

Than when it was solemn and low,

For the waters he swore by seemed to her mind

As resenting that broken vow.

Still darker and darker the cloud on her brow,

Yet paler her tearless cheek;

But no one her sorrow would ever know,

Nor word would she ever speak.

'Tis the story old, old, so often told,

To be told while time shall be,

Fair Catherine, the heiress of Ravenswold,

Is the wife of Robin-a-Ree.

III.

It was on an angry winter night,

When Mary sat in her gloom,

There came to her door an ill-doing wight---

Kildearn's drunken groom:

He placed in her hand a gold-filled purse,

And spoke of love's sacred flame;

And well she knew the unholy source

Whence the man and the money came.

"Awa and awa, thou crawling worm,

On whom thy horse will tread

Awa and awa, and tell Kildearn,

I accept his noble meed."

She placed the purse in a cabinet old,

And locked it right carefullie,

"Lie there, lie there, thou ill-won gold.

Till needed thou shalt be."

IV.

The years roll on, nor Robin-a-Ree

Can their onward progress stay,

The years roll on, and children three,

Have blessed his bridal day.

And Mary Lee is there to see,

As she sat in her lonely home,

Two of Kildearn's children three,

Borne away to Kildearn's tomb.

But none of these years work change on her:

As she seeks the lone greenwood,

She sees a man lying bleeding there,

While his horse beside him stood.

He called for help, where help there was none,

Tho' Mary was standing near,

Who spoke in a solemn eldritch tone,

Words strange to the human ear:

"The hairy adder I dinna like,

When I the fell creature meet,

Neither like I the moon-baying tyke.

Nor the Meg-o'-moniefeet.

I canna thole the yellow-wamed ask,

Sae fearful a thing to see;

But mair than a', and ower them a',

I hate fause Robin-a-Ree."

V.

Time puts in the sack that behind him hangs

Of things both old and new,

And every hour brings stranger things

Than those we have bidden adieu.

The last one of those children three,

Young Hector, Kildearn's pride,

Has gone, in his childish mirth and glee,

To play by the Solway tide.

That tide by which his father swore

As true to the silvery queen--

That tide is breaking with sullen roar,

And Hector no more is seen.

They may search, they may drag--the search is vain,

No Hector they'll ever find;

A lugger is yonder, away to the main,

Borne on an eastern wind.

And there is a woman who stands in the bay,

And she holds out both her hands,

As if she would wave that lugger away

To some of the distant lands.

And if you will trace her to her hold,

Where a purse of gold was laid,

You will find the drawer, but not the gold,

For the purse and gold are fled.

VI.

Time flies, but sin breeds in-and-in,

And a father's grief is stern;

Robin is dead, and a distant kin

Now calls himself Kildearn.

The moon's pale light falls on yonder tomb,

By which sits a woman grey,

And sings in the blast a revengeful doom,

In a woman's weird way.

"Chirk! whutthroats in yon auld taff dyke,

Hoot! grey owl in yon shaw,

Howl out! ye auld moon-baying tyke,

Ye winds mair keenly blaw,

Till ye rouse to the rage o' a wintry storm

The waves of the Solway sea,

And wauken the brawnit connach worm

On the grave o' Robin-a-Ree."

VII.

More years passed on. Ho! near by the cove

Is a ship with a pirate crew,

All bound in honour and fear and love,

To their captain, Hector Drew;

Who looked through his glass at old Kildearn,

As thoughts through his memory ran,

And fain of that house he would something learn.

But he is an outlawed man.

Nor venture could he to come upon land,

Except under cloud of night,

And he and all his pirate band

Lie hidden there out of sight;

That he might plunder Kildearn House

Of its gold and its jewelrie,

Then away, and away, again to cruise

Where rovers aye love to be.

But there is one who stands on the shore,

Who knew that pirate hoy,

Whose captain she bribed many years before

To steal away Kildearn's boy.

She has sent the bloodhounds to the wood,

They have seized them every loon,

And sent them to answer for deeds of blood,

To Edwin's old castled toun.

The Admiral High of old Scotland

Has them tried for deeds so dark,

And they are decreed by his high command

To be hanged within high-water mark.

On the sands of Leith, as St. Giles struck two,

And within the hem of the sea,

There Captain Drew and all his crew

Were hanged for piracie.

And so it is true that a woman's wile

A man may with safety slight,

At worst it may be but nature's guile

To procure what is nature's right.

But a woman's wrath, if once inflamed

By a sense of fond love betrayed,

No cunning device by cunning framed

Has ever that passion laid.

THE BALLAD OF AGE AND YOUTH.

I left yon stately castle on the height,

The ancient halls of lordly Ravenslee,

Wherein was met, in grandeur all bedight,

Of knights and dames a gallant companie;

For I was in a misanthropic mood,

And deemed that gay galaverie false and vain,

And wished to lie or loiter in some wood,

And give my fancy her unbridled rein.

I left them all in flush of pleasure's sport,

Some knights with damoiselles gone forth to woo,

Some listing gleemen in the ballion court,

Some deep in ombre, some at lanterloo,

Some gone a-hawking with the merlyon,

Some at their noon-meat sipping Spanish wine,

Some conning old romances on the lawn,

And all to meet in hall at hour of dine.

II.

Down in Dalmossie dell I sought a nook

Beneath a thick and widely-spreading tree,

And there I sat to con my little book,

My book of old black-letter grammarie.

All stillness in that deep and lonely dell

Save hum of bumble-bee on nimble wing,

Or zephyr sporting round the wild blue bell,

While fancy feigned some tiny tinkle-ring.

Lo! come from yonder sheiling by the burn

An aged pair whom Time claimed as his own--

Their clothes all brown, and sere and sadly worn,

But brushed and clean, and tentily put on.

I noted well the signs of their great eild,

Their shrunken limbs, their locks of snowy hair,

The wobbling walk, the bowing, bending bield,

The wrinkled cheeks, and looks of dule and care.

I thought on hapless man--with changing face,

Each day more furrowed as he wears along.

He looks into the glass to cry Alace!

Alace for that spring time that's past and gone!

He looks askance, and sees young eyes that lour

On him, so comely once, unsightly grown:

The faded roses make a scented bower,

But aged man seems spurned by man alone.

Yet happy he who, changing with advance,

Has bright and golden hopes beyond the sun;

He can give back their saucy, pitying glance,

Who set such wondrous price their youth upon.

_Their_ night will come in turn, yea, comes apace,

Without, mayhap, the hope of brighter day,

When age-worn looks will don their native grace,

And feel no more this world's despised decay.

III.

That aged pair sat down upon the green,

While each the other helped to softest seat,

I watched their ways, myself by them unseen,

And heard their quivering words, so kindly sweet,

As still of golden days when they were young,

Of youth's green summer time they spoke and wept,

And soft in wailing song there came along

These words, which I in memory long have kept:

THE SONG OF AGE.[A]

"The trees they are high, John, the leaves they are green,

The days are awa that you and I have seen;

The days are awa that we have seen;

And oh! for youth's bonnie green summer again,

Summer again, summer again,

And oh! for youth's bonnie green summer again.

"There was joy at our marriage--a dance on the green,

They a' roosed the light of my bonnie blue een,

My bonnie blue een, where tears may now be seen;

And oh! that we were to be married again,

Married again, married again,

And oh! that we were to be married again.

"The grass it is wet, John, the wind it is keen,

Our claes they are worn, and our shune they are thin;

Our shune they are thin, and the waters come in;

And oh! for youth's bonnie green summer again,

Summer again, summer again,

And oh! for youth's bonnie green summer again.

"There was joy in our youth, John, at wish's command,

We danced and we sang, and we ilka gate ran,

But now dule and sorrow's on ilka hand;

And oh! for youth's bonnie green summer again,

Summer again, summer again,

And oh! for youth's bonnie green summer again.

"There's graves in yon howf, John, and hillocks o' green,

Where our bairns lie sleeping that left us alane,

And they're waiting for us till we gae to creep in;

And alas! for youth's bonnie green summer again,

Summer again, summer again,

And alas! for youth's bonnie green summer again."

When _she_ had crooned her chant, I heard _him_ say,

With sobbing voice and deep heart-heaving sigh,

"Dry up thae tears, my Jean, for things away,

Time's but a watch-tick in eternity;

We darena sing of earth, but lift our prayer

To Him whose promises are never vain,

That we may dwell in yonder Eden fair,

And see youth's summer blooming green again."

Then rose a prayer to Bethel's Lord and King

That He would lead them through this vale of woe,

And to the promised land his children bring,

Where Babel's streams in living waters flow.

They left: again all silence in the dell

Save hum of bumble-bee on nimble wing,

Or zephyr sporting round the wild blue bell,

While fancy feigned some tiny tinkle-ring.

[Footnote A: Some readers may recognise in the old woman's song

portions of an ancient ditty that used to be chanted in a

wailing cadence in several parts of Scotland. I suspect the song

as a whole is lost--the more to be regretted for its sweet

simplicity and melodious wail (so far as judged in the

fragments), which in a modern song would be viewed as weakness

or affectation. Indeed, the modes of thought and feeling that

belong to what is called advanced civilisation are impatient of

these things except as rude relics of yet untutored minds; and

the pleasure with which they are accepted has in it perhaps a

grain of pity for those that didn't know better than produce

them. Yet, as regards mere poetical feeling at least, the nearer

the fountainhead the purer the water.]

IV.

And is not youth, thought I, a vulgar thing,

When lording over WISDOM'S ancient reign?

What may avail the brilliancy of spring

If autumn yields no hoards of garnered grain?

Experience is the daughter of old Time,

Mother of Wisdom, last and noblest born,

Who comes as Faith to help our waning prime,

To cheer the night of age and light the morn.

I sought at eve the castle on the height,

The ancient halls of lordly Ravenslee,

Oh! contrast great! gay scene of youth's delight--

The spinette, galliard, mirth's galaverie!

I thought upon the couple in the wood,

And how that singing, dancing, laughing train

Would one day sigh in Time's avenging mood,

"Alas! for youth's green summer time again."

XI.

THE LEGEND OF CRAIGULLAN.[A]

[Footnote A: This legend has been referred to several Scotch

families--one in Fife in particular, the name of which it would

be imprudent to mention.]

Yonder the halls of old Craigullan!

To weird doom for ever true;

The moaning winds are sad and sullen,

The screech-owl hoots too-hoo! too-hoo!

The lazy burn-clock drones around,

The wing-mouse flaps the choking air,

The croaking frog hops on the ground,

For weird fate is working there.

Each wing had once a goodly tower

Of stately beild, both broad and high;

In every tower a lady's bower,

Bedecked with silken tapestry;

In every bower a lovely maid,

Her youth and beauty all in vain;

And with each maid a keeper staid

To watch the wanderings of her brain.

'Twas said that those who went that way

Would hear some shrill and piercing wail

Come from these towers, and die away

As borne upon the passing gale;

Yet none could say from whom it came,

Far less divine the reason why;

And Superstition, with her dream,

Could only whisper mystery--

Unholy spirits haunting nigh,

And screaming in the midnight hour,

Presage of vengeance from on high

For deeds done in Craigullan's tower.

If Superstition has her dream,

She also has her waking hour;

Nor ever man, howe'er supreme,

Can free him from her mystic power.

And it was told, in whispering way,

That once Craigullan led his hounds

Out forth upon a Sabbath day

Within the church bells' sacred sounds;

And as he rode, by fury fired,

A woman, pregnant, overthrown

Beneath his horse's hoofs, expired,

And, dying, shrieked this malison:

_From this day forth, till time shall cease,

May madness haunt Craigullan's race_!

The words struck on a sceptic's ear:

Would woman's curse his pleasure stay?

He blew his horn both loud and clear,

And with his hounds he hied away.

He conned no more the weird reve

Which all conspired to prove untrue,

For he had healthy daughters five,

Who up in maiden beauty grew--

Clorinda, Isobel, and Jane--

Such was the order of their birth--

And Florabel and Clementine,

All lovely, gay, and full of mirth.

But man is blind, with all his power,

And gropes through life his darksome way;

Nor ever thinks the evil hour

May come within the brightest day.

As custom went, a noble throng

Hath filled Craigullan's ancient hall,

Amidst th' inspiring dance and song,

Clorinda is admired of all.

The sun with his enlivening light

Brings out the viper and the rose,

And joy that cheers will oft excite

Dark Mania from her long repose.

Amidst the dance and music there--

The dance which she so proudly led--

A maniac shriek has rent the air--

Clorinda falls, her reason fled.

In vain shall passing time essay

To soothe the dire domestic pain;

Fair Isobel becomes the prey

Of that same demon of the brain.

When autumn winds were sighing low,

When birds were singing on the tree,

Amidst their song she met the foe,

And sank beneath the fell decree.

Nor yet the sibyl leaf all read,

Dark Nemesis is grim and sullen;

She bends again her vengeful head--

Woe! woe! to old Craigullan.

The next by fatal count of Time,

The next by her foreboding fears---

Jane falls, like those in early prime--

She falls amidst a mother's tears.

Nor finished yet the weird spell,

Wrought out by some high powers divine.

The victim next is Florabel,

The fairest of Craigullan's line.

The shadow fell upon her bloom,

Grew darker as the period neared,

As if the terror of her doom

Wrought out the issue which it feared.

If Superstition has her dreams,

Proud reason has her mystic day;

And who shall harmonize the themes

In this world's dark and dreary way?

If Clementine is yet forgot,

Is the relief to her a gain?

She fears the demon in each thought,

In every fancy of the brain.

If once a cheerful thought shall rise,

The dreaded enemy is near;

If once her heaving bosom sighs,

The vengeful demon will appear.

In vain she seeks the greenwood grove,

In vain she hears the merlin sing,

In vain she seeks her flower alcove,

In vain for her the roses spring.

If holy peace she tries to seek,

She hears Clorinda's maniac song,

Or Florabel's ecstatic shriek,

Sounding the stilly woods among.

What though Sir Walter seeks her bower,

And pleads his suit on bended knee

With all a lover's magic power,

That she his lady-love shall be?

He does not know her secret pain;

She dare not whisper in his ear;

She dare not trust that she is sane;

She loves him, but she loves with fear.

This is _her_ madness. Who shall know

If she with reason, _they_ without,

Which have the greater load of woe?

Her sisters have not sense to doubt.

This is the world's madness too:

We seek for truth, and seek in vain.

While madly we the false pursue,

Who shall decide that he is sane?

And still the halls of old Craigullan

To weird doom are ever true;

The moaning winds are sad and sullen,

The grey owl hoots too-hoo! too-hoo!

XII.

THE HERMIT OF THE HILLS.

"Intruder, thou shalt hear my tale," the solitary said,

While far adown beneath our feet the fiery levin played;

The thunder-clouds our carpet were--we gazed upon the storm,

Which swept along the mountain sides in many a fearful form.

I sat beside the lonely man, on Cheviot's cloudless height;

Above our heads was glory, but beneath more glorious night;

For the sun was shining over us, but lightnings flashed below,

Like the felt and burning darkness of unutterable woe.

"I love, in such a place as this," the desolate began,

"To gaze upon the tempests wild that separate me from man;

To muse upon the passing things that agitate the world--

View myself as by a whirlwind to hopeless ruin hurled.

"My heart was avaricious once, like yours the slave of feeling--

Perish such hearts! vile dens of crime! man's selfishness concealing;

For self! damned self's creation's lord!--man's idol and his god!

Twas torn from me, a blasted, bruised, a cast off, worthless load.

"Some say there's wildness in my eyes, and others deem me crazed,

They, trembling, turn and shun my path--for which let Heaven be praised!

They say my words are blasphemy--they marvel at my fate,

When 'tis my happiness to know they _pity_ not, but _hate_.

"My father fell from peace and wealth the day that I was born--

My mother died, and he became his fellow-gambler's scorn;

I know not where he lived or died--I never heard his name--

An orphan in a workhouse, I was thought a child of shame.

"Some _friend_ by blood had lodged me there, and bought my keeper too,

Who pledged his oath he would conceal what of my tale he knew.

Death came to him--he called on me the secret to unfold,

But died while he was uttering the little I have told.

"My soul was proud, nor brooked restraint--was proud, and I was young;

And with an eager joyancy I heard his flattering tongue

Proclaim me not of beggars born--yea, as he speaking died,

I--greedy--mad to know the rest--stood cursing by his side.

"I looked upon the homely garb that told my dwelling-place--

It hung upon me heavily--a token of disgrace!

I fled the house--I went to sea--was by a wretch impressed,

The stamp of whose brutality is printed on my breast.

"Like vilest slave he fettered me, my flesh the irons tore--

Scourged, mocked, and worse than buried me upon a lifeless shore,

Where human foot had never trod--upon a barren rock,

Whose caves ne'er echoed to a sound save billows as they broke.

"'Twas midnight; but the morning came. I looked upon the sea,

And a melancholy wilderness its waters were to me;

The heavens were black as yonder cloud that rolls beneath our feet,

While neither land nor living thing my eager eyes could meet.

"I naked sat upon the rock; I trembled--strove to pray;

Thrice did I see a distant sail, and thrice they bore away.

My brain with hunger maddening, as the steed the battle braves,

Headlong I plunged from the bare rock and buffeted the waves.

"Methought I saw a vessel near, and bitter were my screams,

But they died within me echoless as voices in our dreams;

For the winds were howling round me, and the suffocating gush

Of briny horrors rioted, the cry of death to crush.

"My senses fled. I lifelessly upon the ocean slept;

And when to consciousness I woke, a form before me wept.

Her face was beautiful as night; but by her side there stood

A group, whose savage glances were more dismal than the flood.

"They stood around exultingly; they snatched me from the wave--

Stole me from death--to torture me, to sell me as a slave.

She who stood o'er me weeping was a partner of my chains.

We were sold, and separation bled my heart with deeper pains.

"I knew not what her birth had been, but loved her with a love

Which nor our tyrant's cruelty nor mockery could move.

I saw her offered to a Moor--another purchased me;

But, Heavens! my arms once fetterless, ere midnight I was free!

"Memory, with eager eye, had marked her master's hated door--

I grasped a sabre, reached the house, and slew the opposing Moor.

I bore her rapidly away; a boat was on the beach--

We put to sea--saw morning dawn 'yond our pursuers' reach

"I gazed upon her silently--I saw her sink to sleep,

As darkness gathered over us upon the cheerless deep;

I saw her in her slumber start--unconsciously she spoke--

Oh death!--she called upon _his_ name who left me on the rock!

"Then there was madness in my breast and fury in my brain--

She never heard _that name_ from me, yet uttered it again!

I started forth and grasped her hand--'Are we pursued?' she cried--

I trembled in my agony, and speechless o'er her sighed.

"I ventured not to speak of love in such an awful hour,

For hunger glistened in our eyes, and grated to devour

The very rags that covered us! My pangs I cannot tell,

But in that little hour I felt the eternity of hell.

"For the transport of its tortures did in that hour surround

Two beings on the bosom of a shoreless ocean found;

As we gazed upon each other, with a dismal longing look,

And jealousy, but not from love, our tortured bosoms shook.

"I need but add that we were saved, and by a vessel borne

Again toward our native land to be asunder torn.

The maiden of my love was rich--was rich--and I was poor;

A soulless menial shut on me her wealthy guardian's door.

"She knew it not, nor would I tell--tell! by the host of heaven,

My tongue became the sepulchre of sound!--my heart was riven.

I fled society and hope; the prison of my mind

A world of inexpressible and guilty thoughts confined.

"She was not wed--my hope returned; ambition my soul,

Sweeping round me like a fury, while the beacon and the goal

Of desire, ever turbulent and sleepless, was to have

The hand that mine had rescued from the fetters of a slave.

"I was an outcast on the earth, but braved my hapless lot;

And while I groaned impatiently, weak mortals heard it not.

A host of drear, unholy dreams did round my pillow haunt,

While my days spent in loneliness were darkened o'er with want.

"At length blind fortune favoured me--my breast to joy awoke;

And then he who had left me on the isolated rock,

I met within a distant land; nor need I further tell,

But that we _met_ as equals there, and my antag'nist fell.

"Awhile I brooded on his death; and gloomily it brought

A desolateness round me, stamping guilt on every thought.

I trembling found how bloodily my vengeance was appeased,

At what vile price my bosom was of _jealousy_ released.

"For still the breathing of his name by her I lov'd had rung

In remembrance, like the latest sound that falleth from the tongue

Of those best loved and cherished, when upon the bed of death

They bequeath to us their injuries to visit in our wrath.

"But soon these griefs evanished, like a passing summer storm,

And a gush of hope like sunshine flashed around me, to deform

The image of repentance, while the darkness of remorse

Retreated from its presence with a blacker with'ring curse.

"I hurried home in eagerness---the leaden moments fled;

My burning tale of love was told--was told--and we were wed.

A tumult of delightfulness had rapt my soul in flame,

But on that day--my wedding day--a mourning letter came.

"Joy died on ev'ry countenance--she, trembling, broke the seal--

Screamed--glanced on me! and lifeless fell, unable to reveal

The horrid tale of death that told her new-made husband's guilt--

The hand which she that day had wed, her brother's blood had spilt.

"That brother in his mother's right another name did bear:

Twas him I slew--all shrank from me in horror and in fear;

They seized me in my bridal dress--my bride still senseless lay--

I spoke not while they pinioned me and hurried me away.

"They lodged me in a criminal cell, by iron gratings barred,

And there the third day heavily a funeral bell I heard.

A sable crowd my prison passed--they gazed on it with gloom:

It was my bride--my beautiful--they followed to the tomb!

"I was acquitted; but what more had I with life to do?

I cursed my fate--my heart--the world--and from its creatures flew.

Intruder, thou hast heard my tale of wretchedness and guilt--

Go, mingle with a viler world, and tell it if thou wilt."

XIII.

THE BALLAD OF RUMBOLLOW.

The clouds are flying, the trees are sighing,

The birds are hopping from bough to bough;

The winds are blowing, the snowflakes throwing

O'er the green earth below, below;

The storm is coming while I am roaming

The thick dark forest all through, all through;

The air is nipping, my clothes are dripping,

All in the forest of Rumbollow.[A]

On a felled tree lying a woman sits sighing,

Rocking a child both to and fro;

Her gown it is torn, her shoes they are worn--

She looks like a creature of woe, of woe;

Her eyes are glowing, her hair is flowing,

She's all over white with the snow, the snow;

She rocks the child with a gesture wild,

All in the forest of Rumbollow.

The child is crying, and she is trying

To lull it asleep--balow! balow!

And while she is singing, the snowflakes are winging

And whirling in eddies all through, all through.

I listed the rening and wondered the meaning:

Was it the tale of her woe, her woe--

A truthful crooning or a maniac mooning--

All in the forest of Rumbollow?

[Footnote A: The old song called "Rumbollow Fair" is said by

Pinkerton to have been lost. I have heard a refrain, "All in the

Forest of Rumbollow," but whether this has any relation to the

old song I do not know. I fear I am altogether responsible for

this rhapsodical effusion.]

THE SONG OF THE BETRAYED.

"Balow! balow! my bonnie bairn--

Nae father to care for you;

As your mother has sinned so shall she earn,

And to her the world is hard and stern,

Who has loved and lived to rue,

Balow!

Who has loved and lived to rue.

"On Rumbollow green my love lies slain,

As he cam' frae Rumbollow Fair;

His bodie lies deep amang rushes green,

Where corbies pike at his bonnie blue een,

And taeds sleep in his hair,

Balow!

And taeds sleep in his hair.

"The grey owl sits on yon willow tree,

Whose branches o'er him weep,

And sends its scream far o'er the lea,

Where night winds whisper mournfullie,

And through the rashes sweep,

Balow!

And through the rashes sweep.

"When first I met wi' Hab o' the Howe

I had scarce twice nine years seen,

And he swore by our Ladye o' Rumbollow

I had set a' his heart in a holy lowe

Wi' the fire o' my twa black een,

Balow!

Wi' the fire o' my twa black een.

"Of a' the fair maidens on Rumbollow green

There was nane sae fair as me,

Wi' my kilted kirtle o' mazarine,

And buckles as bright as the siller sheen,

And my coatie o' cramosie,

Balow!

And my coatie o' cramosie.

"I was proud that he stood tall men abune,

Sae stalwart, sae bald and free;

But he cozened my heart and left me undune,

Wi' tatters for claes and bachels for shune,

And a sin-wean on my knee,

Balow!

And a sin-wean on my knee.

"Last night, when the mune was in the wane,

And the winds were moaning low,

I wandered by his dead bodie alane,

And looked at the hole in his white hause bane,

And the gash on his bonnie brow,

Balow!

And the gash on his bonnie brow.

"Did I wail to the mune, and tear my hair,

And weep o'er his bodie? Na!

I leugh at the fause are wha left me to care,

And fought for Bess Cummock at Rumbollow Fair,

And there lies dead, ha! ha!

Balow!

And there lies dead, ha! ha!"

She is up and going, no look bestowing

Through the dark forest, tra-la! tra-la!

The roundelay still sounds away,

The wail and the wild ha, ha, ha, ha!

Some wretched maiden with grief o'erladen,

Victim of man, ever so, ever so.

The world needs mending and some God-sending,

All in the forest of Rumbollow.

The mill is yonder where she may wander;

The wheels they merrily row, they row;

The lade is gushing, the water's rushing

On to the ocean below, below.

The song is ending, or scattered and blending

In the wild winds as they blow, they blow;

She moves still faster with wilder gesture,

All in the forest of Rumbollow.

It is no seeming, hark! comes a screaming

The moaning forest all through, all through;

The miller is running, no danger shunning,

The foaming waters down flow, down, flow:

Too late his braving, there is no saving--

Down the mill lade they go, they go,

Mother and child 'midst the waters wild;

All in the forest of Rumbollow!

XIV.

THE LEGEND OF THE BURNING OF MISTRESS JAMPHRAY.

I.

From the dark old times that have gone before,

We have got in our day some little relief;

We don't think of doing what they did of yore,

To saw a man through for a point of belief;

We do not believe in old women's dreams,

And devils and ghosts we can do without;

Nor do we now set an old woman in flames,

But rather endeavour to put them out.

She has ta'en her lang staff in her shaky hand,

And gaen up the stair of Will Mudie's land;

She has looked in the face of Will Mudie's wean,

And the wean it was dead that very same e'en.

Next day she has gane to the Nethergate,

And looked ower the top of Rob Rorison's yett,

Where she and his wife having got into brangles,

Rob's grey mare Bess that night took the strangles.

It was clear when she went to Broughty Ferry,

She sailed in an egg-shell in place of a wherry;

And when she had pass'd by the tower of Claypots,

John Fairweather's gelding was seized with the bots,

And his black horse Billy was seized the same even,

Not by the bots, but the "spanking spavin."

And as she went on to Monifieth,

She met an auld man with the wind in his teeth--

"Are you the witch o' Bonnie Dundee?"

"You may ask the wind, and then you will see!"

And, such was the wickedness of her spite,

The man took the toothache that very night.

With John Thow's wife she was at drawing of daggers,

And twenty of John's sheep took the staggers.

With old Joe Baxter she long had striven,--

Joe set his sponge, but it never would leaven;

And as for Gib Jenkinson's cow that gaed yeld,

It was very well known that Crummie was spelled.

When Luckie Macrobie's sweet milk wouldna erne,

The reason was clear--she bewitched the concern.

True! no man could swear that he ever saw

Her flee on a broomstick over North Berwick Law;

But as for the fact, where was she that night

When the heavens were blue with the levin-light?

The broom wasna seen ahint the door;

It had better to do than to sweep the floor.

Then, sure there was something far worse than a frolic,

When the half of Dundee was seized with the cholic.

True! nobody knew that she gaed to the howf

For dead men's fat to bring home in her loof,

To brew from the mixture of henbane and savin,

Her hell-broth for those who were thirsting for heaven.

For the sexton, John Cant, could be prudent and still--

He knew she would send him good grist to his mill.

Ere good Provost Syme was ta'en by a tremor,

It was known that the provost had called her a limmer;

And when Bailie Nicholson broke his heugh-bane,

Had she not been seen that day in the lane?

It was certain, because Cummer Gibbieson swore

That the bairn she had with the whummel-bore

Leapt quick in her womb one day the witch passed her,

And she was the cause of the bairn's disaster.

When the ferry-boat sank in crossing the Tay,

She was on the Craig pier the very same day.

It was vain to conceal it, and vain to deny it,

She kept in her house an auld he-pyet:

That bird was the devil, and she fed him each day

With the brimstone she bought from Luckie Glenday.

In truth, the old pyet was daintily treated,

Because her black soul was impignorated.

And these were the reasons--enough, I trow--

Why she should be set in a lunting lowe.

II.

The barrels are brought from Noraway,

Well seasoned with plenty of Noraway pitch;

All dried and split for that jubilee day,

The day of the holocaust of a witch.

The prickers are chosen--hang-daddy and brother--

And fixed were the fees of their work of love;

To prick an old woman who was a mother,

And felt still the yearnings of motherly love

For she had a son, a noble young fellow,

Who sailed in a ship of his own the sea,

And who was away on the distant billow

For a cargo of wine to this bonnie Dundee.

Some said she was bonnie when she was a lassie,

Ah! fair the young blossom upon the young tree;

But winter will come, and summer will pass aye,

And youth is not always to you or to me.

A true loving daughter, with God to fear,

A dutiful wife, and a mother dear;

With a heart to feel and a bosom to sigh,

She had tears to weep, she had tears to dry.

III.

All was joyful--all delectation,

In creatures who prayed to their Maker each morn,

That there was to be a grand incremation

Of a poor fellow-creature, old, weary, and worn.

All pity is drowned in a wild devotion,

A grim savage joy within every breast;

The streets are all in a buzzing commotion,

Expectant of this worse than cannibal feast.

From the provost down to the gaberlunzie,

From fat Mess John to half-fed Bill,

From hoary grand-dad to larking loonie,

From silken-clad dame to scullion Nell;

The oldest, the youngest, the richest, the poorest,

The milky-breasted, the barren, the yeld,

The hardest, the softest, the blithest, the dourest,

Are all by the same wild passion impelled.

If her skin it is wrinkled--ah, God forefend her!

The wild lapping flame will soon make it shrink;

If her eyes are dim and rheumy and tender,

The adder-tongued flames will soon make her wink.

If brown now her breasts--once globes of beauty!

The roasting will char them into a black heap;

If trembling her limbs, the prickers' loved duty

Will be to compel her to dance and to leap.

The harlequin Man has doffed his jacket,

No pity to feel--he has none to give;

The Bible has said it, and so thou must take it,

"Thou shalt not allow a witch to live."

IV.

On the long red sands of old Dundee,

Out at the hem of the ebbing sea,

They have fixed a long pole deep in the sand,

And around it have piled with deftly hand

The rosined staves of the Noraway wood,

Four feet high and four feet broad,

To burn, amidst flames of burning pitch,

So rare a chimera yclept a witch--

Born of a fancy wild and camstary,

Like ghost or ghoul, brownie or fairy.

The prickers are there, each with long-pronged fork,

Yearning and yape for their hellish work,

And the priests and friars, black, white, or grey,

All ready to preach the black devil away.

Yea, devils are there, more than they opine.

Even one under every gabardine;

And there is a crowd of every degree:

The urchins, all laughing with mirth and glee;

And pipers and jangleurs might there be seen,

And cummers and mummers in red and green,

All cheery and merry and void of care,

As if they were going to Rumbollow Fair.

V.

Ho! yonder comes from the emptying town

A crowd of five thousand all rushing down;

They hurry, they scurry, they buzz, they brize,

And all to see this witch in a blaze.

Deep in the midst of the jubilant throng

A harmless woman is hurried along,--

She is weary, and wheezing for lack of breath,

And o'er all her face is the pallor of death;

And she says, as they push her, in grim despair,

"Ye needna hurry yoursel's sae sair--

Nae sport there will be till I am there."[A]

[Footnote A: These words are the old tradition which has been

handed down in Dundee for generations.]

VI.

They have doffed her clothes till all but stark;

They have tied her with ropes in her cutty sark;

They have torn the snood from her silvery hair,

And her locks they fall on her shoulders bare,

Or stream in the cold and piercing breeze

Blowing muggy and moist from the eastern seas.

Hush! silence is over all that crowd,

Then an echoing shout both long and loud;

The fagots flare up with a lurid glare--

In the middle shines bright that white figure there,

Like those sad spirits of endless woe

'Midst eternal fires in the shades below!

There lances and glances each long-pronged fork,[A]

As through the wild flames it is quick at work,

Till the red blood squirts and seethes and sings,

As through the red flame each squirtlet springs,

The flames lap round her like forkèd levin;

The priests send up their prayers to heaven;

But what these prayers are to do when there,

It is likely they could not themselves declare

Yet all this while, in her agony,

She made no murmur, she uttered no cry,

As if she would show by a silent ban

Her scorn of the great wise creature Man.

Lo! the pole breaks over with creaking crash,

The body falls down in the flaming mass;

Up a cloud of sparks with a flesh-burnt smell

Rises and swirls like vomit of hell.

[Footnote A: There is in the records of the town the account of

the expenses attending the execution, and the sums in Scots

money paid for the tar barrels, and for prickers' fees, etc.]

VII.

There's a ship in the Tay on the rising tide--

She has come that day from a distant land;

The captain stands there the helm beside,

A telescope holding in his left hand.

"What, ho! my lads," he loudly exclaims,

"Yonder's a fire on the hem of the sea--

It is some good ship that is there in flames:

Good faith! and it blazes right merrily."

And there is a boat comes from the pier,

And it comes and comes still nigher and nigher--

"What is the ship that is burning there?"

"No ship, sir, it is that is yonder on fire,

But a pile of burning barrels of pitch,

On which all, amidst a deafening cheer,

They are burning an old woman for a witch;

_And the woman she is thy mother dear_."

Then Captain Jamphray silent stood,

And a sad and sorrowful man was he;

He turned the helm in a gloomy mood--

"Farewell for ever to Bonnie Dundee."

And away and away to the Spanish Main,

Where he turned a jolly buccaneer;

And he has ta'en "Yeaman," his mother's name--

A name which he held for ever dear.

VIII.

When twenty long years had come and gone,

He was laden with Spanish golden prey;

And he yearned and sighed for his native home,

Then turned his prow for the rolling Tay;

And he has bought all, for a handsome fee,

On its bonnie banks where the trees are tall--

The lordly lands of old Murie,[A]

Where he built for himself a noble hall;

And long, long down till a recent time,

There dwelt the Yeaman's honoured line.

[Footnote A: This tradition has always been in the Yeaman

family, and very likely to be true, for the reason that an

origin not gratifying to the pride of an old house would not

have been accepted on the dubious authority of hearsay.]

XV.

THE BALLAD OF BALLOGIE'S DAUGHTERS.

There were four fair maids in Ballogie Hall,

Not all so sweet as honey;

But Lillyfair was the flower of them all--

So gentle, so kind, and so bonnie.

And why was it that Ballogie's dame

Was so fond of her Lillyfair?

It was not by reason she bore her name,

Nor yet for her love and care.

It was that she long had cherished a dream

Of a face which she once held dear,

Ere yet she had bent to Ballogie's claim,

Whom she married through force and fear.

That image unsought--all by fancy wrought--

Had been fixed upon Lillyfair,

And to her had gi'en her bonnie blue een,

As well as her golden hair.

Yet the dame was true to her bridal vow,

Though sairly she would mourn,

As she wandered in moods through Ballogie woods,

And down by Ballogie Burn.

And why did these three sisters all

Hate their kind sister so sair?

When gallants came to Ballogie Hall

They sought aye Lilly fair.

But Ballogie swore by the heavens so hie,

And eke by the Holy Rood,

There was not in all Lillyfair's bodie

Ane drap of Ballogie's blood.

And he whispered words into Sibyl's ear,

Which sweetly unto her came,

That he wouldna care tho' Lillyfair

Were dooked in Ballogie dam.

And Sibyl she whispered to Christobel,

And she into Mildred's ear;

But what that was no tongue might tell,

For there was none to hear.

"What makes ye laugh?" cries Lillyfair,

As she comes tripping ben;

"Oh do come tell, dear Christobel,

For I am fidging fain."

"Oh this is the night, my sister dear.

When the wind is low and loun,

That we are to go in a merry row

To see the eclipse of the moon.

"And thou'lt go with us, Lillyfair,

And see this goodly show--

The moon in the meer reflected clear,

With the shadow upon her brow."

"Oh yes, I will go," Lillyfair rejoined;

And glad in her heart was she,

For seldom before had her sisters deigned

To give her their companie.

'Twas the hour o' twell by Ballogie's bell,

When each with her mantle and hood,

They all sallied out in a merry rout,

Away through the still greenwood.

Shine out, shine out, thou silvery maid,

And light them to the place;

But long ere all this play be played,

In sorrow thou'lt hide thy face.

No shadow of this earth ever can

A murkier darkness throw,

Than what from the sin of cruel man

May be cast on thy silvery brow.

The greenwood through, the greenwood through,

Ho! there is Ballogie's meer;

And deep within its breast they view

The moon's face shining clear.

And down they bent, and forward leant--

Loud laughed the sisters three,

As Lillyfair threw back her hair,

Yet could no shadow see.

But is not this an old, old dream--

Some nightmare of the brain?

A splash! and, oh! a wild, wild scream,

And all is still again.

This was the eclipse which the sisters meant

When they would the maid beguile;

For sin has the greater a relish in't

When lurking beneath a smile.

And now the pale-faced moon serene

Shines down on the waters clear,

Where deep, deep among the seggs so green

Lies Ballogie's Lillyfair.

On Ballogie's dam there sails a swan

With wings of snowy white,

But never is seen by the eye of man

Save in the pale moonlight.

And the miller he looks with upright hair

Upon that weird-like thing,

And as he peers he thinks he hears

It sing as swans can sing.

XVI.

THE LEGEND OF DOWIELEE.

I.

There still is shown at Dowielee,

Within the ancient corbeiled tower,

A chamber once right fair to see,

And called the Ladye Olive's bower.

Right o'er the old carved mantelpiece

A portrait hung in frame of gold,

O'er which was spread by strange caprice

A pall of crape in double fold;

And it was said, as still they say,

'Twas spread by good Sir Gregory,

And that when it was ta'en away,

The Ladye Olive thou might'st see,

With eyne of blue so softly bright,

Like those we feign in fairie dreams,

Where love shines like that lambent light

That in the opal softly swims.

But they could carry maddening fires,

As when they inspired Sir Evan's breast,

And roused therein those wild desires

That stole from Dowielee his rest.

And led to that, oh, fatal night!

When, less beguiling than beguiled,

She fled, and left in her maddened flight

The good Sir Gregory and her child.

II.

The castle menials hear in bed

Their master's foot-fall overhead--

All in the silent midnight hour,

All under unrest's chafing power,

On and on upon the floor,

On and on both back and fore--

Bereaved, betrayed, disgraced, forlorn,

His brain on fire, his bosom torn

By fancy's images--sad lumber

Of man's proud spirit--care and cumber

Waxing brighter as they keep

From the vexed soul the frightened sleep.

III.

By balustrade and corridor

That lead him to his lady's bower,

He stands before that crape-draped frame--

Its hidden face of _beauteous_ shame--

And holds aloft in his shaking hand

The glimmering lamp, nor can withstand

The fierce desire to feed his eye

With that fair-painted treachery.

He lifts the crape, he peers below--

The fire of wrath upon his brow;

He lets it fall--he lifts again,

To feed on the _pleasure_ of his _pain_,

And gazes without stint or measure

To gloat on the _pain_ that is his _pleasure_;

He turns the picture upon its face,

And reads _the curse of his broken peace_.

He turns the picture round again,

Then away to toss in his bed of pain.

IV.

Some moral thrusts can stab the heart,

And love bestowed returned in hate

May play with some a deadlier part

Than strokes that seem of sterner fate.

In yonder vault down by the aisle

Thou'lt read the good Sir Gregory's name--

His death the sequel of the tale

Inscribed upon that pictured frame.

Yet not forgot while rustic swain

Atunes his throat to melodie,

And warbles forth the soft refrain,

"Alace! alace I for Dowielee."

V.

Her father dead, Burde Olive fair--

Her mother's image--grows apace,

And oft she throws in pensive care

A glance upon that crape-veiled face:

She wonders what may be beneath.

But fears to lift the veil to know;

Her father with his latest breath

Forbade it, on the pain of woe,

Till she to eighteen years had grown,

With woman's wisdom duly fraught,

When she might take that picture down

And learn the lesson which it taught.

Yet as she sat within the bower

That bore a mother's sacred name,

She felt the heart's divining power

And guessed the face within the frame--

Her mother's! who they said was dead:

And hence the crape--appropriate sign.

But why debarred the simple meed

To look upon her face divine,

And as she looked revive again

Those lines that had been once impressed

By love upon her infant brain,

And never thence to be defaced?

Not ever fairest painted theme,

Or triumph of the graver's art,

Could match the image of her dream

Enshrined within a daughter's heart--

So gently kind, so sweetly fair:

They were the features she assigned

To creatures of yon upper air

When they look down on humankind:

And oft she sighed that morn would shine

When that dark crape she could remove,

And she would feast those eydent eyne

On those that taught her first to love;

And oft she scanned her own sweet face,

Reflected to her anxious view,

To see if therein she could trace

Those lineaments--the _first_ she knew.

VI.

On Time's swift wing the years have passed:

The morn has come, the hour is now,

When she would feast her heart at last

By looking on that sacred brow!

She took the picture from the nail,

She held it in her trembling hands,

She lifted up the envious veil,--

And there confessed the mother stands.

The charm is wrought! that painted gleam

Brought up the lines impressed of yore,

As flash of the bright morning beam

On twilight things seen long before.

Her mother seemed from death returned;

She kissed the lips, the cheeks, the chin;

She sobbed, she sighed, she laughed--she mourned

To think it was a painted sign;

And then at last she turned it round,

As if she feared her sire's decree,

And there, in written words, she found

The dreaded curse of Dowielee:

THE CURSE.

"Than Olive who more beautiful

In all that nature could bestow?

Than Olive who more dutiful

When first she pledged that holy vow?

What is she now, by sin entoiled?

Dark spirits of yon woods declare,

Where I in anguish wander wild,

The victim of a dark despair.

"Thank Heaven, I leave no son my heir,

Who might another Olive see,

And think her as his mother fair--

Fair, but yet a mystery--

With heart so like some alcove deep,

Where nightingales may sing their song,

And roses blow, and--serpents creep,

To sting him as I have been stung.

"The secrets of the living rock,

Deep hid from man's divining rod,

A spark may open, and the shock

Bring forth an ingot or a toad:

The secret that is kept for years,

One stroke of fate yields to the sight;

And if the toad a jewel wears,

That jewel may have lost its light.

"Begone ye hopes of tender ties,

Of smiling home with wife and child,

Of all love's tender sympathies,

That once a rugged soul beguiled!

In vain may Beauty deck her crown,

And winning Goodness try her plan,

I trust no more--the guile of ONE

Hath changed me to a savage man.

"If in this world I smile again,

Twill be to see the charming eye

Like _hers_--the smile--each effort plain,

And think I can them all defy.

You tell me these are Nature's ways,

But Nature tells me to beware;

And while each angler smiling plays,

So shall I play to shun the snare.

"Mocked by the glamour of the eye,

I dread all things surpassing fair;

The sweetest flower but makes me sigh

To think there may be poison there.

Were I inclined to change my part,

And seek again domestic peace,

I'd seek for beauties in the heart,

Though seen through a _revolting_ face.

"By the heart-pulses of my love,

By all the things once dear to me,

By every tree within the grove,

By every bird upon the tree,

By every tint upon its wing,

By every note of melodie

That close by HER I've heard it sing,

_Cursed be the dame of Dowielee_."

VII.

Burde Olive sat at the evening hour

Within her mother's painted bower:

It was a ruthless winter night.

When beasts and birds cowered with affright

From brattling winds that, roving free,

Moaned in the woods of Dowielee.

A wanderer knelt beside her chair,

And spoke these words of tearful prayer:

THE APPEAL.

"When Justice sought the skies above,

She left on earth her sister, LOVE,

And heaven-born MERCY staid behind

On purpose to console mankind.

The silly sheep that left one day

The winter's beild and went astray,

Did not, when weary, worn, and old,

Seek all in vain the shepherd's fold!

And He, the Shepherd without sin,

Felt for the contrite Magdalene,

And gave her hope--her sin forgiven--

That she would join the fold in heaven:

And shall my Olive while on earth

Forgive not her who gave her birth?

Oh! turn on me a smiling face,

Forgiving eyes--a look of grace."

But Olive turned her face away--

Her father's spirit whispered Nay--

His hastened death, his curse forbade:

She trembled and was sore afraid;

Yet father's daughter, meek and mild,

Was she not, too, the mother's child?

Then _he_ was gone, and _she_ was here:

Her eye acknowledges the tear

Of brooding nature all confessed--

She falls upon the wanderer's breast!

No more the veil obscures the frame--

The curse is taken from the name.

XVII.

THE BALLAD OF MAID MARION.

Maid Marion laid her down to sleep,

Maid Marion could do nought but weep,

For thinking of that happy time

When she was in her early prime,

When in her glass she looked so fair

With lily-lire and golden hair.

Full many a year had rolled away,

Since _he_ left her that weary day,

When, poor in love and rich in gear,

She cast him off without a tear;

When, poor in gear, tho' rich in love,

He left her o'er the sea to rove.

His ship was never heard of more,

And she must now his death deplore.

Now, poor in gear and rich in love,

She saw him looking from above,

With mild reproof in his dark eyes,

And still that love she dared despise.

"Oh that that day had never been--

That I that day had never seen!

Wae fa the gowd that took its flight,

Wae fa' the love I feel this night,

Wae fa' the pride that made me mad,

And this regret that makes me sad."

And still she turned and aye she mourned,

And aye the briny tear it burned:

A spendthrift father in the grave,

A mother buried with the lave,

And he, her Willie, also gone,

And she left weeping here alone.

And still she tried to fall asleep,

But aye the thoughts their revels keep:

Hark, "one" knurrs from the ancient clock,

Long yet ere crowing of the cock--

That sound which sends to their repose

The ghosts that mourn their human woes.

A faint beam from the waning moon

Can scarcely more than show the gloom;

All is so still and silent round,

The foot of ghost might raise a sound.

Hush! there's a rustling near the bed--

She heard the curtain drawn aside.

With trembling fear she turned to see

Amid the gloom who there might be,

And thought she yet could dimly trace

The outlines of that well-known face

Of him, now dead, who loved her dear,

And she had scorned through pride of gear.

"Oh Marion dear!" the words came plain:

"Maid Marion, dear," it said again;

"Remember you of that auld time

I tried sae sair thy love to win,

And for that I was lowly born

Thou treated my true love with scorn?"

"Ah, Willie, Willie! I do thee fear,

It is thine angry ghost I hear;

I saw thee looking from on high,

I saw red anger in thine eye;

Come thou my cruel heart to chide,

Or claim me for thy heavenly bride?"

"No, Marion dear!" the shade replied,

"I dinna come thy heart to chide.

A spendthrift father left thee poor,

But Heaven has added to my store.

Thou hast been punished for thy pride,

And I am come to claim my bride."

"Oh fearful shade! the cock will craw;

It's mair than time thou wert awa.

Gae back into the ocean deep

Where thou and thy companions sleep."

But still the angry spirit said,

"I come to claim thee for my bride."

Sore, sore she wept, and shook with dread,

"I've meikle sin upon my head,

And, oh! I am unfit to dee,

And go to heaven thy bride to be.

Leave me! oh leave me! flit away,

And give me peace to weep and pray."

Now something touched Maid Marion's arm,

She felt the touch both kind and warm;

The spirit took her by the hand,

She felt the touch both kind and bland.

The spirit kissed Maid Marion's mou',

Oh! how it thrilled her body through.

The spirit laughed in that odd way

Which spirits do when they are gay;

For there are spirits good and bad--

The good are aye a merry squad.

No body-pains their hearts to vex,

No worldly cares their minds perplex.

"Nae ghaist am I, Maid Marion dear,

My soul's well cased in fleshly gear;

I have a heart still warm and free,

Enough of gowd for thee and me;

And if thou wilt give up thy scorn,

Trow-la! I'll marry thee the morn."

XVIII.

THE BALLAD OF ROSEALLAN CASTLE.

Yonder Roseallan's Castle old!

Which time has changed to iron grey,

Whose high crenelles, o'ergrown with mould,

Are crumbling silently away.

Soft comes the thought that, years before,

Now hid by time's obscuring pall,

Some tiny foot had tript the floor,

Some silver voice had filled the hall.

There was a time in long past years--

It seems to me an age of dreams--

My grandam filled my itching ears

With all Roseallan's storied themes:

Of how Sir Baldwin dearly loved

The last of all Roseallan's maids;

And how in moonlight nights they roved

Among Roseallan's sylvan shades.

But there was one with envious eyes,

Deep set in visage pale and wan,

Resolved, whoe'er should win the prize,

Sir Baldwin should not be the man.

He took his aim--too deadly straight,

Yet not unseen by Annabel,

Who sprang before her favoured knight,

And died for him she loved so well.

How she who thus so bravely died

Was last of all her honoured name,

The only hope that fate supplied

To keep alive her house's fame.

And then the screeching bird of night

Would mope upon the crumbling walls,

And chirking whutthroats claim the right

To gambol in the ancient halls.

In yonder vault, deep down below,

Half choked with hoary eglantine,

Sleep side by side in lengthened row

The proud Roseallan's noble line.

The hairy wing-mouse flutters there,

The owl mopes as in days of yore,

Strange eldritch sounds salute the ear,

Unholy things crawl on the floor.

How oft alone at midnight hour

I stand within that silent tomb,

What time the moon with waning power

Is struggling through increasing gloom,

On one sole bier _his_ tears would fall,

For _her_ his groans come evermore,

Whose silver voice once filled the hall,

Whose feet once lightly tript the floor.

XIX.

THE BALLAD OF THE TOURNAY.

In the castle of Kildrennie,

Up in her chamber high,

There sat the fair Burde Annie,

And with her County Guy--

Come lately from the east,

As far as Palestine,

Where he had sent to his long rest

Many a bold Saracen.

Sir Guy his burning love hath told,

And a favour he hath won,

For lo! a ring of virgin gold

Shines there his finger on.

And they have pledged the solemn yea,

Each on the bended knee,

That on the coming Beltane day

They two shall wedded be.

Burde Annie viewed, to hide her tears,

The red sun setting still,

And lo! behold two cavaliers

Came riding up the hill:

The one he was Sir Hudibras

Come of a noble clan;

The other no less noble was--

The brave Sir Gallachan.

The first bore on his shield outspread

Two bones in cross moline,

And for his crest ane bluidy head,

Erased from Saracen.

The other carried, nobler far,

All in a field of gold,

A flaming bolt of Jupiter,

For crest ane tiger bold.

And up they rode, and up they rode,

Till they came to the lawn

Which spread before the castle broad,

And there they made a stand;

And there they spied Burde Annie

Up in her chamber high,

But for the breadth of her bodie

They could not see Sir Guy.

Burde Annie waved her lily hand,

And threw a kiss a-down--

For Hudibras or Gallachan

Was meant the priceless boon?

For sure it was a priceless boon,

When neither could espy

That when she threw that kiss a-down

She winkit to Sir Guy.

"That kiss divine, I trow, is mine,"

Cried doughty Hudibras;

"I am the man," cried Gallachan,

"And sure thou art ane ass."

Such words to hear were ill to bear

By any valiant knight;

And each drew forth his sword o' weir,

And stood prepared for fight.

They startit, they partit,

Then on each other sprang;

They lungit, they plungit,

Till all the welkin rang.

They ogglit, they gogglit,

Amidst the dread deray;

They chirnit, they girnit,

Like bluidy beasts of prey.

They rattlit, they brattlit,

Each cuirass upon;

They hackit, they thwackit,

Each other's morion.

They reel it, they wheelit,

And quick came round again;

They burstit, they thrust it,

With all their might and main.

They smeekit, they reek it,

Like to ane smouldering kiln;

They peghit, they sighit,

Each other's blood to spill,

They trampit, they stampit,

Like animals run wud;

They flarit, they glarit,

With eyne yred with bluid.

At length, to end the bluidy deeds,

They raised their falchions keen,

And down upon each other's heads

They clove them to the chin.

But 'tis not true, as I've heard tell,

And I do not believe

That when these doughty lovers fell,

_One laughed within her sleeve_.

But I have also heard it said,

And I again it say,

And I would like to see the head

With tongue in't to say nay--

That as these pates lay on the ground

(As there they yet may lie),

_One eye in each cloved head was found

Fixed on that chamber high_.

XX.

THE BALLAD OF GOLDEN COUNSEL.

Come Mary and Martha, Jeanie and Jenny,

And sit down and listen, baith ane and a',

To me, wha may very weel be your grannie,

And aiblins may ken ae thing or twa.

This world is no so sweet and so bonnie

As you in your young hearts may suppose;

There's aloes in it as weel as honey,

And aye some prickles on ilka rose.

Young lasses I think are something like fillies

Let out in a field to idle and eat,

To graze by the gowans and drink by the willows,

And never to dream of a bridle _a bit_.

It's no what ye eat, it's no what you drink, dears,

It's no your bonnets, or ribbons, or skirts,

The trinkets ye wear, or the siller ye clink, dears--

There's something, I wean, far nearer your hearts.

Your thoughts are mair of him you will marry,

What the colour may be of his hair,

Whether aye cheery, or sometimes chary,

What his complexion, or dark or fair.

But men they are gude, and men they are ill, dears,

You may get the leal or the lazy loon;

A lover is aft like a gilded pill, dears,

The bitter comes after it's gulpèd doon.

I fear ye hae little of power to choose him,

The husband is settled for you abune;

But you've power in holy bands to noose him

_Before ye let him tak' aff his shune_.

For a maid who is silly and stoops to folly,

And finds ower late that she is betrayed,

I ken nae cure for her melancholy

But a coffin--and let it be quickly made.

A braw lover cam' to my minnie's shieling

When I was as young as you now may be,

Sae saft, like a loon wha's bent on stealing,

And he tirled and whispered secretlie.

"Oh let me in this ae night, Jenny,

And I will for ever thy true love be;

Oh let me in this ae night, hinny,

And I will come back and marry thee!"

"Gae back and awa, for this my will is,

My mither lies gleg wi' half-closed ee,

And bids me beware of faithless billies,

Who will steal my heart and awa frae me flee."

"For mercy's sake! this ae night, Jenny,

Oh let me scoug frae the wind and rain,

And holy vows I will plight thee, hinny,

That thou wilt be for ever mine ain."

I opened the door so saft and sleeky,

For fear my mither should hear the din,

And he has ta'en aff his shune so creaky,

And I've led him into my cosy ben.

Our speckled cock crew loud and early,

The day was dawing o'er forest green,

And I let him out as wily and warily

As ever I let him in yestreen.

"Now, fare thee well, my winsome Jenny,

For I am a baron of high degree;

Now, fare thee well for ever, my hinny,

For the wife of a baron thou ne'er canst be."

With a ha! ha! ha! and a tra-la-lalla,[A]

He stroked the red beard on his chin,

With a ha! ha! ha! and a tra-la-lalla,

And I have never seen him again.

[Footnote A: The reader may here recollect the fine ballad of

Bürger, "Der Ritter und sein Liebchen;" and the verse--

Drauf ritt der Ritter hop sa! sa!

Und strich sein Bartchen trallala;

Sein Leibchen sah ihn reiten

Und hörte noch von weiten

Sein Lachen ha! ha! ha!

]

[The maidens thought the humour gala,

And, laughing, they chorused to the strain,

"With a ha! ha! ha! and a tra-la-lalla,

And you have never seen him again."]

Now, dears! if your lovers you would not lose them,

Tak' counsel--it is not an hour ower sune:

Be sure that in holy bands ye noose them

_Before you let them tak' aff their shune_.

[The maidens thought they would amuse them,

And, laughing, they chorused to the tune,

"Oh yes, we in holy bands will noose them

_Before we let them tak' aff their shune_."]

XXI.

THE BALLAD OF MATRIMONY.

"Come, now tell me, Clarabella,

How that wondrous thing befell,

Why you took that sorry fellow,

Leaving me who loved you well?

It was, good faith! a sad miscarriage,

And cost me many a pang of pain;

Indeed, when I heard of your marriage,

I vowed I ne'er would love again."

"Well, I don't mind, since you're pathetic,

And so the reason you shall hear:

Th' affair was one of arithmetic--

A matter of so much a year.

His father left five thousand good

Of pounds per annum, as you know,

And you possessed, I understood,

Of yearly thousands only two."

"Well, why did I, who knew of Cupid,

Display so much stupid-ity

As not to know--the thing was lucid--

From Cupid comes Cupid-ity?"

"But not too late," cried Clarabella:

"My husband dear has gone to heaven;

He left the five to me, good fellow!

And five and two, you know, make seven."

I laughed and bowed to Clarabella,

And quickly homewards bent my way,

And there became a rustic fellow,

And donned a suit of hodden-grey.

And then I hired me to a farmer,

Concealing every sign of pelf,

One Hodge, who had a pretty charmer,

Who might love me for myself.

I laid bold siege to fair Lucinda,

And tho' she loved another swain

(I had observed them through the window),

I was resolved her love to gain

Then I would be a lucky fellow,

Assured one loved me for my merit,

And not, like widowed Clarabella,

For the lucre _I_ inherit.

At length I boldly purposed marriage,

And found Lucinda at my call,

And soon thereafter in my carriage

I drove my wife to Border Hall.

Well! she wondered at the mansion,

And all the grandeur that was there,

The servants bowing all attention

To the lady of their squire.

I had a call from Clarabella,

Who said my choice was very good;

But though her speech was calm and mellow,

I thought her in an envious mood.

Indeed I had some small suspicion

She had avenged a woman's grudge,

And had conveyed my true condition

To the ears of Farmer Hodge.

Sometime thence I met Bill Hedger,

Who knew me spite of my changed dress.

"Squoire," said he, "I think I'd wager

There is a something thee doan't guess;

Lucinda's father knew by letter

Thee wert a squoire in low disguise,

And she, altho' _she loiked me better_,

Agreed to take the richer prize."

XXII.

THE SONG OF ROSALIE.

Row on! row on! to flowing Tay,

Thou Dighty, who art dear to me;

For here upon thy flowery brae

I parted last frae Rosalie.

Her hair, so rich in gowden hue,

Ilk plait was like a gowden string,

Her eyne were like the bonnie blue

That shines upon the halcyon's wing.

There is a worm that loves the bud,

And there is one that loves the bloom,

And there is one that seeks its food

Within the dark and silent tomb.

Thou speckled thrush, with tuneful throat,

Who sing'st within yon greenwood dell;

Sing on, for every trembling note

Brings back the voice I loved so well.

Thou little pansy, raise thy head,

And turn thine azure eye to me,

And so remind me of the dead,

My dearest, long lost Rosalie.

There is a worm that loves the bud,

And there is one that loves the bloom,

And there is one that seeks its food

Within the dark and dreary tomb.

Thou lambkin on yon hillock's brow,

That sportest in thy gamesome mood,

Play on! for thou remind'st me now

Of one as innocent and good;

All emblems dear, for thoughts you bring

Of her who loved you all to see,

When through the woods in early spring

Ilk bird seemed calling "Rosalie."

But there's a worm that loves the bud,

And there is one that loves the bloom,

And there is one that seeks its food

Within the dark and dreary tomb.

Far have I roamed for years and years,

As from my thoughts I fain would stray;

But here once more I weep my tears

O'er her now mouldering in the clay.

Oh! would that happy day were come

When death shall set my spirit free,

And I shall rise to yonder home,

And be again with Rosalie,

Where is no worm to gnaw the bud,

And none to blight the youthful bloom;

Where spirits sing in joyful mood,

"Behold our triumph o'er the tomb!"

XXIII.

THE BALLAD OF THE WORLD'S VANITY.

I.

Mournfully maundering,

Life's last moments squandering,

Weary, weary, wandering,

Through this world of sin,

Hermit-shade! I call thee;

Lead me to the valley--

That mysterious alley,

Where I may creep in.

World of strange illusion!

Fancy-born delusion!

Reason-bred confusion!

Phantasmagoria!

Love, where shall I find thee?

Faith, how shall I bind thee?

Truth, who has defined thee?

Changing every day.

Streets of hurry scurry!

Fields of fire and fury!

Homes of wear and worry!

Passing quickly by;

Pleasure a wild snatching,

Dying in the catching,

Pain eternal watching

With relentless eye.

Sorrow, old Sin's daughter!

Screams of eldritch laughter!

Burning tears thereafter!

I've felt the vanity;

Still the hope pursuing,

The pursuit ever rueing,

Possession still undoing

The hope's fond prophecy.

II.

Sun! I've seen thy grandeur,

Scenes of gorgeous splendour,

Visions passing wonder

In ocean, sea, and sky;

Thunders o'er us pealing,

Earthquakes 'neath us reeling,

Fiery comets wheeling

Through all immensity.

Virtue! man has crowned thee,

For beautiful he found thee;

Yet millions have disowned thee,

And seek dark Vice's way,

Hypocrisy, deep-hooded,

Injustice still obtruded,

Stern Cruelty, cold-blooded,

Make brother man their prey.

Kind Love's pure affection!

Pity's benediction!

Charity's sweet action!

All blessed urbanities;

Man on man still preying;

Bleating lambkins slaying!

Devouring blood, and saying

All soft humanities.

III.

Dreaming, doubting, moping,

Hopelessly still hoping,

Dimly, darkly groping

My being's mystery;

This sobbing and this sighing,

This laughing and this crying,

This living and this dying--

Man's mortal history!

Why this wild contention?

This mocking, cruel invention--

What the deep intention?

Who shall give replies?

Demons wildly sporting,

God's beautiful distorting,

Or His own hand extorting

Sin-born penalties?

IV.

Those with whom I started

Oceans wide have parted:

Some are broken-hearted,

Some lie in the clay;

Those I once heard prattle,

For whom I shook the rattle,

Engaged in life's vain battle,

Push me off the way.

The world's laugh it jeers me,

Their looks they seem to fear me,

I hear them whisper near me,

"Old man, why linger here?"

She who loved me dearly,

Wandered with me cheerily,

Is now a phantom merely,

Seen through memory's tear.

Pale ghost, flitting yonder!

With drooping head you wander.

Deep in thought you ponder

Why I stay from thee;

Cease those hands to beckon,

Vain, vain, may you reckon;

Alas! I cannot quicken

Death's desired decree.

Weary, weary wandering,

Life's last moments squandering,

Weary, weary wandering

Through this world of sin,

None can undeceive me,

None but ONE relieve me,

None but ONE receive me,

His peace to enter in.

XXIV.

THE SIEGE: A DRAMATIC TALE.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.--SIR ALEXANDER SETON, Governor of Berwick;

RICHARD and HENRY, his sons. PROVOST RAMSAY. HUGH ELLIOT, a

traitor. KING EDWARD. EARL PERCY. MATILDA, wife of Seton; etc.

SCENE I.--_A Street--the Market-place_.

_Enter_ SIR ALEXANDER SETON, RICHARD _and_ HENRY

(_his sons_), PROVOST RAMSAY, HUGH ELLIOT, _and others of

the People_.

_Provost Ramsay_.--Brither Scotchmen! it is my fixed an'

solemn opinion, that the King o' England has entered into a

_holy alliance_ wi' the enemy o' mankind! An' does he

demand us to surrender!--to gie up our toun!--our property!--our

lives!--our liberty!--to Southern pagans, that hae entered into

compact wi' the powers o' the air! Surrender! No, Scotchmen!

While we breathe, we will breathe the _breath o' Freedom!_

as it soughs down the Tweed, between the heathery hills o' our

ain auld country! I am but provost o' Berwick, Sir Alexander,

an' ye are its governor; an' in a time like this, the power o'

defending or surrendering the gates is yours; but though ye gie

up the keys this very hour, an' were every stane o' the walls

turned are upon anither--here!--the power to defend this

market-place is mine!--and _here_ will I stand, while this

hand can wield a sword, or a Scotchman is left to die by my

side!

_Sir Alex_.--Fear not, good provost; I through life have learned

To live with honour, or with honour fall.

_Richard_.--And as the father dies, so shall his sons. What

sayest thou, Henry?

_Henry_.--I would say but this--

(If one with a smooth chin may have a voice)--

When thou dost nobly fall, I'll but survive

To strike revenge--then follow thy example.

_Provost Ramsay_.--Bravely said, callants! As sure as

death, I wish ye were my sons! Do ye ken, Sir Alexander, the

only thing that grieves me in a day like this, is, that I hae

naebody to die for the glory an' honour o' auld Scotland but

mysel? But, save us, neebor Elliot! ye look as douf an' as

dowie-like as if ye had been forced to mak yer breakfast o' yer

coat-sleeve.

_Hugh Elliot_.---In truth, methinks, this is no time for smiles--

In every street, each corner of the town,

Struck by some unseen hand, the dead are strewed;

From every house the children's wail is heard,

Screaming in vain for food; and the poor mother,

Worn to a skeleton, sits groaning by!

My house, 'tis known, o'erlooks the battlements;

'Tis not an hour gone that I left my couch,

Hastening to speed me hither, when a sound,

Fierce as the thunders, shook our firm-built walls:

The casements fell in atoms, and the bed,

Which I that moment left, rocked in confusion:

I turned to gaze on it, and I beheld!--beheld

My wife's fair bosom torn--her heart laid bare!

And the red stream came oozing to my feet!

_Is this a time for smiles!_

_Provost Ramsay_.--Your wife! Heaven preserve us! Weel,

after a', I hae reason to be thankfu' I hae neither wife nor

bairns on a day like this!

_Sir Alex_.--Behold an envoy from the English camp,

Sent with proposals, or some crafty truce.

_Hugh Elliot_.--Let me entreat you, then, most noble sir,

Give him all courtesy; and if his terms

Be such as we in honour may accept,

Refuse them not by saying, WE WILL DIE.

_Enter_ EARL PERCY _and_ Attendants.

_Percy_.--Good morrow, my Scotch cousins!

My gracious sovereign, your right lawful master,

Hath, in his mercy, left you these conditions--

Now to throw wide your gates, and, if ye choose,

Go walk into the Tweed, and drown your treason;

Or run, like scapegoats, to the wilderness,

Bearing your sins, and half a week's provision;

Or, should these terms not meet your approbation,

Ere midnight we shall send some _fleeter messengers_.

So now, old Governor, my master's answer?

_Provost Ramsay_.--The mischief's in your impudence! But

were I Sir Alexander, the only answer your master should hae,

would be your weel-bred tongue sent back upon the end o' an

arrow; an' that wad be as _fleet a messenger_, as ye talk

about _fleet messengers_, as ony I ken o'.

_Percy_.--Peace, thou barbarian! keep thy frog's throat closed.

I say, old greybeard, hast thou found an answer?

_Sir Alex_.--Had my Lord Percy found more fitting

phrase

To couch his haughty mandate, I perhaps

Had found some meet reply. But as it is,

Thou hast thine answer in this people's eyes.

_Hugh Elliot_.--Since we with life and honour may depart,

Send not an answer that must seal our ruin,

Though it be hero-like to talk of death.

[_Enter_ LADY SETON, _listening_.

Bethink thee well, Sir Governor: these men

Have wives with helpless infants at their breasts;

What husband, think ye, would behold a child

Dashed from the bosom where his head had pillowed,

That his fair wife might fill a conqueror's arms!

These men have parents--feeble, helpless, old;

Yea, men have daughters!--they have maids that love them--

Daughters and maidens chaste as the new moon--

Will they behold them screaming on the streets,

And in the broad day be despoiled by violence?

Think of _these things_, my countrymen! [_Aside to_ PERCY,

Now, my Lord Percy, you may read your answer.

_Percy [aside]_.--So thou art disaffected, good Sir Orator:

Well, ply thy wits, and Edward will reward thee--

Though, for my part, I'd knight thee with a halter!

_Sir Alex_.--Is this thy counsel in the hour of peril,

Milk-hearted man? To thee, and all like thee,

_I_ offer terms more _generous_ still than Edward's:

Depart ye by the Scotch or English gate--

Both shall be opened. Lade your beasts of burden--

Take all you have--your food, your filthy gold,

Your wives, your children, parents, and yourselves!

Go to our Scottish king, and prate of courage!

Or go to Edward--Percy will conduct thee.

[LADY SETON _advances forward_.

_Lady Seton_.--Spoke like thyself, my husband!

Out on thee, slave! [_To_ ELLIOT.

Or shall I call thee traitor? What didst thou,

On finishing thy _funeral service_, whisper

In my Lord Percy's ear?

_Elliot_.--I whisper, lady?

_Lady Seton_.--You whisper, smooth-tongued sir!

_Percy [aside]._--Zounds! by the coronet of broad Northumberland,

Could I exchange it for fair England's crown,

I'd have my bodyguard of woman's eyes,

And make the whole sex sharpshooters!

_Provost Ramsay_.--Wae's me! friend Elliot, but you have an

unco dumfoundered-like look after that speech o' yours in

defence o' liberty, and infants, and fair bosoms, maiden

screams, and grey hairs, and what not.

_Sir Alex_.--Percy, we hear no terms but death or liberty.

This is our answer.

_Percy_.--Well, cousins, be it so. The wilful dog--

As runs the proverb. Lady, fare-ye-well. [_Exit_.

_Sir Alex_.--On with me, friends--on to the southern ramparts!

There, methinks, they meditate a breach. On, Scotsmen! on--

For Freedom and for Scotland! [_Exeunt_.