One night Eilidh and Isla and I were sitting before a fire, of pine logs
blazing upon peats, and listening to the snow as it whispered against
the walls of the house. The wind crying in the glen, and the tumult of
the hill-stream in spate, were behind the white confused rumour of the
snow.
Eilidh was singing low to herself, and Isla was watching her. I could
not look long at him, because of the welling upward of the tears that
were in my heart. I know not why they were there.
At last, after a pause wherein each sat intent listening to the disarray
without, Eilidh’s sweet thrilling voice slid through the silence—
“Over the hills and far away,”
That is the tune I heard one day.
Oh that I too might hear the cruel
Honey-sweet folk of the Hills of Ruel.