Page:Ballads, Stevenson, 1890.djvu/77

 With many a man he counselled

Of high and low degree,

With the herdsmen on the mountains

And the fishers of the sea.

And he came and went unweary,

And read the books of yore,

And the runes that were written of old

On stones upon the moor.

And many a name he was told,

But never the name of his fears—

Never, in east or west,

The name that rang in his ears:

Names of men and of clans,

Names for the grass and the tree,

For the smallest tarn in the mountains,

The smallest reef in the sea:

Names for the high and low,

The names of the craig and the flat;

But in all the land of Scotland,

Never a name like that.

II. THE SEEKING OF THE NAME.

And now there was speech in the south,

And a man of the south that was wise, 65