Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/192

 184 you are tired of me, before the end of the New Year's festival. I now invite you to spend the remainder of it with me in the kirk-yard. I go before you, and will await your coming: on your peril do not fall."

Mine host went again and craved the priest's advice, whose counsel was to proceed. This he did, with a trembling step, while from every pore a cold sweat distilled. On reaching the churchyard, he there saw a great house, illuminated in its many windows, while sounds of music and dancing met his ears. The savoury odours issuing from the kitchen soon reminded him that he had had no dinner that day: his fears vanished, and he felt hungry. The grey old man received him at the door, led him into a large room, beautifully decorated, where a numerous company was assembled. The old man, disappearing then, left him to enjoy himself for the evening, which he did—eating, drinking, piping and dancing. After a short time the grey master of the house entered, and said to him that the entertainment was at an end, and that he must make the best of his way back. "Surely not yet. I have been but for a few hours, and I kept you for days." The other replied: "Hasten home, or your wife will be married to another; in parting, let me give you this advice: never take liberties, using disrespectful words or actions to the remains of the dead." Having said so, the grey old man, the guests, the house, and all that it contained, vanished, leaving our hero standing alone in the churchyard-grass, and so fatigued that he could hardly crawl back in the moonshine.

When he neared his own house he again heard the sound of music and dancing; and, on opening the door, the first thing that met his sight was his wife, in a bride's dress. She swooned away immediately; the piper flung down his pipes and bolted through the window; the would-be bridegroom scrambled up the chimney; the wedding-guests made for the door, or hid under the bed, and the husband and wife—called back from her faint,—were left alone to make their mutual explanations. It seemed he had been away a year and a day; and that is the time within which widows are restricted from making a second marriage.

It was some time before the man recovered from the fatigue of a