Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/118

114 As that pebble descends into thy deeps,

And that feather floats on thy waves,

So shall the good and the holy curse thee,

And the madman mar thee with dust.

Cursed mayst thou continue, for my sake,

For the sake of those thou hast slain;

For the father who mourned for his son,

For the mother who wailed for her child.

I heard the voice of sorrow on thy banks,

And a mother mourning by thy waters;

I saw her stretch her white hands over thee,

And weep for her fair-haired son!

"The sound of the song rolled low and melancholy over the surface of the lake. I never heard a sound so dismal. During the third verse the singer took up water in the hollow of his hand, and threw it on the wind. Then he threw a pebble and a feather into the lake; and, gathering up the dust among the margin stones, strewed it over the surface of the water. When he concluded his wild verses he uttered a loud cry, and throwing himself suddenly on his face, spread out his hands, and lay, and quivered, and moaned like one in mortal agony.

"A young woman, in widow's weeds, and with a face still deeper in woe than her mourning dress, now came towards me, along the border of the lake. She had the face and the form of one whom I knew in my youth, the companion of my teens, and the life and love of all who had hearts worth a woman's wish. She was the grace of the preaching, the joy of the dance, through her native valley, and had the kindest and the gayest heart in the wide holms of Annandale. I rode at her wedding, and a gay woman was I; I danced at her wedding as if sorrow was never to come; and when I went to the kirking, and saw her so fair, and her husband so handsome, I said, in the simplicity of my heart, they will live long and happy on the earth. When I saw him again he was stretched in his shroud, and she was weeping, with an infant son on her knee, beside the coffin of her husband. Such remembrances can never pass away from the heart, and they came thick upon me as the companion of my early years approached. We had been long separated. I had resided in a distant part, till the loss of all I loved brought me back to seek for happiness in my native place, in the dwellings of departed friends and the haunts of early joys.

"Something of a smile passed over her face when she saw