Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/129

Rh for me, broken slumbers, and a burning brain, and a vision that will not pass from me, of eight fair creatures drowning.'

"Ere he had concluded the unhappy mother had leaped to her feet, and stretched forth her hands over him, and, with every feature dilated with agony, gathered up her strength to curse and to confound him. 'Oh! wretched and contemptible creature,' she said, 'were I a man, as I am but a feeble woman, I would tread thee as dust aneath my feet, for thou art unworthy to live. God gave thee his own form, and gave thee hands to save, not to destroy, his fairest handiworks; but what heart, save thine, could have resisted a cry for mercy from one so fair and so innocent? Depart from my presence; crawl—for thou art unworthy to walk like man—crawl as the reptiles do, and let the hills cover thee, or the deeps devour thee; for who can wish thy base existence prolonged? The mother is unblest that bare thee, and hapless is he who owns thy name. Hereafter shall men scorn to count kindred with thee. Thou hast no brother to feel for a brother's shame, no sister to feel for thee a sister's sorrow, no kinsman to mourn for the reproach of kindred blood. Cursed be she who would bear for thee the sacred name of wife. Seven sons would I behold—and I saw one—wae's me!—dragged from the bottom of that fatal lake; see them borne over my threshold, with their long hanks of fair hair wetting the pavement, as the lovely locks of my sweet boy did, and stretch their lily limbs in linen which my own hands had spun for their bridal sheets, even as I stretched my own blessed child—rather than be the mother of such a wretch as thou!' From this fearful malediction, the delirious youth sought not to escape; he threw himself with his face to the earth, spread out his hands on the turf, and renewed his sobbings and his moans, while the sorrowful mother returned to a cheerless home and an empty fireside.

"Such was her fearful dream; and such was its slow, but sure and unhappy, fulfilment. She did not long survive the desolation of her house. Her footsteps were too frequent by the lake, and by the grave of her husband and child, for the peace of her spirit; she faded, and sank away; and now the churchyard grass grows green and long above her. Old people stop by her grave, and relate with a low voice, and many a sigh, her sad and remarkable story. But grass will