Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/132

128 the cherry-lipped, in the shape of snoods, and ribbons, and gloves. Nor will ye hinder him to reign the chief of chaps in the change-house, when the tale and the strong drink circulate together: who like Lacie Dacre, I should be glad to know, for chanting bousing-ballads and telling merry adventures? He's the wildest of all our border spirits, and his exploits with the brandy-cup and the ale-flagon have obtained him the name of Allan-a-Maut—a scrap of an old-world song, sir, with which young Spend-pelf ever commences and concludes his merriment. I have said my worst of the lad—I believe he's a kind-hearted chield, and as true to his word as the cup is to his lip. And now listen to his story, for I'll warrant it a queer one." And as she concluded, he commenced.

"That song," said the youth, "rude and uncouth though it seems, pitches, as a musician would say, the natural tone or key of the tale I have to tell; it was far from unwise in me to sing it; and so, with this explanation, I will proceed, it happened some summers ago, as I was returning, during the grey of the morning, from a love tryste in a green glen on the banks of Annan water, I fell into a kind of reverie; and what should the subject of it be but the many attachments my heart had formed among the maidens, and the very limited requital the law allows one to make to so many sweet and gentle creatures. My spirit was greatly perturbed, as ye may guess, with this sorrowful subject; and a thick mist, which the coming sun seemed unable to dispel, aided me in totally mistaking my way; and I could not well mistake it further, for I found myself in a region with which I had formed no previous acquaintance: I had wandered into a brown and desolate heath, the mist rolled away in heavy wreaths before me, and followed close on my heels, with the diligence of an evil spirit.

"All hill and woodland mark, our usual country guides, were obscured, and I strayed on till I came to the banks of a moorland brook, stained by the soil through which it passed, till it flowed the colour of the brownest brandy. The tenants of this desert stream partook of the congenial nature of the region; they were not of that swift and silver-speckled sort described by the pastoral verse-makers, but of a dull and dark mottled kind, and so lean and haggard as to be wholly unworthy of a fisher's bait. I caught one under the mossy bank, and returned it again to the stream as unfit for food.