Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/134

130 visible in many places, shagged round the entrance with heath-berry; and, where the plant that bears this delicious fruit failed to grow, the hardier ivy took root, and with little nourishment shot up into small round masses, called fairy-seats by the peasantry. At the foot of the precipice, some hundreds of high and shivered stones stood on end, like a Druidic grove, but in sevenfold confusion, and here and there a fir inserted in the clefts of the rock struggled for life; while the ivy, shooting its stems to the summit of the crag, shook down a profusion of green tendrils, and crawled along the ground again, till the mossy soil, which bubbled up water at every step, arrested the march of the beautiful evergreen. Around the crag, a circle of spruce firs was planted; while high over the whole the rock rose savage and grey, and gave the eagles, which not infrequently visited its summit, a view over some of the fairest pasture lands in Annandale.

"The desolation of the place was heightened by the absence of living water—the voice of the brook, which lends the tongue of life to many a dreary place. A little puddle of brown moorish water supplied the place of a fountain; around its margin the bones of hares and fowls were strewn; while in a recess in the rock the fox had sought a lair, and heaped it high with wool and feathers. But the proverbial lord of craft and cunning had for some time forsaken this once favourite abode; the presence of man had intruded on his wild domain, and driven him to the neighbouring mountains.

"I climbed to the summit of the rock, and gazed down the vale of Annan as far as the sea of Solway, and westward as far as the green hills of Nithsdale. To enable me more pleasantly to enjoy the beauty of a scene which Turner, or Callcott, or Dewint would love to consecrate, I proceeded to discuss the merits of some ewe-milk cheese, made for me by the lily-white hand of Jessie Johnstone, of Snipeflosh; and the gift of the maiden began to vanish before the sharp-set perseverance of youth. The sun too, dispelling the fog, gleamed over the green heads of the groves in all his summer glory, and I proceeded to examine how I might find out the way to Ae Water, to the dwelling of bonnie Bess Dinwoodie.

"While I sat gazing about me, I observed a thin and curling line of smoke ascending from the base of the crag; it rose up thicker and blacker, and, wafted by the wind, gushed