Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/153

Rh So wail they on; I tell thee, maid,

One of thy tresses dark

Is worth all the souls who perished

In that good and gallant bark.

O mariner, O mariner,

It's whispered in the hall,

And sung upon the mountain side

Among our maidens all,

That the waves which fill the measure

Of that wide and fatal flood

Cannot cleanse the decks of thy good ship,

Or wash thy hands from blood;

And sailors meet, and shake their heads,

And, ere they sunder, say,

God keep us from Miles Colvine

On the wide and watery way!

And up then spoke he, Miles Colvine,

His thigh thus smiting soon,

By all that's dark aneath the deep,

By all that's bright aboon,

By all that's blesséd on the earth,

Or blesséd on the flood,

And by my sharp and stalwart blade

That revelled in their blood—

I could not spare them; for there came

My loved one's spirit nigh,

With a shriek of joy at every stroke

That doomed her foes to die.

O mariner, O mariner,

There was a lovely dame,

Went down with thee unto the deep,

And left her father's hame.

His dark eyes, like a thunder cloud,

Did rain and lighten fast,

And, oh! his bold and martial face

All grimly grew and ghast:

I loved her, and those evil men

Wronged her as far we ranged;

But were ever woman's woes and wrongs

More fearfully avenged?

The ballad had proceeded thus far, when a band of smugglers, from the coasts of Ireland and Scotland, uniting the reckless desperation of the former with the craft and tact of the latter, attracted by the secure and naked coast, and perhaps by the lonely house, which presented hope of plunder with little appearance of resistance, landed, to the number of seven, and, leaping over the exterior wall, seized the door and shook it violently, calling loudly for