Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/179

Rh among her admirers with an equal and a judicious diligence. Curds and cream, and tea, were in succession handed round—she partook of both, uniting in her own person the pastoral taste of the mountains with the refinement of the vales; songs were sung—she assisted in the strain, and her voice was sweet and delightful; and thus the evening hours flew by. But amid all this show of harmony and good-fellowship, an experienced eye might observe, by the clouding brow and restrained joy of many, that the breeze of love which blew so soft and so balmy would soon burst out into tempest and storm. It is certainly a hazardous policy in such matters to collect a number of admirers face to face: in the silent darkness of a solitary tryste, the lover imagines himself the sole, or at least the favoured, admirer; and after breathing a brief vow, and tasting the joy of a half-yielded kiss, he returns home, leaving his mistress to the nocturnal hardihood and superior address of a more artful lover. But seated with your rivals at your side, your jealousy of affection rises in arms against your peace, and you begin to sum up the hours you have been blessed in her company, and to multiply them by the number of her admirers, conceding in despair a fractional part of affection to yourself, while it is plain your rivals have revelled in round numbers. There is no temper can long endure this; and it seemed plain that my fellow-suitors regarded our meeting as a general field-day—a numbering of the people, that she might wonder over the amount of her admirers and the force of her own charms.

"Conversation began at last to flag, and silence ensued. 'For my own part,' said an upland shepherd, 'I came here for an hour of quiet joy in a dark nook, the darker the better; but here's nought but an assembly of fools from the four winds of heaven, bending their darkening brows at one another, and a young lass sitting to count the strokes they strike, and to reckon every bruised brow a sure sign of her influence among men. Deil have me if I like it; so let short peace and long strife be among ye; and for you, my bonnie dame, the less ye make sport of honest hearts the less sport will evil hearts make of you, and so I leave you.' And away he strode, whistling manfully the tune of the gallant Graemes, in token of defiance. 'Let him go, the rough-footed moorcock, that can clap his wings, but never crow,' said a ploughman from the vale of Ae; 'the smell of