Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/19

Rh At length he came where the glen expanded, and the sides became steep and woody: amid a grove of decaying trees the mansion of Bonshaw rose, square and grey. Its walls of rough granite were high and massive; the roof, ascending steep and sharp, carried a covering of red sandstone flags; around the whole the rivulet poured its scanty waters in a deep moat, while a low-browed door, guarded by loopholes, gave it the character of a place of refuge and defence. Though decayed and war-worn now, it had in former times been a fair and a courtly spot. A sylvan nook or arbour, scooped out of the everlasting rock, was wreathed about with honeysuckles; a little pool, with a margin studded with the earliest primroses, lay at its entrance; and a garden, redeemed by the labour of man from the sterile upland, had its summer roses and its beds of lilies, all bearing token of some gentle and departed inhabitant.

As he approached the house a candle glimmered in a small square window, and threw a line or two of straggling light along the path. At the foot of the decayed porch he observed the figure of a man kneeling, and presently he heard a voice chanting what sounded like a psalm or a lyke-wake hymn. Ezra alighted, and approached: the form seemed insensible of his presence, but stretched his hands towards the tower; and while the feathery snow descended on his grey hair, he poured his song forth in a slow and melancholy manner. "I protest," said the messenger, "here kneels old William Cameron, the Covenanter. Hearken, he pours out some odd old-world malison against Bonshaw. I have heard that the laird hunted him long and sore in his youth, slew his sons, burned his house, threw his two bonnie daughters desolate—that was nae gentle deed, however—and brake the old mother's heart with downright sorrow. Sae I canna much blame the dour old carle for remembering it even now, though the candles of Bonshaw are burning in the socket, and his light will be extinguished for ever. Let us hearken his psalm or his song; it is no every winter night we have minstrelsy at Bonshaw gate, I can tell ye that." The following are the verses, which have been preserved under the title of "Ane godly exultation of William Cameron, a chosen vessel, over Bonshaw, the persecutor." I have adopted a plainer but a less descriptive title.