Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/200

196, and a thick canopy of vapour, which hung over the Isle of Man, waxed more ominous and vast. A light, as of a fierce fire burning, dropped frequent from its bosom, throwing a sort of supernatural flame along the surface of the water, and showing distinctly the haven, and houses, and shipping, and haunted castle of the isle. The old men sat silently gazing on the scene, while cloud succeeded cloud, till the whole congregating vapour, unable to sustain itself longer, stooped suddenly down from the opposing peaks of Criffel and Skiddaw, filling up the mighty space between the mountains, and approaching so close to the bosom of the ocean, as to leave room alone for the visible flight of the seamew and cormorant.

The water-fowl, starting from the sea, flew landward in a flock, fanning the waves with their wings, and uttering that wild and piercing scream which distinguishes them from all other fowl when their haunts are disturbed. The clouds and darkness increased, and the bird on the rock, the cattle in the fold, and the reapers in the field, all looked upward and seaward, expecting the coming of the storm.

"Benjamin Forster," said an old reaper to me, as I approached his side, and stood gazing on the sea, "I counsel thee, youth, to go home, and shelter these young hairs beneath thy mother's roof. The mountains have covered their heads—and hearken, too, that hollow moan running among the cliffs! There is a voice of mourning, my child, goes along the sea-cliffs of Solway before she swallows up the seafaring man. Seven times have I heard that warning voice in one season—and it cries, woe to the wives and the maids of Cumberland!"

On the summit of a knoll, which swelled gently from the margin of a small beck or rivulet, and which was about a dozen yards apart from the main body of the reapers, sat a young Cumbrian maiden, who seemed wholly intent on the arrangement of a profusion of nut-brown locks, which descended, in clustering masses, upon her back and shoulders. This wilderness of ringlets owed, apparently, as much of its curling elegance to nature as to art, and flowed down on all sides with a profusion rivalling the luxuriant tresses of the Madonnas of the Roman painters. Half in coquetry, and half in willingness to restrain her tresses under a small fillet of green silk, her fingers, long, round, and white, continued shedding and disposing this