Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/201

Rh beautiful fleece. At length the locks were fastened under the fillet—a band denoting maidenhood—and her lily-looking hands, dropping across each other in repose from their toil, allowed the eye to admire a smooth and swan-white neck, which presented one of those natural and elegant sinuous lines that sculptors desire so much to communicate to marble. Amid all this sweetness and simplicity there appeared something of rustic archness and coquetry; but it was a kind of natural and born vanity, a little of which gives a grace and joyousness to beauty. Those pure creations of female simplicity, which shine in pastoral speculations, are unknown among the ruddy and buxom damsels of Cumberland. The maritime nymphs of Allanbay are not unconscious of their charms, or careless about their preservation; and to this sweet maiden Nature had given so much female tact as enabled her to know that a beautiful face and large dark hazel eyes have some influence among men. When she had wreathed up her tresses to her own satisfaction, she began to cast around her such glances—suddenly shot, and as suddenly withdrawn—as would have been dangerous concentrated on one object, but which, divided with care, even to the fractional part of a glance, among several hinds, infused a sort of limited joy without exciting hope. Indeed, this was the work of the maiden's eyes alone, for her heart was employed about its own peculiar care, and its concern was fixed on a distant and different object. She pulled from her bosom a silken case, curiously wrought with the needle. A youth sat on the figured prow of a bark, and beneath him a mermaid swam on the green silken sea, waving back her long tresses with one hand and supplicating the young seaman with the other. This singular production seemed the sanctuary of her triumphs over the hearts of men. She began to empty out its contents in her lap; and the jealousy of many a Cumbrian maiden, from Allanbay to Saint Bees Head, would have been excited by learning whose loves these emblems represented. There were letters expressing the ardour of rustic affection—locks of hair, both black and brown, tied up in shreds of silk—and keepsakes, from the magnitude of a simple brass pin, watered with gold, to a massy brooch of price and beauty. She arranged these primitive treasures, and seemed to ponder over the vicissitudes of her youthful affections. Her eyes, after lending a brief scrutiny to each