Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/207

Rh In another group stood a young seaman with his sister's arms linked round his neck, receiving the blessings and the admonitions which female lips shower so vainly upon the sterner sex: "This is the third time, Giles, thou hast sailed with Richard Faulder, and every time my alarm and thy perils increase. Many a fair face he has witnessed the fate of, and many a fair ship has he survived the wreck of: think of the sea, since think of it thou must, but never more think of it with such a companion."

In another group a young woman stood gazing on a sailor's face, and in her looks fear and love held equal mastery. "Oh! William Rowanberry," said she, and her hand trembled with affection in his while she spoke, "I would have held my heart widowed for one year and a day, in memory of thee; and though there be fair lads in Ullswater, and fairer still in Allanbay, I'll no say they would have prevailed against my regard for thee before the summer. But I warn thee," and she whispered, waving her hand seaward to give importance to her words, "never be found on the great deep with that man again!"

Meanwhile, the subject of this singular conversation kept pacing from stem to stern of the Mermaid; gazing, now and then, wistfully shoreward, though he saw not a soul with whom he might share his affections. His grey hair, and his melancholy look, won their way to my youthful regard, while his hale and stalwart frame could not fail of making an impression on one not wholly insensible to the merits of the exterior person. A powerful mind should in poetical justice have a noble place of abode. I detached myself a little from the mass of people that filled the shore, and, seeming to busy myself with some drift wood, which the storm had brought to the hollow of a small rock, I had an opportunity of hearing the old mariner chant, as he paced to and fro, the fragment of an old maritime ballad, part of which is still current among the seamen of Solway, along with many other singular rhymes full of marine superstition and adventure.

Sir Richard shot swift from the shore, and sailed

Till he reached Barnhourie's steep,

And a voice came to him from the green land,

And one from the barren deep.

The green sea shuddered, and he did shake,

For the words were those which no mortals make.