Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/212

208 pirate and the Scot were dreaded, and stood on a swelling knoll, encompassed with wood, visible from afar to mariners. In the centre was a tower, and on the summit of the tower was a seat, and in that seat tradition will yet tell you that the good Lord Walter Forester sat for a certain time, in every day of the year, looking on the sea. The swallows and other birds which made their nests and their roosts on the castle-top became so accustomed to his presence, that they built and sang and brought forth their young beside him; and old men, as they beheld him, shook their heads, and muttered over the ancient prophecy, which a saint, who suffered from persecution, had uttered againt the house of Helvellyn:

"As we scudded swiftly through the water, I looked towards the shore of Cumberland, stretching far and near, with all its winding outline, interrupted with woody promontories; and there I beheld the old Lord Walter of Helvellyn, seated on the topmost tower of his castle, looking towards the Scottish shore. I thought on the dying man's rhyme, and thought on the vision of last night; and I counted the mariners, and looked again on the castle and Lord Walter, and I saw that the fulfilling of the prophecy and the vision was approaching. Though deeply affected, I managed the barge with my customary skill, and she flew across the bay, leaving a long furrow of foam behind. Michael Halmer, an old mariner of Allanbay, afterwards told me he never beheld a fairer sight than the barge that day, breasting the billows; and he stood, warding off the sun with his hands from his fading eyes, till we reached the middle of the bay. At that time, he said, he beheld something like a ship formed of a black cloud, sailing beside us, which moved as we moved, and tacked as we tacked; had the semblance of the same number of mariners, and in every way appeared like the bridegroom's barge! He trembled with dismay, for he knew the spectre shallop of Solway, which always sails by the side of the ship which the sea is about to swallow. It was not my fortune to behold fully this fearful vision; but, while I gazed towards Helvellyn Hall, I felt a dread, and although I saw nothing on which