Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/218

214 the rough and dizzy cliff of Barnhourie Burn, which overlooks the Solway for many miles, had the possession of its summit disputed with its native cormorants and eagles by some venturous schoolboys, who thus showed that love of adventure which belongs to the children of the sea-coast. The sun was in noon when we landed in Preston Bay, and its edge was touching the grassy tops of the western hills of Galloway, when shout above shout, from wood and eminence, the waving of white hands from field and knoll, and the sudden awakening of all manner of clamorous and mirthful melody announced the coming of the bridal crowd. The gates of Preston Hall burst suddenly open; out upon the level lawn gushed an inundation of youths and maidens clad in their richest dresses, and the living stream flowed down to the Solway side. As they approached, a shallop, covered from the masthead to the water with streamers and pennons and garlands, came suddenly from a small anchorage scooped out of the bosom of the garden, making the coming tide gleam to a distance with the gold and silver lavished in its decoration. But my admiration of this beautiful shallop was soon interrupted by the appearance of a lady, who, standing on the ground by the prow of the bride's barge, looked earnestly seaward, and trembled so much that the white satin dress which covered her from bosom to heel, studded and sown and flowered with the most costly stones and metals, shook as if touched by an ungentle wind. Her long tresses, of raven black hair, and which, in the boast of maidenhood of my early days, descended till she could sit upon them, partook of her agitation. Her eyes alone, large and bright, and fringed with long lashes of a black still deeper than that of her hair, were calm and contemplative, and seemed with her mind meditating on some perilous thing. While she stood thus a maiden came to her side, and, casting a long white veil, a present from the bridegroom, over her head, shrouded her to the feet; but the elegance of her form and the deep dark glance of her expressive eyes triumphed over the costly gift, though the fringe was of diamonds and the disastrous tale of the youth who perished swimming over the Solway to his love was wrought, or rather damasked, in the middle. I could have gazed from that hour till this on this beautiful vision; but while I looked there came slowly from the wood a figure of a woman, bent with age or distress to the ground, and entirely covered in a black mantle: she approached the bride