Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/229

Rh Though Annan has its beauteous dames,

And Corrie many a fair one,

We canna want thee from our sight,

Thou lovely and thou rare one.

Bonnie Mary Halliday,

When the cittern's sounding,

We'll miss thy lightsome lily foot,

Amang the blithe lads bounding;

The summer sun shall freeze our veins,

The winter moon shall warm us,

Ere the like of thee shall come again,

To cheer us and to charm us.

During the song I walked unconsciously down to the river bank, and stood on a small promontory which projected into the stream; it was bordered with willows and wild flowers, and the summit, nibbled by some pet sheep, was as smooth as the softest velvet. Here I obtained a full view of this singular songstress. She was seated among the willows, on the indented bank, with her bare feet in the stream: a slouched straw hat, filled with withered flowers and blackcock and peacock feathers, lay at her side; and its removal allowed a fine fleece of hazel-coloured hair to fall down on all sides, till it curled on the grass. She wore a bodice of green tarnished silk; her lower garments were kilted in the thrifty fashion of the country maidens of Caledonia; and round her neck and arm she wore, as much, it is true, for a charm as an ornament, several bracelets of the hard, round, and bitter berries of the mountain-ash, or witch-tree.

"It is poor Judith Macrone, sir," said the maiden, who, with the privilege of a listener, had come close to my side; "she has found her bed in the wild woods for some weeks, living on nuts and plums: I wish the poor demented maiden would come and taste some of my curds and cream."

Judith rose suddenly from her seat, and, scattering some handfuls of wild flowers in the stream, exclaimed, with something of a scream of recognition "Aha, bonnie Mary Halliday, lass, ye wear the snood of singleness yet, for a' yere gentle blood and yere weel-filled farms. But wha's this ye have got with ye? May I love to lie on wet straw wi' a cold sack above me if it is not Francis Forster, all the way from bonnie Derwentwater. Alake, my bonnie lass, for such a wooer! He could nae say seven words of saft, sappy, loving Scotch t'ye, did every word bring for its dower the