Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/233

Rh evil. It's well known that she foretold the drowning of her sister and her bridegroom, in that black pool before us, where poor Jude now sits so sorrowful."

"Troth and atweel, and that's too true," said Prudence Caird, "and I was unwise to grow cankered with such a kittle customer. She tried my patience sore, but I never heard of any one's luck who crossed her—that one never did good that she wished harm to yet; I hope she'll wish no kittle wish to me."

"I know not," said Mary Halliday, with more than ordinary gravity, and in a tone something between hesitation and belief; "I know not how Judith is informed of evil fortune; but her foreknowledge of human calamity, whether it comes from a good or an evil source, is of no use but to be wondered at, and perhaps sorrowed for. What is foredoomed will surely come to pass, and cannot be guarded against; and, therefore, I deem all warning of the event to be vain and useless. But touching her skill in minstrel lore—with her each oak-tree has its tale, each loop of Annanwater its tradition, and every green knowe or holly-bush its ballad of true-love or song of knightly bravery."

"But the story of her sister's bridal," said one of the menials, "is the best of all the tales told of idle Jude; it is said to be sorrowful—ye may pick sorrow out of aught as weel as ye may pick mirth, and some cry for what others laugh at—but I know this, that lang Tam Southeranairn, the tinker, told me that, save the drowning of the bride and bridegroom in the mirkest pool of Annanwater, shame fall of aught saw he to sorrow for; and he would not have such a duck again as he had that blessed night for all the tup-horns of Dryfesdale and the heads they grow upon."

"I had better, without farther clipping and cutting of the bridal tale, relate it at once," said Mary Halliday; "it is a strange story, and soon told. The marriage of Margaret, the sister of Judith, happened in the very lap of winter—the snow lay deep on the ground, the ice was thick on the river, and the wheel of her father's mill had not turned round for full forty days. The bride was a sweet and a kind-hearted beautiful girl; and there was not a cleverer lad than her bridegroom, David Carlyle, from the head to the foot of Annanwater. I heard the minister of the parish say, after he had joined their hands together, that fifty years he had been a marrier of loving hearts, but he