Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/237

Rh o'clock, and as the bridal chamber lay a mile distant the bride and bridegroom prepared to depart, accompanied by a sure friend or two, to witness the conclusion of the marriage. 'Let them go,' said more voices than one; 'we shall make the fiddle-strings chirp and shake our legs till the small hours of the morning. Come, Tom Macthairm, play us up something wily and wanton: who can leap rafter-high to a sorrowful psalm tune like that?' The fiddler complied, and wall and rafter quivered and shook to the reviving merriment. The young couple now stood on the threshold and looked towards their future habitation, in which the lights of preparation were shining. 'An' I were you, bridegroom,' said one adviser, 'I would go by the bridge—I have heard oftener than once to-night the soughing of the west wind and the roaring of the linns. The Annan is a fair water in summer time, but I would not trust such a bonnie lass as the bride on its fickle bosom on a winter night.' 'An' I were you, bridegroom,' said another counsellor, 'I would lippen to the old proverb, "The nearest road to the bride's bed's the best." The bosom of the Annanwater is bound in ice as hard and as firm as iron—ye might drive Burnswark Hill over its deepest pools, providing it had four feet. So dauner away down the edge of the wood, and cross at the Deadman's Plump; and if ye give me a shout and the bride a kiss when ye cross over't, it will give pleasure to us both.'

"The bride herself came forward to bid farewell to her sister, not unconscious that the time of sorrow had come over her spirit, and that whispers of the import of her predictions were circulated among the bridal guests. She stood before Judith with a cheek flushed with dancing and parting benedictions from rustic lips, and her eyes gleaming with a wild and unusual light—which has often since been noticed by the tellers of her melancholy tale, as a light too unlike that of earthly eyes to be given for her good. 'Graves!' said the bride, with a laugh, which had some thing of a shriek in it; 'is this all you have as an apology for your fear? Where's your sight, if your senses be wandering? My sister has only made the bridal beds, and strewed them with bridal favours.' She turned round to depart: Judith uttered a piercing shriek, and, throwing her arms about her sister, clung to her, giving one convulsive sob after another; and finally, throwing herself between her and the river, strove, but still strove in silence, to impress her