Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/242

238 with a grave smile, "they have braved sundry tempests between sixteen and sixty; but, touching this pasture, sir, I know nobody who would like their cows to crop it—the aged cattle shun the place, the bushes bloom but bear no fruit, the birds never build in the branches, the children never come near to play, and the aged never choose it for a resting-place; but pointing it out, as they pass, to the young, tell them the story of its desolation. Sae ye see, sir, having nae goodwill to such a spot of earth myself, I like little to see a stranger sitting in such an unblessed place; and I would as good as advise ye to come owre with me to the cowslip knoll; there are reasons mony that an honest man should nae sit there."

I arose at once, and, seating myself beside the peasant on the cowslip knoll, desired to know something of the history of the spot from which he had just warned me. The Caledonian looked on me with an air of embarrassment.

"I am just thinking," said he, "that as ye are an English man I should nae acquaint ye with such a story. Ye'll make it, I'm doubting, a matter of reproach and vaunt when ye gae hame how Willie Borlan o' Caerlaverock told ye a tale of Scottish iniquity that cowed all the stories in Southron book or history."

This unexpected obstacle was soon removed. "My sage and considerate friend," I said, "I have the blood in my bosom will keep me from revealing such a tale to the scoffer and scorner. I am something of a Caerlaverock man, the grandson of Marion Stobie of Dookdub."

The peasant seized my hand. "Marion Stobie! bonnie Marion Stobie o' Dookdub, whom I wooed sae sair and loved sae lang! Man, I love ye for her sake; and well was it for her braw English bridegroom that William Borlan—frail and faded now, but strong and in manhood then—was a thousand miles from Caerlaverock, rolling on the salt sea, when she was brided. Ye have the glance of her ee; I could ken 't yet amang ten thousand, grey as my head is. I will tell the grandson of bonnie Marion Stobie ony tale he likes to ask for, and the story of 'The Ghost and the Gowd Casket' shall be foremost.

"You may imagine, then," said the old Caerlaverock peasant, rising at once with the commencement of his story from his native dialect into very passable English—"you may imagine these ruined walls raised again in their beauty