Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/248

244 Solway, to examine his nets. It was near midnight—the tide was making, and I sat down by his side, and watched the coming of the waters. The shore was glittering in starlight as far as the eye could reach. Gilbert the fisherman had that morning removed from his cottage to his new mansion—the former was, therefore, untenanted; and the latter, from its vantage-ground on the crest of the hill, threw down to us the sound of mirth and music and dancing, a revelry common in Scotland on taking possession of a new house. As we lay quietly looking on the swelling sea, and observing the water-fowl swimming and ducking in the increasing waters, the sound of the merriment became more audible. My father listened to the mirth, looked to the sea, looked to the deserted cottage, and then to the new mansion, and said: 'My son, I have a counsel to give thee—treasure it in thy heart, and practise it in thy life—the daughters of him of Gyrape-ha' are fair, and have an eye that would wile away the wits of the wisest; their father has wealth—I say nought of the way he came by it—they will have golden portions doubtless. But I would rather lay thy head aneath the gowans in Caerlaverock kirkyard, and son have I none beside thee, than see thee lay it on the bridal pillow with the begotten of that man, though she had Nithsdale for her dowry. Let not my words be as seed sown on the ocean—I may not now tell thee why this warning is given. Before that fatal shipwreck, I would have said Prudence Gyrape, in her kirtle, was a better bride than some who have golden dowers. I have long thought some one would see a sight—and often, while holding my halve-net in the midnight tide, have I looked for something to appear—for where blood is shed, there doth the spirit haunt for a time, and give warning to man. May I be strengthened to endure the sight!'

"I answered not, being accustomed to regard my father's counsel as a matter not to be debated, as a solemn command: we heard something like the rustling of wings on the water, accompanied by a slight curling motion of the tide. 'God haud his right hand about us!' said my father, breathing thick with emotion and awe, and looking on the sea with a gaze so intense that his eyes seemed to dilate, and the hair of his forehead to project forward and bristle into life. I looked, but observed nothing, save a long line of thin and quivering light, dancing along the surface of the sea: it ascended the bank, on which it seemed to linger for a