Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/287

Rh "String them with speed," the sixth man said,

"For low down in the forest

There runs a deer I long to smite,

With bitter shafts the sorest.

"The bucks bound blythe on Chatsworth lea,

Where brackens grow the greenest;

The pheasant's safe 'neath Chatsworth oaks,

When the tempest sweeps the keenest.

"The fawn is fain as it sucks its dam,

The bird is blythe when hatching;

Saint George! such game was never seen,

With seven such fellows watching.

"In the wild wood of fair Dove dwells

An outlaw, young and handsome;

A sight of him on Chatsworth bank

Were worth a prince's ransom.

"He slew the deer on Hardwick Hill,

And left the keeper sleeping

The sleep of death; late—late yestreen

I heard his widow weeping.

"Now bend your bows, and choose your shafts"—

His string at his touch went sighing;

"The outlaw comes—now, now at his breast

Let seven broad shafts be flying."

The outlaw came—with a song he came—

Green was his gallant cleeding;

A horn at his belt, in his hand the bow

That set the roebucks bleeding.

The outlaw came—with a song he came—

O'er a brow more brent and bonny

The pheasant plume ne'er danced and shone,

In a summer morning sunny.

The outlaw came—at his belt a blade,

Broad, short and sharp, was gleamin';

Free was his step, as one who had ruled

Among knights and lovely women.

See, by his shadow in the stream

He loves to look and linger,

And wave his mantle richly flowered

By a white and witching finger.

"Now, shall I hit him where yon gay plume

Of the Chatsworth pheasant's glancing;

Or shall I smite his shapely limbs

That charm our maidens dancing?"

"Hold! hold!" a northern forester said,

Twill be told from Trent to Yarrow,

How the true-love song of a gentle outlaw

Was stayed by a churl's arrow."