Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/40

36 The streamlet that ran down the lonely vale,

Aneath its banks, half-seen, half-hid,

Seemed melted silver—at once it came down,

From the shocking of horsemen, reeking and red;

And that lady flew, and she uttered a cry,

As the riderless steeds came rushing by.

And many have fallen, and more have fled:

All in a nook of bloody ground

That lady sat by a bleeding knight,

And strove with her fingers to stanch the wound:

Her locks, like sunbeams when summer's in pride,

She plucked and placed on his wounded side.

And aye the sorer that lady sighed,

The more her golden locks she drew;

The more she prayed, the ruddy life's blood

The faster and faster came trickling through:

On a sadder sight ne'er looked the moon

That o'er the green mountain came gleaming down.

He lay with his sword in the pale moonlight;

All mute and pale she lay at his side:

He, sheathed in mail from brow to heel;

She, in her maiden bloom and pride:

And their beds were made, and the lovers were laid,

All under the gentle holly's shade.

May that Selby's right hand wither and rot,

That fails with flowers their bed to strew!

May a foreign grave be his who doth rend

Away the shade of the holly bough!

But let them sleep by the gentle river,

And waken in love that shall last for ever."

As the old dame ceased her song, she opened her lap, from which she showered a profusion of flowers—such as are gathered rather in the wood or the wild than the garden—on two green ridges which lay side by side beneath the shade of the green holly. At each handful she strewed she muttered, in an under-tone, what sounded like the remains of an ancient form of prayer; when, turning toward the path, she observed me, and said: "Youth, comest thou here to smile at beholding a frail woman strew the dust of the beautiful and the brave with mountain thyme, wild mint, and scented hawthorn?" I soothed her by a tone of submission and reverence: "Eleanor Selby, may the curse of the ballad, which thou sangest even now, be mine, if I come