Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/43

Rh of the land; and the welcome of that person would be cold, and his repulse certain, who should tell him the unwelcome tale that he wedded above his degree." "Youth, youth," said the old woman, with hasty and marked impatience, "I shall for thy sake refrain from comparing the churlish name of Rode with the gentle name of Selby; but I would rather sit a winter night on Skiddaw than have the best who bear the name of Rode to imagine that the hem of a Selby's robe had not more of gentleness than seven acres of Rode's. But thou hast promised me a song: even let me hearken to it now in the free open air, sitting by an ancient summer-seat of the Selbys; it will put me in a mood to enter thy mother's abode." She seated herself on the margin of the lake, while the young man, surrounded by his companions, sung in a rough free voice this legendary ballad, of which I had the good fortune to obtain a copy:

The trumpet has rung on Helvellyn side,

The bugle in Derwent vale;

And an hundred steeds came hurrying fleet,

With an hundred men in mail:

And the gathering cry and the warning word

Was "Fill the quiver and sharpen the sword."

And away they bound—the mountain deer

Starts at their helmets' flash:

And away they go—the brooks call out

With a hoarse and a murmuring dash;

The foam flung from their steeds as they go

Strews all their track like the drifting snow.

What foe do they chase, for I see no foe;

And yet, all spurred and gored,

Their good steeds fly—say, seek they work

For the fleet hound or the sword?

I see no foe—yet a foe they pursue,

With bow and brand, and horn and halloo.

Sir Richard spurs on his bonnie brown steed,

Sir Walter on his black;

There are a hundred steeds, and each

Has a Selby on its back:

And the meanest man there draws a brand

Has silver spurs and a baron's land.