Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/45

Rh With a measuring eye and a measured pace,

Nigher they came and nigher;

Then made a bound and made a blow,

And the smote helms yielded fire:

December's hail, or the thunder blast,

Ne'er flashed so bright, or fell so fast.

Now yield thee, Graeme, and give me back

Lord Selby's beauteous daughter;

Else I shall sever thy head and heave 't

To thy light love o'er the water."

"My sword is steel, Sir Richard, like thine,

And thy head's as loose on thy neck as mine."

And again their dark eyes flashed, and again

They closed—on sweet Eskside,

The ring-doves sprang from their roosts, for the blows

Were echoing far and wide:

Sir Richard was stark, and Sir Roland was strong;

And the combat was fierce, but it lasted not long.

There's blood upon young Roland's blade,

There's blood on Sir Richard's brand;

There's blood showered o'er their weeds of steel

And rained on the grassy land;

But blood to a warrior's like dew to the flower;

The combat but waxed still more deadly and dour.

A dash was heard in the moonlit Esk,

And up its banks of green

Fair Edith Selby came with a shriek,

And knelt the knights between:

"Oh spare him, Sir Richard!" She held her white hands,

All spotted with blood 'neath the merciless brands.

Young Roland looked down on his true love and smiled,

Sir Richard looked also, and said—

"Curse on them that true love would sunder!" He sheathed

With his broad palm his berry-brown blade;

And long may the Selbys abroad and at hame,

Find a friend and a foe like the good gallant Graeme!

While the ballad proceeded, the old representative of the house of Selby sat with a look of demure dignity and importance, and regarded this minstrel remembrance of the forcible engrafting of the predatory name of Graeme on the stately tree of the Selbys with a look of the darkest displeasure. When the youth finished, she arose hastily, and, elevating herself to her utmost stature, said: "May that ignorant minstrel be mute for ever, or confine his strains to the beasts of the field and the churls who tend them, who has presumed to fashion the ballad of Roland Graeme's wooing of Edith Howard of Naworth into a rhyme