Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/46

42 with this ungentle marriage the spotless house of Selby! A gentle Selby wed a border Graeme! May the heavens forfend! Who will lay a dog in a deer's den? No," said she, muttering in continuance, as she walked into the house of her ancestors; "we have had sad mishaps among us, but nothing like that. One branch of the stately Selby tree carried the kite's nest of a Forster, another the rook's nest of a Rode; but neither scion nor bough have sheltered the hooded-crow brood of the men of the debateable land—men neither of predatory Scotland nor haughty England, but begotten in the haste of a mutual inroad—and the herald's office cannot divine by whom." The mutterings of the wayward woman fell unregarded in the ear of fair Maude Rode, one of the sweetest maidens that ever pressed curd or milked ewes among the pastoral mountains of Cumberland. She welcomed old Eleanor with one of those silent glances which says so much, and spread her a seat, and ministered to her with the demeanour of the humblest handmaid of the house of Selby when its splendour was fullest. This modest kindness soon had its effect on the mutable descendant of this ancient house; she regained her serenity, and her wild legends and traditional tales were related to no ungrateful ears.

" fire, a clean floor, and a pleasant company," is one of the proverbial wishes of domestic comfort among the wilds of Cumberland. The moorland residence of Randal