Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/60

56 dogs, and the latter with her pail of reeking milk, each singing with a hearty country freedom of voice, and in their own peculiar way, the loves and the joys of a pastoral life. The home of Randal Rode presented a scene of rough plenty, and abounded in pastoral wealth; the head of the house associated with his domestics, and maintained that authority over their words and conduct which belonged to simpler times; and something of the rustic dignity of the master was observable in his men. His daughter Maude busied herself among the maidens with a meekness and a diligence which had more of the matron than is commonly found in so young a dame. All this escaped not the notice of her old and capricious kinswoman Eleanor Selby; but scenes of homely and domestic joy seemed alien to her heart. The intrusion, too, of the churlish name of Rode among the martial Selbys, never failed to darken the picture which she would have enjoyed had this rustic alloy mixed with the precious metal of any other house. It was her chief delight, since all the males of her name had perished, to chant ballads in their praise, and relate their deeds from the time of the Norman invasion down to their ruin in the last rebellion. Many snatches of these chivalrous ballads are still current on the Border—the debateable land of song as well as of the sword, where minstrels sought their themes, and entered, harp in hand, into rivalry—a kind of contest which the sword, the critic's weapon of those days, was often drawn to decide. Much of this stirring and heroic Border-life mingles with the traditionary tales of Eleanor Selby. Her narratives contain occasionally a vivid presentment of character and action. I shall endeavour to preserve something of this, and retain at the same time their dramatic cast, while I prune and condense the whole, to render them more acceptable to the impatience of modern readers. She thus pursued her story:

"I am now to tell a tale I have related a thousand times to the noble and the low; it is presented to me in my dreams, for the memory of spilt blood clings to a young mind—and the life's-blood of Walter Selby was no common blood to me. The vision of the spectre horsemen, in which human fate was darkly shadowed forth, passed away, and departed too, I am afraid, from the thoughts of those to whom it came as a signal and a warning—as a cloud passes from the face of the summer-moon. Seated on horseback, with Walter Selby