Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/76

72 and I saw it was a living being. It descended and approached me, motioning me back with its hand. I retired in awe, and still the figure followed. I turned suddenly round and said, 'Whether thou comest for evil or for good, farther shall I not go till I know thy errand.'

Fair and unhappy lady,' said a voice which I had often heard before, 'I have come, not without peril, from a distant place; for I heard the story of your daily and nightly sorrowings, and I vowed I would not leave a relic of the noble and the brave to gladden the eyes of vulgar men and feast the fowls of heaven. Here, take this tress of thy lover's hair, and mourn over it as thou wilt—men shall look on the morrow for the golden locks of Walter Selby waving on Carlisle gate, and when they see nothing there they shall know that the faithful and the valiant are never without friends. His body has been won and his head removed, and his dust shall mingle with the knightly and the far-descended, even as I vowed when we laid him in his early grave.' With these words Sir Thomas Scott departed, and I placed the ringlet in my bosom, from which it shall never be separated."

Such was the story of Eleanor Selby. In a later day some unknown Scottish minstrel heard the uncertain and varying tradition, and, with a minstrel's licence, wove it into verse, suppressing the name of Selby and giving the whole a colour and character most vehemently Scottish. A northern lady is made to sing the following rude and simple lament

White was the rose in my love's hat

While he rowed me in his Lowland plaidie,

His heart was true as death in love,

His hand was aye in battle ready;

His lang, lang hair in yellow hanks

Waved o'er his cheeks sae sweet and ruddy,

But now it waves o'er Carlisle yetts

In dripping ringlets soiled and bloody.

When I came first through fair Carlisle

'Ne'er was a town sae gladsome seeming,

The white rose flaunted o'er the wall,

The thistled pennons far were streaming.

When I came next through fair Carlisle,

Oh! sad, sad seemed the town, and eerie,

The old men sobbed, and grey dames wept,

"O lady! come ye to seek your dearie?"