Allan Cunningham

“ I'll wager my gold-hilted sword against that pheasant feather in thy cap that thou hast a new and a gallant strain; for I have seen thee measure more than once the form of fair Dora Vernon with a ballad-maker's eye. Sing, man, sing."
"'The young minstrel, as he bowed his head to this singular mode of request, blushed from brow to bosom; nor were the face and neck of Dora Vernon without an acknowledgment of how deeply she sympathised in his embarrassment. A finer instrument, a truer hand, or a more sweet and manly voice, hardly ever united to lend grace to rhyme. ”

“ But I was an inextinguishable lover. I disciplined my mind, pampered up my courage, and having, as I hoped, inured myself to the sharp encounter of female wit, boldly resolved to go in quest of an adventure. I have travelled much in the world; but all parts of the earth are surpassed by Scotland in the amorous spirit of its peasantry: there a maiden has many lovers, and a peasant many mistresses; adventures equalling those of romance are encountered; and the effusion of men's blood, as well as maiden's tears, not unfrequently follows those nocturnal excursions. ”

“ As the trooper fell, a pistol and carbine flashed together, and Walter Selby reeled in the saddle, dropped his head and his sword, and saying faintly, 'Oh, Eleanor!' fell to the ground, stretching both hands towards me. I sprang to the ground, clasped him to my bosom, which he covered with his blood, and entreated Heaven to save him; and oh, I doubt I upbraided the Eternal with his death! But Heaven will pity the ravings of despair. He pressed my hand faintly, and lay looking on my face alone, though swords were clashing and pistols were discharged over us. ”

“ She wore a bodice of green tarnished silk; her lower garments were kilted in the thrifty fashion of the country maidens of Caledonia; and round her neck and arm she wore, as much, it is true, for a charm as an ornament, several bracelets of the hard, round, and bitter berries of the mountain-ash, or witch-tree.
"It is poor Judith Macrone, sir," said the maiden, who, with the privilege of a listener, had come close to my side; "she has found her bed in the wild woods for some weeks, living on nuts and plums: I wish the poor demented maiden would come and taste some of my curds and cream." ”

“ He shed back his long and moistened locks from a burning and bewildered brow, and looking steadfastly in her face for a moment, said, 'Rachel, dost thou know me?' She answered only with a flood of tears, and a wave of her hand to be gone. 'Know me! ay, how can ye but know me, since for me that deadly water opened its lips, and swallowed thy darling up. If ye have have a tongue to curse and a heart to scorn me, scorn me then, and curse me; and let me be seen no more on this blessed earth. For the light of day is misery to me, and the cloud of night is full of sorrow and trouble. ”

“ Our hatred was superior to the tempest and the scene of desolation around, and, drawing, our cutlasses, we sought each other's bosom. There is a fate in all things—the planks parted beneath our feet, and the sea broke over us, and he escaped me then, to perish by my hand to-night. Revenge is sweetest when it comes unhoped for. As we sank in the waves, a passing vessel, it seems, saved my sweet May Colvine, while the remainder of the crew went to the bottom, without the chance of swimming for an existence they deserved not to prolong. ”

“ Thou mayest be the grand artificer of deceit come to practise upon my immortal soul. Unmantle thee, I pray, that I may behold if thou art a poor and an afflicted spirit, punished for a time, or that fierce and restless fiend who bears the visible stamp of eternal reprobation." "I may not withstand thy wish," uttered the form in a tone of melancholy; and dropping his mantle, and turning round on the pastor, said, "Hast thou forgotten me?" "How can I forget thee?" said Ezra, receding as he spoke; "the stern and the haughty look of Bonshaw has been humbled indeed. ”

“ It was gallant to see the maids and the matrons of Cumberland, standing in crowds, on headland and cliff, waving their white hands seaward, as we spread our sails to the wind, and shot away into the Solway, with our streamers dancing and fluttering like the mane of a steed as he gallops against the wind. Proud of our charge, and glorying in our skill, we made the good ship go through the surge as we willed; and every turn we made, and every time we wetted her silken sails, there came shout and trumpet-sound from the shore, applauding the seven merry mariners of Allanbay. ”

“ There are only two persons living now who remember when the Bonne-Homme-Richard, the first ship ever Richard Faulder commanded, was wrecked on the Pellock sand; one of these persons now addresses you, the other is the fisherman who once owned that cottage—whose name ought never to be named, and whose life seems lengthened as a warning to the earth how fierce God's judgments are. Life changes—all breathing things have their time and their season; but the Solway flows in the same beauty—Criffel rises in the same majesty—the light of morning comes and the full moon arises now as they did then. ”

“ It was near midnight when I reached the Ladye's Lowe, and, seating myself on the place where I now sit, I looked sadly to the heaven, and sorrowfully to the waters. The moon had arisen with her horns half filled; the stars had gathered around her; the sheep lay white and clustering on the hill-sides; the wild swans sailed in pairs along the quiet bosom of the lake; and the only sound I heard was that of the mother-duck, as she led her swarm of yellow young ones to graze on the tender herbage on the margin of the lake. ”

“ While thus then sung that gallant outlaw,
⁠Till rung both rock and river:
"Oh! bonny Chatsworth, and fair Chatsworth,
⁠Thy bucks go merrily bounding;
Aneath your green oaks, as the herds flew past,
⁠How oft have my shafts been sounding!
"It is sweet to meet with the one we love,
⁠When the night is nigh the hoarest;
It is sweet to bend the bow as she bids,
⁠On the proud prey of the forest.
"One fair dame loves the cittern's sound,
⁠When the words of love are winging;
But my fair one's music's the outlaw's horn,
⁠And his bow-string sharply singing. ”

“ I know not how Judith is informed of evil fortune; but her foreknowledge of human calamity, whether it comes from a good or an evil source, is of no use but to be wondered at, and perhaps sorrowed for. What is foredoomed will surely come to pass, and cannot be guarded against; and, therefore, I deem all warning of the event to be vain and useless. But touching her skill in minstrel lore—with her each oak-tree has its tale, each loop of Annanwater its tradition, and every green knowe or holly-bush its ballad of true-love or song of knightly bravery. ”

“ Wicked was thy course on earth—many and full of evil were thy days; and now thou art loose again, thou fierce and persecut ing spirit—a woe, and a woe to poor Scotland." "They are loose who were never bound," answered the spirit of Bonshaw, darkening in anger and expanding in form, "and that I could soon show thee. But, behold, I am not permitted; there is a watcher—a holy one, come nigh, prepared to resist and to smite; I shall do thee no harm, holy man, I vow by the pains of punishment and the conscience pang, now the watcher has departed." ”

“ You have been a mother, and may have known the tenderness and love which an infant will show her when she is distressed. He hung his little arms round my neck, hid his head in my bosom, and raised up such a murmur and a song of sorrow and sympathy, that I blessed him and smiled, and the bairn smiled, and so we fell asleep. It was about midnight that I dreamed a dream.
"'I dreamed myself seated at my own threshold, dandling my boy in the sun: sleep gives us many joys which are taken from us when we wake, and shadows out to us many woes which are interrupted by sorrow. ”

“ Blessed be the tide that will break over and bury ye for ever! Sad to mariners, and sorrowful to maids and mothers, has the time been you have choked up this deep and bonnie bay. For evil were you sent, and for evil have you continued. Every season finds from you its song of sorrow and wail, its funeral processions, and its shrouded corses. Woe to the land where the wood grew that made ye! Cursed be the axe that hewed ye on the mountains, the hands that joined ye together, the bay that ye first swam in, and the wind that wafted ye here! ”

“ Walter Selby, who all this while—though then a hot and forward youth—had remained mute, addressed me in a whisper: 'Fair Eleanor, mine own giddy cousin, this pedlar—this dispenser of rosaries, made of Queen Mary's yew tree—he, whom the churls call Simon Packpin, is no seeker of profit from vulgar merchandise. I'll wager a kiss of thine own ruddy lips against one of mine, that he carries swords made of good Ripon steel, and pistols of good Swedish iron, in yon horse-pack of his: wilt thou pledge a kiss on this wager, my gentle cousin? ”

“ But the tale is far frae finished, for mariners say that once a year, on a certain night, if ye stand on the Borran Point, ye will see the infernal shallops coming snoring through the Solway, ye will hear the same laugh and song and mirth and minstrelsy which our ancestors heard; see them bound over the sandbanks and sunken rocks like sea-gulls, cast their anchor in Blawhooly Bay, while the shadowy figure lowers down the boat, and augments their numbers with the four unhappy mortals to whose memory a stone stands in the kirkyard, with a sinking ship and a shoreless sea cut upon it. ”