WILLIAM ERSKINE, ESQ.
ADVOCATE.
* * * *
The editor embraces this opportunity
of presenting the reader with the following stanzas,
intended to commemorate some striking Scottish superstitions,
omitted by Collins in his ode upon that subject; and
which, if the editor can judge with impartiality of
the production of a valued friend, will be found worthy
of the sublime original. The reader must observe,
that these verses form a continuation of the address,
by Collins, to the author of Douglas, exhorting
him to celebrate the traditions of Scotland.
They were first published in the Edinburgh Magazine,
for April, 1788.
* * * *
Thy muse may tell, how, when at evening’s
close,
To meet her love beneath the twilight
shade,
O’er many a broom-clad brae and
heathy glade,
In merry mood the village maiden goes;
There, on a streamlet’s margin as
she lies,
Chaunting some carol till her swain appears,
With visage deadly pale, in pensive guise,
Beneath a wither’d fir his form
he rears![73]
Shrieking and sad, she bends her irie
flight,
When, mid dire heaths, where flits the
taper blue,
The whilst the moon sheds dim a sickly
light,
The airy funeral meets her blasted view!
When, trembling, weak, she gains her cottage
low,
Where magpies scatter notes of presage
wide,
Some one shall tell, while tears in torrents
flow,
That, just when twilight dimm’d
the green hill’s side,
Far in his lonely sheil her hapless shepherd
died.
[Footnote 73: The wraith,
or spectral appearance, of a person shortly to die,
is a firm article in the creed of Scottish superstition.
Nor is it unknown in our sister kingdom. See the
story of the beautiful lady Diana Rich.—Aubrey’s
Miscellanies, p, 89.]
Let these sad strains to lighter sounds
give place!
Bid thy brisk viol warble measures gay!
For see! recall’d by thy resistless
lay,
Once more the Brownie shews his honest
face.
Hail, from thy wanderings long, my much
lov’d sprite!
Thou friend, thou lover of the lowly,
hail!
Tell, in what realms thou sport’st
thy merry night,
Trail’st the long mop, or whirl’st
the mimic flail.
Where dost thou deck the much-disordered
hall,
While the tired damsel in Elysium sleeps,
With early voice to drowsy workman call,
Or lull the dame, while mirth his vigils
keeps?
’Twas thus in Caledonia’s
domes, ’tis said,
Thou ply’dst the kindly task in
years of yore:
At last, in luckless hour, some erring
maid
Spread in thy nightly cell of viands store:
Ne’er was thy form beheld among
their mountains more.[74]
[Footnote 74: See Introduction, p.
ci.]
Then wake (for well thou can’st)
that wond’rous lay,
How, while around the thoughtless matrons
sleep,
Soft o’er the floor the treacherous
fairies creep,
And bear the smiling infant far away:
How starts the nurse, when, for her lovely
child,
She sees at dawn a gaping idiot stare!
O snatch the innocent from demons vilde,
And save the parents fond from fell despair!
In a deep cave the trusty menials wait,
When from their hilly dens, at midnight’s
hour,
Forth rush the airy elves in mimic state,
And o’er the moon-light heath with
swiftness scour:
In glittering arms the little horsemen
shine;
Last, on a milk-white steed, with targe
of gold,
A fay of might appears, whose arms entwine
The lost, lamented child! the shepherds
bold75
The unconscious infant tear from his unhallowed
hold.
[Footnote 75: For an account
of the Fairy superstition, see Introduction to
the Tale of Tamlane.]
MINSTRELSY
OF THE
SCOTTISH BORDER.
