University of Virginia Library

There were three of us, when we took the road,
To warn our folk that the hawks were abroad.
And we met by chance in the market place,
Under the gibbet we thought to grace,
Some day yet, with an honest face.
A black night, I remember me:
The wet wind roared in the creaking tree,
Where the hoarse raven was hard bestead
To balance himself on a dead man's head,
Holding on with claw and beak,
And clapping his wings to the withered cheek
Grimly at each sudden gust.
“Hist!” quoth my neighbour Irwine, “Hist!
To the hornet's nest in the castle rock:
They're stirring now. God help the folk
On the Pentland Hills to-night!”

Quoth I,
At sunset I was hurrying by
St. Giles, when the courier, white with spray
From the bit and flanks of his jaded bay,
Pulled up on his haunches sudden; and forth
Rushed our dry-weasened curate, that came from the north,
And patters the prayers from his painted missal
With a squeaking voice like a penny whistle,
Nodding his wig like a downy thistle.
So I pricked up my ears for news, the while
Our priestling stood with a greasy smile
Wrinkling a countenance sallow with bile.
“Ho! now, sir curate, 'tis our time at last,
And we'll tutor the Whigs to feast or fast,
Or pray with candle and book and bell,
Or any thing likes you in heaven or hell.
Hast heard the news, man? At noon a crew
Of psalm-singing villains beset and slew
The good archbishop on Magus Moor—
Burley and Hackston and some few more—
Answered his prayers with a rascal laugh,
And split his skull with a Jeddart staff.
There's news makes your ears to tingle.—Ho!
What crop-eared dog have we here, I trow
Eavesdropping?” Then I heard a crash,
And there came on my crown a sabreslash;
And the courier galloped along the street.
But that my bonnet was padded, to meet
By-strokes of this sort, I had been dead;
For all that our sucking bishop said,
Was “Now will our dean get the vacant see,
And what may the prospect be for me?”
So, neighbour Irwine, you well may say,
“God be on the Pentland Hills this day.”

We parted then, each with a burden of thought;
As a gust of wind from the castle brought
The din of arms and of clattering hoof
From the rough causeway far aloof;
While the raven croaked his rusty caw,
Cawing over the soldier's law—
It was ever a friend to the raven's maw.
Never another word crossed our lip;
Only we knew by the steadfast grip
Of each other's hand—a certain token—
That each had a matter as yet unspoken.

I was the youngest of all the three;
And they should have left this gear to me.
And I should have told them plainly too
What it was in my heart to do.
But somehow or other that courier's sabre
Rang in my head like a sounding tabor;
And then we were hurried, for two or three
Might not meet, but the devil would be
Right in the midst of them, syne or soon,
In the shape of a curate or dragoon,
To worm the secret out of your head.
Yet I was the youngest, and should have said
Plainly out to them all my will;
And the old man's gray hairs haunt me still—
The weird gray locks, and the withered skin,
And the dark red pool they were dabbled in.
As I say, I was young, and in troth, till of late,
Tippet and rochet, church and state,
Missal and Bible, bishop and priest,
Mitre and altar, fast and feast,
Little recked I of them, better or worse,
If they left me only my hound and horse,
A broad brown moor and a stag to course.
Nay, I had been mettlesome, given to frolic,
And once on a day gave our bishop a colic,
By stately robing our old gray cat
In Episcopal raiment, rochet and hat,
And sending her out to hunt a mouse,
Just as his Lordship left the house.
But my wife Meg—I was courting her then—
Would not hold nor bide from the westland men;
And I never could round a word in her ear,
If I went not with her to pray, and hear
Saintly men in cellars hidden,
And Gospel truth from lips forbidden.
So I followed with never a graver thought,
Till found of Him whom I had not sought;
For, mirthful and meddlesome, God's own grace
Plucked me a brand from the burning place.

Now, there was a rumour that Christ would spread
A table next day by the watershed
Of the Pentland Hills where curlews bred.
And I thought, as I heard the gathering hum,
The trumpet call, and the rolling drum,
The pawing hoof, and the jangling rein,
Up in the castle rock again,—
“They are gathering here for deeds accursed;
They are gathering there with hearts a-thirst
For the water of life; and I must to the road,
And keep the wolf from the lambs of God.
Here's Turner with his hireling loons,
And Clavers'e with his devil's dragoons,
And Grierson o' Lagg and Dalzell o' the Binns,
With the blood of saints on their leprous skins;
And the blood of the bishop on Magus Moor,
Pricking them on for vengeance sure.
And there, by misty glen and rock,
Old men and maidens, the best of the stock
Our land ever bred—be the others who may—
In maud and bonnet they gather to pray.
And God sees all: but the bishop's ghost
Will be in, I fear, at the winning post.”

So I mused down the street, till I reached my own door,
Where I swithered uncertain, a minute or more;
Then I crossed to the other side, hoping to see
My wife busy as wont at her housewifery;
For she had no thought of what was astir,
And it might be the last I should see of her.
Then I took up my stand in a darksome nook,
Where the rain guttered on me, just craving one look
Of her bonny blithe face ere I set to the road,
And to leave her the peace and the blessing of God.
But when I glanced up, where she stood with our child,
Looking wistfully out on the tempest wild,
And hushing the baby that wept on her breast,
And moving about with the strange unrest,
And standing by the window wrapt in light,
And peering out into the darksome night,
I could not abide to part from her so:
Just a word, and a kiss, and then I would go;
No harm could come of a word and a kiss;
And how could I leave her in wretchedness?
But alas! when I found me in her embrace,
And the babe on my knee crowing up in my face,
And the fire blazing cheerily there on the hearth,
And her eyes glancing clear, and the light-hearted mirth
Gleesomely singing about the room,
Blithe as the birds in the early bloom—
I had not the heart to break in on her joy.
So the hours flew by; she cradled the boy
Asleep on her round and dimpled arm,
Asleep on her bosom soft and warm,
And held him up for a parting kiss,
With a look of beaming happiness.
And then with mingled smiles and tears,
She spake of boding thoughts and fears,
Weird dreams and tales and luckless rhymes
Of murdered men in the olden times,
Which haunted her the live-long night;
And she could not get rid of them do what she might;
She had heard them last by her grandam's knee;
And what a foolish thing was she,
To have such silly thoughts of me!
You may be sure I had much to do,
Hearing her speak, to keep steady in view
The thing it was in my heart to do.
And once or twice it was on my tongue;
And once or twice the devil had sung
A pretty lying song in my ear:
But I drowned it quick with a word of prayer.
So the hours flew by till the midnight fell,
And the baby slept, and the mother as well;
And I crept from her side, like a guilty one,
To speed on the work that must be done—
God bless thee, Meg, and the little one!

On the Borough-muir road I had stabled a roan,
With plenty of mettle and plenty of bone;
And just as the lights of morning broke
By fits, like a flame leaping up in the smoke
Of a fresh green log, I was trotting along,
At a great round pace, with a silent throng
Of stars overhead, beheld now and then
Through a rift in the clouds, or a pause in the rain,
A chill eerie night! there was that in its breath
Made you creep, like the air in a room where Death
Is busy at work: and here and there,
Ghostly glimmering through the air,
Phantom-lights were twinkling late,
Quenchless either by wind or wet.
I was troubled at heart; for I thought at times
Of my wife, with her dreams and her luckless rhymes,
That would not go out of her head all night;
And whether she slept till morning light;
And how bitterly there she would weep and moan,
When she waked and found the bird was flown,
And would clasp the child, and be sure that they
Were widow and orphan made this day.
And then my conscience pricked me sore
That I should have been there long hours before.
But I never knew Turner's hireling loons,
Nor any of Claverse's devil-dragoons
Leave the flagon ere break of day,
Till they slept the fumes of the drink away.
So I thought 'twould be hours ere they were astir,
And silently gave my roan the spur,
As she snorted, and pricked her ears forward, and strode
With her long round pace on the plashy road;
Holding on bravely by tower and tree,
By Glencorse water, and Woodhouselee,
And Rullion Green where the battle befell
'Tween the westland folk and the bloody Dalzell.
And I never drew bridle and scarcely drew breath,
For I rode on an errand of life and death,
And I felt as if nought but a galloping pace
Could quiet my mind's uneasiness:
When all of a sudden my good roan steed,
Who never yet failed me in hour of need,
Sprang right from the path, with a cry of quick fear—
A frightened cry and frightful to hear;
While caw, caw, caw! from under her hoof,
The raven lazily rose aloof;
Lazily rose on his broad black wing,
As loth to leave some horrible thing;
And I fell without sense of life or pain
On the brown heath 'mid the plashing rain—
The plashing rain, and the raven black,
Croaking and hopping lazily back.

How long in that stupor dull I lay
By the big white stone, I may not say:
But when I awoke, with senses dim,
And stiff and racked in each joint and limb,
The dawn had brightened into the day,
And the light birds sang on the bending spray,
And the rain-drops hung on the leaves overhead,
And the sunshine on the moorland played,
Like a radiant smile kindling up in a face,
And turning the rude into loveliness.
And there in the sunshine the old man lay,
And the pool was red, and his hair was gray;—
Grisled locks in a pool of blood;
While sleepily gorged the raven stood,
Blinking dull in the golden sun.
And God sees all: and the deed is done;
And the old man's race at length is run.
Too late—too late; my neighbour was dead;
The saints were slain, and the birds were fed;
From east and from west the trooper rode,
And the curate was priest, and the trooper his God;
And the wily informers had scent like a beagle,
And wherever the carcass was there was the eagle;
And the crook and the mitre were serfs to the sword,
And sanctified slaughter with texts from the Word;
And old men and maidens, preacher and people,
From kirk and from kirkyard, from pulpit and steeple,
They must take them to hiding, where hiding is sure,
By the bleak Moffat water or Annandale moor,
To the rocks and the mountains and dens of the earth;
And now in the wilderness all that is worth
Of us, withers and wanes, as the meek and the brave
Wait for the dawn, or look out for a grave.
But I have no part in their struggle or hope,
Though I hear now and then, something faintly, their scope
Whispered low in the ear, as the salt waves pass
And the sea-bird screams on the rocky Bass.
For they found me laid by my neighbour dead,
And they tried me with boots and a cord on my head,
That started the eyes from their pits; but the twine
Wrung not a word from lips of mine.
And the last that I saw of my wife was then
When I witness bore in the sight of men,
And while the crafty lawyers plied me,
The crowd opened up and she stood beside me,
And she held up the boy, with a blush without shame,
Saying—“He shall be proud of his father's name.”