Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry/Judith Macrone, the Prophetess
JUDITH MACRONE,
THE PROPHETESS.
But I am haunted by a fearful shape-
Some hated thing which sharp fear forms of shadows;
Something which takes no known form, yet alarms
Me worse than my worst foeman armed in proof;
Something which haunts my slumbers—finds me out
In my deep dreams—in fiercest strife, when blood
Runs rife as rivulet water—in quiet peace,
When rustic songs abound—in silent prayer,
For prayer, too, have I tried—still is it there;
Now—now—the dismal shadow stalks before me,
More visible than ever!
The whole course of Annanwater, in Dumfriesshire, is beautiful; from where it arises among the upland pastures, in the vicinity of the sources of the Clyde and the Tweed, and winding its way by old churchyard, decayed castle, Roman encampment, and battle-field, through fine natural groves and well-cultivated grounds, finally unites its waters with the sea of Solway, after conferring its name on the pretty little borough of Annan. The interior of the district, it is true, presents a singular mixture of desolate nature and rich cultivation; but the immediate banks of the river itself are of a varied and romantic character. At every turn we take we come to nooks of secluded and fairy beauty—groves of fine ancient trees, coeval with the ruined towers they embosom—clumps of the most beautiful holly, skirted with rones or irregular rows of hazel, wild cherry, and wild plum—remains of military or feudal greatness, dismantled keeps or peels, and repeated vestiges of broad Roman roads and ample camps, with many of those massive and squat structures, vaulted and secured with double iron doors, for the protection of cattle, in former times, from reavers and forayers. The river itself has attractions of its own: its inconsiderable waters are pure, and the pebbles may be numbered in the deepest pools, save when the stream is augmented by rains; and for the net, the liester, and the fly-hook, it produces abundance of salmon, grilses, herlings, and trouts.
The peasantry are as varied in their character as the district they inhabit. Agriculture and pasturage claim an equal share in the pursuits of almost every individual; and they are distinguished from the people of many other Lowland districts by superior strength, agility, and courage: the free mountain air, gentle labour, and variety of pursuits give a health and activity which fit them for martial exercises, and they have, perhaps, more of a military air about them than the inhabitants of any of the neighbouring vales. Many strange, romantic, and martial stories linger among them; and those who have the good fortune to be admitted to their friendship or their fireside may have their condescension richly repaid by curious oral communications, in which history, true and fabulous, and poetry and superstition, are strangely blended together. The tale of the spirit which for many generations has haunted the castle of Spedlans will have its narrative of ordinary horror accompanied by fairy legends and traditions more romantic in their origin, and more deeply steeped in the dews of superstition.
One fine September morning, for the combined purpose of angling, gathering nuts, and exploring the strongholds of the ancient heroes of Annandale—the Hallidays, the Jardines, the Carlyles, the Bells, and the Irvings—I proceeded up the river bank, and employed my fish-rod with a success which drove me in despair to nut-gathering. It was past midday when I arrived at a fine bold sweep of the stream, where the shade of the bordering groves was invitingly cool and the greensward fresh, soft, and untrodden. The sun was, to use the expression of a Scottish poet, "wading 'mang the mist," or, as a fastidious Englishman would say, "struggling amid drizzly rain," which abated the heat of the luminary, and rendered the grass blade cool and moist. A large oak-tree or two, set down in the random beauty of Nature, adorned the narrow holm, or bordering of greensward, between the wood and the water; while at the extremity of the walk, where the stream was limited by projecting rocks, stood the remains of one of those square peels, or towers of refuge, already alluded to. The building was roofless, and the walls had been lessened in their height by military violence; while from its interior ascended a thin blue smoke, which, curling away among the straight stems of the trees, escaped into the free air through the upper boughs of the grove. Between the tower and the river lay many webs of fine linen, bleaching on the grass; while from the ruin itself came the uninterrupted merriment of some country maidens—a singular medley of open laughter, fragments of song, and taunts about courtship and sarcasms on the lack of lovers.
"Lads!" said a shrill voice, "I never saw such soulless coofs! Ane would think we had ne'er a tooth in our heads, or a pair o' lips for the kissing."
"Kissing, indeed!" said another; "ane would think our lips were made for nought save supping curds or croudy, and that we were suspected of witchcraft. Here we have been daidling in this den of woe and dool from blessed sunrise, and deil a creature with hair on its lip has mistaken its road and come near us. I think ancient spunk and glee be dead and gone from merry Annanwater."
"Ah, my bonnie lasses," interrupted an old woman, half-choked with a churchyard cough, "I mind weel in the blessed year fifteen, we had a bonnie bleaching in this very place. There was Jeany Bell, and Kate Bell, her cousin, who had a misfortune at forty, and was made an honest woman at fifty-eight; and there was Bell Irving and me. Lads! we had the choice of the parish; ye might have heard the caressing o' our lips as far as the Wyliehole; and what would ye think—Pate Irving, now a douce man and a godly, was the wantonest of all. Ah, my bonnie kimmers, that was a night."
This description of departed joys seemed to infuse its spirit into the younger branches of the establishment; for while I pondered how I might introduce myself to these water-nymphs with discretion and humility, I observed a young rosy face, ornamented with a profusion of glistering nut-brown locks, projected past the porch, and reconnoitring me very steadfastly. A forehead with dark eyes and raven hair instantly assisted in the scrutiny, and presently the head of the ancient dame herself appeared, obtruded beyond them both—like Care looking out between Mirth and Joy, in a modern allegory. A tartan nightcap endeavoured in vain to restrain her matted and withered air, which the comb had not for a long while sought to shed or the scissors to abridge; her cheeks were channeled, and a pair of spectacles perched on a nose something of the colour and shape of a lobster's claw assisted her in drawing conclusions from the appearance of a stranger.
I heard the tittering and whispering of the maidens; but the voice of the old woman aspired to something more elevated than a whisper, and mingled counsel and scolding in equal quantities.
"A fisher, indeed!" responded the sibyl to the queries of one of her greener companions; "and what's he come to fish?—a snow-white web from the bottom of our caldron? Ay, ay, 'cause he has ae handsome leg, and something of a merry ee—mind ye, I say na twa—ye christen his calling honest. He's a long black fallow with a tinker look, and I'll warrant there's no his marrow from Longtown to Lochmaben for robbing hen-roosts; and yet I shouldna wonder, Mysie Dinwoodie, if ye held tryst with that strange lad for a whole night with no witness save the blessed moon."
"Hout now, Prudence Caird," said the fair-haired girl, "ye are thinking on the mistake ye made with Pate Johnstone of Dargavel, and how ye failed to mend it with Dick Bell o' Cowfloshan."
The secret history of the old woman's unhappy loves was interrupted by the appearance of a very handsome girl, who, bearing refreshments for her menials, glided through the grove, with a foot so light and white, a look so sweet, a high white forehead, shaded with locks clustering over the temples, and with eyes so large, so bright, and blue—that she seemed a personification of the shepherd maidens of Scottish song. Two fine moorland dogs accompanied her: they sat as she sat, stood as she stood, and moved as she moved. She withdrew from her companions, and approached where I stood, with a look at once so sweet and demure, that, trespasser as I imagined myself to be, I was emboldened to abide a rebuke, which I hoped would come softened from such sweet lips. Though apparently examining the progress of her linen towards perfect whiteness, and approaching me rather by a sidelong than a direct step, I observed, by a quick glance of her eye, that I was included in her calculations. I was saved the confusion which a bashful person feels in addressing a stranger by a voice from the river bank, which, ascending from a small knoll of green willows, sang with singular wildness some snatches of an old ballad.
O Annan runs smoothly atween its green banks,
The ear may scarce listen its flowing:
Ye may see 'tween the ranks of the lofty green trees
The golden harvest glowing,
And hear the horn wound, see the husbandman's bands
Fall on with their sharp sickles bright in their hands.
I have seen by thy deep and romantic stream
The sword of the warrior flashing;
I have seen through thy deep and thy crystal stream
The barbed war-steeds dashing:
There grows not a green tree, there stands not a stone,
But the fall of the valiant and noble has known.
When the song ceased I observed two hands shedding apart the thick willows, while an eye glanced for a moment through the aperture on the young maiden and me. A song of a gentler nature instantly followed, and I could not help imagining that my companion felt a particular interest in the minstrel's story. The time and the place contributed to the charm of the sweet voice and the rustic poetry.
BONNIE MARY HALLIDAY.
Bonnie Mary Halliday,
Turn again, I call you;
If you go to the dewy wood
Sorrow will befall you:
The ringdove from the dewy wood
Is wailing sore and calling,
And Annanwater, 'tween its banks,
Is foaming far and falling.
Gentle Mary Halliday,
Come, my bonnie lady;
Upon the river's woody bank
My steed is saddled ready;
And for thy haughty kinsmen's threats,
My faith shall never falter;
The bridal banquet's ready made,
The priest is at the altar.
Gentle Mary Halliday,
The towers of merry Preston
Have bridal candles gleaming bright,
So busk thee, love, and hasten;
Come, busk thee, love, and bowne thee
Through Tinwald and green Mouswal;
Come, be the grace and be the charm
To the proud towers of Machusel.
Bonnie Mary Halliday,
Turn again, I tell you:
For wit, an' grace, an' loveliness,
What maidens may excel you?
Though Annan has its beauteous dames,
And Corrie many a fair one,
We canna want thee from our sight,
Thou lovely and thou rare one.
Bonnie Mary Halliday,
When the cittern's sounding,
We'll miss thy lightsome lily foot,
Amang the blithe lads bounding;
The summer sun shall freeze our veins,
The winter moon shall warm us,
Ere the like of thee shall come again,
During the song I walked unconsciously down to the river bank, and stood on a small promontory which projected into the stream; it was bordered with willows and wild flowers, and the summit, nibbled by some pet sheep, was as smooth as the softest velvet. Here I obtained a full view of this singular songstress. She was seated among the willows, on the indented bank, with her bare feet in the stream: a slouched straw hat, filled with withered flowers and blackcock and peacock feathers, lay at her side; and its removal allowed a fine fleece of hazel-coloured hair to fall down on all sides, till it curled on the grass. 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."
Judith rose suddenly from her seat, and, scattering some handfuls of wild flowers in the stream, exclaimed, with something of a scream of recognition "Aha, bonnie Mary Halliday, lass, ye wear the snood of singleness yet, for a' yere gentle blood and yere weel-filled farms. But wha's this ye have got with ye? May I love to lie on wet straw wi' a cold sack above me if it is not Francis Forster, all the way from bonnie Derwentwater. Alake, my bonnie lass, for such a wooer! He could nae say seven words of saft, sappy, loving Scotch t'ye, did every word bring for its dower the bonnie lands of Lochwood, which your forefathers lost. No, no, Mary Halliday, take a bonnie Annanwater lad, and let the Southron gang."
There's bonnie lads on fairy Nith,
And cannie lads on Dee,
And stately lads on Kinnel side,
And by Dalgonar tree:
The Nithsdale lads are frank and kind,
But lack the bright blue ee
Of the bonnie Annanwater lads,
The wale of lads for me.
There's Willie Watson of Witchstone,
Dick Irving of Gowktree,
Frank Forest of the Houlet-ha,
Jock Bell of Lillylea;
But give to me a Halliday,
The witty, bauld, and free,
The frackest lads of Annanbank,
The Hallidays for me.
The Johnstone is a noble name,
The Jardine is a free,
The Bells are bauld, the Irvings good,
The Carlyles bear the gree,
Till the gallant Hallidays come in
With minstrel, mirth, and glee,
Then hey! the lads of Annanbank,
The Hallidays for me.
This old rude rhyme was sung with considerable archness and effect: the songstress then came towards the place where we stood, not with a regular direct step, but a sidelong hop and skip, waving, as she came, her bonnet and feathers from side to side, accompanying every motion with a line of an old song. Old Prudence Caird seemed scandalized at the extravagant demeanour of the poor girl, and, advancing towards her, waving her hands to be gone, exclaimed:
"In the name of all aboon, what are ye skipping and skirling there for, ye born gowk and sworn gomeral? Ye'll fall belly-flaught, breadth and length, on the lily-white linen that has cost such a cleansing. Away to the woods like another gowk, away, else I'se kirsen ye with a cupful of scalding water, my sooth shall I;" and, partly suiting the action to the word, she came forward with a cupful of water in her hand.
The singular person to whom these bitter words were addressed heard them with a loud laugh of utter contempt and scorn; and, with a thousand fantastic twirls and freaks, she threaded, with great dexterity, the whole maze of linen webs, and confronted old Prudence. She looked her full in the face, she eyed her on one side and eyed her on another, she stooped down and she stood on tiptoe, examining her all the while with an eye of simple but crafty scrutiny.
"Protect us, sirs!" said the wandering maiden, "what wicked liars these two blue een o' mine are—I'll ne'er credit them again; and yet, believe me, but it's like her. Hech be't, she's sore changed since that merry time—it cannot be her. Harkee, my douce decent-looking dame, d'ye ken if Prudence Caird be living yet?"
"And what hast thou to say to Prudence Caird?" said the old woman, growing blacker with anger, and clutching, as she spoke, the long sharp fingers of her right hand, portending hostility to the blue eyes of Judith.
"Say to Prudence Caird?" said the maiden; "a bonnie question, indeed! What advice could a poor bewildered creature like me give to a douce person who has had twice the benefit of the counsel of the minister and kirk session?"
And, with unexpected agility, away Judith danced and leaped and laughed, eluding the indignation of her less active antagonist.
I could not help feeling anxious to learn something of the history of Judith; and while I was expressing this to Mary Halliday, the poor girl approached and received a bowl of curds and cream, which she acknowledged with abundance of fantastic bows and becks.
"Look at her now," said my companion, "but say not a word."
Judith seated herself on the margin of the river; and, throwing a spoonful of the curds into the stream, said: "There, taste that, thou sweet and gentle water; and when I bathe my burning brow in thy flood, or wade through thee, and through thee, on the warm moonlight evenings of summer, mind who fed yere bonnie mottled trouts and yere lang silver eels, and no drown me as ye did my bonnie sister Peggy and her young bridegroom." In a small thicket beside her, a bird or two, confiding in the harmlessness of a creature with whom they were well acquainted, continued to pour forth their uninterrupted strain of song. "Ye wee daft things," said Judith, changing from a tone of sadness to one of the most giddy gaiety, "what sit ye lilting there for, on the broad green bough—wasting yere sweetest songs on a fool quean like me: but ye shall not go unrewarded." So saying, she scattered a spoonful of curds beside her on the grass, and said, with some abatement of her mirth: "Come, and peckle at my hand, my poor feathered innocents—ilka bird of the forest, save the raven and the hooded crow, is a sister to me." A redbreast as she spoke, with an audacity which that lover of the human face seldom displays save when the snow is on the ground, came boldly to her elbow, and began to obey her invitation. "Aha, Rabin, my red-bosomed lover, are ye there? Ye'll find me stiff and streekit under the greenwood bough some morning, and ye mauna stint to deck me out daintily with green leaves, my bonnie man;" and, throwing the bird some more curds, she proceeded to sup the remainder herself, indulging between every mouthful in much bewildered talk.
The interest I took in the poor girl, a few handfuls of nuts—and, above all, a few pleasant glances from one, who (though old and bent and withered now) was once twenty-one, had a handsome leg, and mirth in his eye—obtained me the good graces of the nymphs of Annanwater. Our conversation turned upon poor Judith Macrone.
"She is a poor innocent," said Mary Halliday, "as wild and as harmless as the birds she is feeding. She was ever a singular girl, and wit and folly seem to keep alternate sway over her mind."
"She an innocent!" said Prudence Caird; "she's a cunning and a crafty quean, with a wicked memory and a malicious tongue. It sets her weel to wag her fool tongue at me, and say a word that is nae to my credit."
"Hoot, toot, woman," said one of the fair-haired menials; "we can scarce keep our balance with all the wit we have—what can ye expect o' such an adder cap as crazy Jude? But of all the queans of Annanbank, she is the quean for old-world stories. Set her on a sunny hillside, give her her own will—and, wise or daft, who likes na that?—and she'll clatter ye into a dead sleep, with tales of spirits and apparitions, and the dead who have not peace in the grave and walk the earth for a season. I heard douce John Stroudwater, the Cameronian elder, say that assuredly an evil spirit has filled her head with fool songs and queer lang-sin-syne ballads, by and attour a foreknowledge of coming evil. It's well known that she foretold the drowning of her sister and her bridegroom, in that black pool before us, where poor Jude now sits so sorrowful."
"Troth and atweel, and that's too true," said Prudence Caird, "and I was unwise to grow cankered with such a kittle customer. She tried my patience sore, but I never heard of any one's luck who crossed her—that one never did good that she wished harm to yet; I hope she'll wish no kittle wish to me."
"I know not," said Mary Halliday, with more than ordinary gravity, and in a tone something between hesitation and belief; "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."
"But the story of her sister's bridal," said one of the menials, "is the best of all the tales told of idle Jude; it is said to be sorrowful—ye may pick sorrow out of aught as weel as ye may pick mirth, and some cry for what others laugh at—but I know this, that lang Tam Southeranairn, the tinker, told me that, save the drowning of the bride and bridegroom in the mirkest pool of Annanwater, shame fall of aught saw he to sorrow for; and he would not have such a duck again as he had that blessed night for all the tup-horns of Dryfesdale and the heads they grow upon."
"I had better, without farther clipping and cutting of the bridal tale, relate it at once," said Mary Halliday; "it is a strange story, and soon told. The marriage of Margaret, the sister of Judith, happened in the very lap of winter—the snow lay deep on the ground, the ice was thick on the river, and the wheel of her father's mill had not turned round for full forty days. The bride was a sweet and a kind-hearted beautiful girl; and there was not a cleverer lad than her bridegroom, David Carlyle, from the head to the foot of Annanwater. I heard the minister of the parish say, after he had joined their hands together, that fifty years he had been a marrier of loving hearts, but he had never married a fairer pair. The bridegroom's mother was a proud dame, of the ancient house of Morison. She took it sore to heart that her son should marry a miller's daughter; she forbade him, under pain of the mother's curse—and a woman's curse, they say, is a sore one—to bed with his bride under a churl's roof-tree, and, as he wished to be happy, to bring her home to his father's house on the night of the wedding.
"Now, ye will consider that the house of the bride stood on one hillside, and the home of the bridegroom on another; while between them, in the bosom of the valley, lay no less a water than the Annan, with its bank knee-deep in snow, and its surface plated with ice. The mirk winter night and the mother's scorn did not prevent one of the blithesomest bridals from taking place that ever a piper played to or a maiden danced in. Ye have never seen, sir, one of our inland merry-makings, and seen the lads and the lasses moving merrily to the sound of the fiddle and the harpstring, else ye might have some notion of the mirth at Margaret's bridal. The young were loudest in their joy, but the old were blither at the heart; and men forgot their white heads and women that they were granddames, and who so glad as they? An old man, one of the frank-hearted Bells of Middlebee, wiped his brow as he sat down from a reel, and said: 'Aweel, Mary, my bonnie lass, there are just three things which intoxicate the heart of man: first, there is strong drink; secondly, there is music; and thirdly, there is the company of beautiful women, when they move to the sound of dulcimer and flute. Blest be the Maker, for they are the most wonderful of all His works.'
"But the merriest, as well as the fairest, was the bride herself: she danced with unequalled life and grace—her feet gave the tone, rather than took it, from the fiddle; and the old men said the melody of her feet, as they moved on the floor, would do more mischief among men's hearts than her eyes, and her eyes were wondrous bright ones. Many stayed from dancing themselves, and stood in a circle round the place where she danced. I listened to their remarks, which the catastrophe of the evening impressed on my memory. 'I think,' said William Johnstone of Chapelknowe, 'our bonnie bride's possessed; I never saw her look so sweet or dance so delightfully. It's no sonsie to look so smiling on her wedding-night; a grave bride's best, owre blithe a bride is seldom a blest one.' 'There's no a sweeter or more modest maid on Annanbank,' said John Stroudwater, the Cameronian, who, scorning to mingle in the dance himself, yet could endure to be a witness of youthful folly where the liquor was plenty; 'she's a bonnie quean; yet I cannot say I like to see the light which comes from her eyes, as if it were shed from two stars; nor love I to hearken the vain and wanton sound which she causeth the planed floor to utter, as she directeth her steps to the strange outcry of that man's instrument of wood, called by the profane a fiddle.' Nor were the women without their remarks on the bride's mirth on this unhappy night. 'I protest,' said an old dame in a black hood, 'against all this profane minstrelsy and dancing; it is more sinful in its nature than strong drink—I wish good may come of it!' and she paused to moisten her lips with a cup of brandy, to which a piece of sugar and a single teaspoonful of water had communicated the lady-like name of cordial. 'I wish, I say, good may come of it: I have not danced these thirty years and three, but the bride is dancing as if this night was her last. I fear she is fey.'
"If the bride and bridegroom were blithe, there was another sad enough: even poor Judith, who, retiring from the mirth and the dancing, went to her father's mill-door, and seating herself on a broken mill-stone, and loosing her locks from the comb, let them fall like a shroud around her, while she gazed intent and silent upon Annanwater, which lay still and clear in the setting light of the moon. I had an early regard for this unhappy maid—we were school-fellows and play-fellows; and, though her temper was wayward, and her mind, equal to the hardest task one week, was unequal for any kind of learning another; yet, from the frequency of these remarkable fits of impulse and ability, she became one of the finest scholars in Annandale. So I went out into the open air, and found her sitting silent and melancholy, and looking with a fixed and undeviating gaze on the river, which glittered a good half-mile distant. I stood beside her, and sought rather to learn what oppressed her spirit, from her actions and her looks, than by questioning her. It has been remarked that on ordinary occasions, though she is talkative and fond of singing snatches of songs, yet, when the secret of any coming calamity is communicated to her spirit, she becomes at once silent and gloomy, and seeks to acquaint mankind with the disaster awaiting them by sensible signs and tokens—a kind of hieroglyphic mode of communication which she has invented to avoid the misery, perhaps, of open speech. She seemed scarcely aware of my presence.
"At last she threw back her long hair from her face, that nothing might intercept her steady gaze at the river; and, plucking a silver bodkin from her bosom, she proceeded to describe on the ground two small and coffin-shaped holes—one something longer than the other. I could not help shuddering while I looked on these symbols of certain fate; and my fears instantly connected what I saw with the wedding and the bride and bridegroom. I seized her by the arm, and, snatching the bodkin from her, said: 'Judith, thou art an evil foreboder, and I shall cast this bodkin of thine, which has been made under no good influence, into the blackest pool of Annanwater.' At other times I was an overmatch for her in strength; but when the time of her sorrow came she seemed to obtain supernatural strength in body as well as in mind, and on this occasion she proved it by leaping swiftly to her feet and wresting the bodkin from me. She resumed her seat; and, taking the bride and bridegroom's ribands from her bosom, she put the latter into the larger grave and the former in the less, and wrung her hands, threw her hair wildly over her face, and wept and sobbed aloud.
"All this had not passed unobserved of others. 'Mercy on us!' cried the Laird of Gooseplat, 'but the young witch is casting cantraips, and making the figures of graves, and dooming to the bedral's spade and the parish mortcloth the quick instead of the dead. I'se tell thee what, my cannie lass, two red peats and a tar-barrel would make a warm conclusion to these unsonsie spells ye are casting; and may I be choked with a thimbleful of brandy if ye should want a cross on the brow as deep as the bone if I had my whittle.' Other spectators came to more charitable conclusions. 'Red peats and sharp whittles!' muttered William Graeme of Cummerlair; 'I'se tell ye what, laird, if ye lay a hand of harm on the poor demented lassie, I'se lend ye a Lockerby lick to take home with ye. Eh, sirs, but this be fearful to look upon—she is showing us by dumb looks, and sure nods, and sad signs, and awful symbols, the coming of wrath and woe. There are two graves, and the bridal ribands laid like corses in them—he that runs may read.'
"While this passed out of doors, the dancing and bridal mirth abounded more than ever. It was now ten o'clock, and as the bridal chamber lay a mile distant the bride and bridegroom prepared to depart, accompanied by a sure friend or two, to witness the conclusion of the marriage. 'Let them go,' said more voices than one; 'we shall make the fiddle-strings chirp and shake our legs till the small hours of the morning. Come, Tom Macthairm, play us up something wily and wanton: who can leap rafter-high to a sorrowful psalm tune like that?' The fiddler complied, and wall and rafter quivered and shook to the reviving merriment. The young couple now stood on the threshold and looked towards their future habitation, in which the lights of preparation were shining. 'An' I were you, bridegroom,' said one adviser, 'I would go by the bridge—I have heard oftener than once to-night the soughing of the west wind and the roaring of the linns. The Annan is a fair water in summer time, but I would not trust such a bonnie lass as the bride on its fickle bosom on a winter night.' 'An' I were you, bridegroom,' said another counsellor, 'I would lippen to the old proverb, "The nearest road to the bride's bed's the best." The bosom of the Annanwater is bound in ice as hard and as firm as iron—ye might drive Burnswark Hill over its deepest pools, providing it had four feet. So dauner away down the edge of the wood, and cross at the Deadman's Plump; and if ye give me a shout and the bride a kiss when ye cross over't, it will give pleasure to us both.'
"The bride herself came forward to bid farewell to her sister, not unconscious that the time of sorrow had come over her spirit, and that whispers of the import of her predictions were circulated among the bridal guests. She stood before Judith with a cheek flushed with dancing and parting benedictions from rustic lips, and her eyes gleaming with a wild and unusual light—which has often since been noticed by the tellers of her melancholy tale, as a light too unlike that of earthly eyes to be given for her good. 'Graves!' said the bride, with a laugh, which had some thing of a shriek in it; 'is this all you have as an apology for your fear? Where's your sight, if your senses be wandering? My sister has only made the bridal beds, and strewed them with bridal favours.' She turned round to depart: Judith uttered a piercing shriek, and, throwing her arms about her sister, clung to her, giving one convulsive sob after another; and finally, throwing herself between her and the river, strove, but still strove in silence, to impress her with a sense of danger. It was in vain: the bride and bridegroom departed; while Judith, covering, or rather shrouding herself in her mantle, and turning her face from the river, sat as mute and as still as a statue; a slight convulsive shudder was from time to time visible.
"The young pair reached the Annan, and attempted to pass over the pool called the Deadman's Plump; the dancing and merriment, which had sustained a brief remission, had recommenced, when, far above the din of the dance and the music, one shriek, and then another, was heard in the direction of the river. 'Hearken the shout!' said one rustic; 'the bridegroom is fairly over the water now—then, hey, play up "The Runaway Bride."' 'Alas!' answered another peasant, 'yon is not the cry of pleasure, but the shriek of agony. My kale-yard to the Johnstone's land, but they are fallen into the Deadman's Plump, and Judith's prophecy 's true.' The hall-door seemed much too narrow for the multitude who rushed to get out. The shrieks were repeated, and, mingling with the shrieks, and at last o'ermastering them, was heard the downward dash of Annanwater, which, swollen suddenly with distant rains, descended from the hills with all its increase of waters, lifting the ice before it, and heaving it on the banks with a crash that resounded far and wide. The unhappy pair were seen struggling together against the overpowering element, which, encumbered with ice and trees, filled the channel from bank to bank, and rushed down six feet deep abreast. No effort could be made to save them; and, when the river subsided in the morning, they were found in a distant eddy, the bridegroom's left hand round his bride's waist, and his right hand held out like one in the act of swimming. They lie buried together in the old kirkyard of Dryfesdale. I have often seen Judith sitting weeping on their grave."