Tales From Scottish Ballads. Elizabeth W. Grierson

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       Elizabeth W. Grierson

      Tales From Scottish Ballads

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066223564

Table of Contents

       THE LOCHMABEN HARPER

       THE LAIRD O' LOGIE

       KINMONT WILLIE

       THE GUDE WALLACE

       THE WARLOCK O' OAKWOOD

       MUCKLE-MOU'ED MEG

       DICK O' THE COW

       THE HEIR OF LINNE

       BLACK AGNACE OF DUNBAR

       THOMAS THE RHYMER

       LORD SOULIS

       THE BROWNIE OF BLEDNOCK

       SIR PATRICK SPENS

       YOUNG BEKIE

       THE EARL OF MAR'S DAUGHTER

       HYNDE HORN

       THE GAY GOS-HAWK

       THE END

THE LOCHMABEN HARPER

       Table of Contents

      "Oh, heard ye of a silly harper,

       Wha lang lived in Lochmaben town,

       How he did gang to fair England,

       To steal King Henry's wanton brown?"

      Once upon a time, there was an old man in Lochmaben, who made his livelihood by going round the country playing on his harp. He was very old, and very blind, and there was such a simple air about him, that people were inclined to think that he had not all his wits, and they always called him "The silly Lochmaben Harper."

      Now Lochmaben is in Dumfriesshire, not very far from the English border, and the old man sometimes took his harp and made long journeys into England, playing at all the houses that he passed on the road.

      Once when he returned from one of these journeys, he told everyone how he had seen the English King, King Henry, who happened to be living at that time at a castle in the north of England, and although he thought the King a very fine-looking man indeed, he thought far more of a frisky brown horse which his Majesty had been riding, and he had made up his mind that some day it should be his.

      All the people laughed loudly when they heard this, and looked at one another and tapped their foreheads, and said, "Poor old man, his brain is a little touched; he grows sillier, and sillier;" but the Harper only smiled to himself, and went home to his cottage, where his wife was busy making porridge for his supper.

      "Wife," he said, setting down his harp in the corner of the room, "I am going to steal the King of England's brown horse."

      "Are you?" said his wife, and then she went on stirring the porridge. She knew her husband better than the neighbours did, and she knew that when he said a thing, he generally managed to do it.

      The old man sat looking into the fire for a long time, and at last he said, "I will need a horse with a foal, to help me: if I can find that, I can do it."

      "Tush!" said his wife, as she lifted the pan from the fire and poured the boiling porridge carefully into two bowls; "if that is all that thou needest, the brown horse is thine. Hast forgotten the old gray mare thou left at home in the stable? Whilst thou wert gone, she bore a fine gray foal."

      "Ah!" said the old Harper, his eyes kindling. "Is she fond of her foal?"

      "Fond of it, say you? I warrant bolts and bars would not keep her from it. Ride thou away on the old mare, and I will keep the foal at home; and I promise thee she will bring home the brown horse as straight as a die, without thy aid, if thou desire it."

      "Thou art a clever woman, Janet: thou thinkest of everything," said her husband proudly, as she handed him his bowlful of porridge, and then sat down to sup her own at the other side of the fire, chuckling to herself, partly at her husband's words of praise, and partly at the simplicity of the neighbours, who called him a silly old harper.

      Next morning the old man went into the stable, and, taking a halter from the wall, he hid it in his stocking; then he led out his old gray mare, who neighed and whinnied in distress at having to leave her little foal behind her. Indeed he had some difficulty in getting her to start, for when he had mounted her, and turned her head along the Carlisle road, she backed, and reared, and sidled, and made such a fuss, that quite a crowd collected round her, crying, "Come and see the silly Harper of Lochmaben start to bring home the King of England's brown horse."

      At last the Harper got the mare to start, and he rode, and he rode, playing on his harp all the time, until he came to the castle where the King of England was. And, as luck would have it, who should come to the gate, just as he arrived, but King Henry himself. Now his Majesty loved music, and the old man really played very well, so he asked him to come into the great hall of the castle, and let all the company hear him play.

      At this invitation the Harper jumped joyously down from his horse, as if to make haste to go in, and then he hesitated.

      "Nay, but if it please your Majesty," he said humbly, "my old nag is footsore and weary: mayhap there is a stall in your Majesty's stable where she might rest the night."

      Now the King loved all animals, and it pleased him that the old man should be so mindful of his beast; and seeing one of the stablemen in the distance, he turned his head and cried carelessly, "Here, sirrah! Take this old man's nag, and put it in a stall in the stable where my own brown horse stands, and see to it that it has a good supper of oats and a comfortable litter of hay."

      Then he led the Harper into the hall where all his nobles were, and I need not tell you that the old man played his very best. He struck up such a merry tune that before long everybody began to dance, and the very servants came creeping to the door to listen. The cooks left their pans, and the chambermaids their dusters, the butlers their pantries; and, best of all, the stablemen