Title: Popular British Ballads, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 4 (of 4)
Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
Illustrator: W. Cubitt Cooke
Release date: March 28, 2014 [eBook #45244]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45244
Credits: Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by Google Books
CONTENTS
THE HIGH TIDE ON THE COAST OF LINCOLNSHIRE
THE BALLAD OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN
THE BALLAD OF FISHER'S BOARDING-HOUSE
THE NIGHT BEFORE LARRY WAS STRETCHED
BY THAT LAKE, WHOSE GLOOMY SHORE
SIR TURLOUGH; OR, THE CHURCHYARD BRIDE
THE BALLAD OF THE BIER THAT CONQUERED
THE BALLAD OF "BONNY PORTMORE"
THE BROTHERS: HENRY AND JOHN SHEARS
T he old mayor climbed the belfry tower,
The ringers ran by two, by three;
"Pull, if ye never pulled before;
Good ringers, pull your best," quoth he.
"Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston bells!
Ply all your changes, all your swells,
Play uppe 'The Brides of Enderby.'"
Men say it was a stolen tyde—
The Lord that sent it, He knows all;
But in myne ears doth still abide
The message that the bells let fall:
And there was nought of strange, beside
The flights of mews and peewits pied
By millions crouched on the old sea wall.
I sat and spun within the doore,
My thread brake off, I raised myne eyes;
The level sun, like ruddy ore,
Lay sinking in the barren skies;
And dark against day's golden death
She moved where Lindis wandereth,
My sonne's faire wife, Elizabeth.
"Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling,
Ere the early dews were falling,
Far re away I heard her song.
"Cusha! Cusha!" all along;
Where the reedy Lindis floweth,
Floweth, floweth,
From the meads where melick groweth
Faintly came her milking song.—
"Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling,
"For the dews will soone be falling;
Leave your meadow grasses mellow,
Mellow, mellow;
Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow;
Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Light-
foot;
Quit the stalks of parsley hollow,
Hollow, hollow;
Come uppe Jetty, rise and follow,
From the clovers lift your head;
Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Light-
foot,
Come uppe Jetty, rise and follow,
Jetty, to the milking shed,"
If it be long, aye, long ago,
When I beginne to think howe long,
Againe I hear the Lindis flow,
Swift as an arrowe, sharpe and strong;
And all the aire, it seemeth mee,
Bin full of floating bells (sayth shee),
That ring the tune of Enderby.
Alle fresh the level pasture lay,
And not a shadowe mote be seene,
Save where full fyve good miles away
The steeple towered from out the greene;
And lo! the great bell farre and wide
Was heard in all the country side
That Saturday at eventide.
The swannerds where their sedges are
Moved on in sunset's golden breath,
The shepherde lads I heard afarre,
And my sonne's wife, Elizabeth;
Till floating o'er the grassy sea
Came downe that kyndly message free,
The "Brides of Mavis Enderby."
Then some looked uppe into the sky,
And all along where Lindis flows
To where the goodly vessels lie,
And where the lordly steeple shows.
They sayde, "And why should this thing be?
What danger lowers by land or sea?
They ring the tune of Enderby!
"For evil news from Mabelthorpe,
Of pyrate galleys warping down;
For shippes ashore beyond the scorpe,
They have not spared to wake the towne:
But while the west bin red to see,
And storms be none, and pyrates flee,
Why ring 'The Brides of Enderby?'"
I looked without, and lo! my sonne
Came riding downe with might and main:
He raised a shout as he drew on,
Till all the welkin rang again,
"Elizabeth! Elizabeth!"
(A sweeter woman ne'er drew breath
Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth).
"The olde sea wall (he cried) is downe,
The rising tide comes on apace,
And boats adrift in yonder towne
Go sailing uppe the market-place."
He shook as one that looks on death:
"God save you, mother!" straight he saith;
"Where is my wife, Elizabeth?"
"Good sonne, where Lindis winds away
With her two bairns I marked her long;
And ere yon bells beganne to play
Afar I heard her milking song."
He looked across the grassy lea,
To right, to left, "Ho Enderby!"
They rang "The Brides of Enderby!"
With that he cried and beat his breast;
For, lo! along the river's bed
A mighty eygre reared his crest,
And up the Lindis raging sped.
It swept with thunderous noises loud;
Shaped like a curling snow-white cloud,
Or like a demon in a shroud.
And rearing Lindis backward pressed,
Shook all her trembling bankes amaine;
Then madly at the eygre's breast
Flung uppe her weltering walls again.
Then bankes came downe with ruin and rout—
Then beaten foam flew round about—
Then all the mighty floods were out.
So farre, so fast the eygre drave,
The heart had hardly time to beat,
Before a shallow seething wave
Sobbed in the grasses at oure feet:
The feet had hardly time to flee
Before it brake against the knee,
And all the world was in the sea.
Upon the roofe we sate that night,
The noise of bells went sweeping by:
I marked the lofty beacon light
Stream from the church tower, red and high—
A lurid mark and dread to see;
And awsome bells they were to mee,
That in the dark rang "Enderby."
They rang the sailor lads to guide
From roofe to roofe who fearless rowed;
And I—my sonne was at my side,
And yet the ruddy beacon glowed:
And yet he moaned beneath his breath,
"O come in life, or come in death!
O lost! my love, Elizabeth."
And didst thou visit him no more?
Thou didst, thou didst, my daughter deare;
The waters laid thee at his doore,
Ere yet the early dawn was clear.
Thy pretty bairns in fast embrace,
The lifted sun shone on thy face,
Downe drifted to thy dwelling-place.
That flow strewed wrecks about the grass,
That ebbe swept out the flocks to sea;
A fatal ebbe and flow, alas!
To manye more than my ne and me:
But each will mourn his own (she saith).
And sweeter woman ne'er drew breath
Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth.
I shall never hear her more
By the reedy Lindis shore,
"Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling,
Ere the early dews be falling;
I shall never hear her song,
"Cusha! Cusha!" all along,
Where the sunny Lindis flpweth,
Goeth, floweth;
From the meads where ihelick groweth,
When the water winding down,
Onward floweth to the town.
I shall never see her more
Where the reeds and rushes quiver,
Shiver, quiver;
Stand beside the sobbing river.
Sobbing, throbbing, in its falling,
To the sandy lonesome shore;
I shall never hear her calling,
"Leave your meadow grasses mellow,
Mellow, mellow;
Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow;
Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot;
Quit your pipes of parsley hollow,
Hollow, hollow;
Come uppe Lightfoot, rise and follow;
Lightfoot, Whitefoot,
From your clovers lift the head;
Come uppe Jetty, follow, follow,
Jetty, to the milking shed."
——Jean Ingelow.
A stillness crept about the house,
At evenfall, in noon-tide glare;
Upon the silent hills looked forth
The many-windowed House of Quair.
The peacock on the terrace screamed;
Browsed on the lawn the timid hare;
The great trees grew i' the avenue,
Calm by the sheltered House of Quair.
The pool was still; around its brim
The alders sickened all the air;
There came no murmur from the streams,
Though nigh flowed Leithen, Tweed, and
Quair.
The days hold on their wonted pace,
And men to court and camp repair,
Their part to fill, of good or ill,
While women keep the House of Quair.
And one is clad in widow's weeds,
And one is maiden-like and fair,
And day by day they seek the paths
About the lonely fields of Quair.
To see the trout leap in the streams,
The summer clouds reflected there,
The maiden loves in pensive dreams
To hang o'er silver Tweed and Quair.
Within, in pall-black velvet clad,
Sits stately in her oaken chair—
A stately dame of ancient name—
The Mother of the House of Quair.
Her daughter broiders by her side,
With heavy drooping golden hair,
And listens to her frequent plaint,—
"I'll fare the Brides that come to Quair.
"For more than one hath lived in pine,
And more than one hath died of care,
And more than one hath sorely sinned,
Left lonely in the House of Quair.
"Alas! and ere thy father died
I had not in his heart a share,
And now—may God forfend her ill—
Thy brother brings his Bride to Quair!"
She came: they kissed her in the hall,
They kissed her on the winding stair,
They led her to her chamber high,
The fairest in the House of Quair.
They bade her from the window look,
And mark the scene how passing fair,
Among whose ways the quiet days
Would linger o'er the wife of Quair.
"'Tis fair," she said on looking forth,
"But what although 'twere bleak and
bare"—
She looked the love she did not speak,
And broke the ancient curse of Quair—
"Where'er he dwells, where'er he goes,
His dangers and his toils I share."
What need be said—she was not one
Of the ill-fated Brides of Quair!
——Isa Craig Knox.-
O my earliest love, who, ere I number'd
Ten sweet summers, made my bosom thrill!
Will a swallow—or a swift, or some bird—
Fly to her and say, I love her still?
Say my life's a desert drear and arid,
To its one green spot I aye recur:
Never, never, although three times married—
Have I cared a jot for aught but her.
No, mine own! though early forced to leave you,
Still my heart was there where first we met;
In those "Lodgings with an ample sea-view,"
Which were, forty years ago, "To Let."
There I saw her first, our landlord's oldest
Little daughter. On a thing so fair
Thou, O Sun,—who (so they say) beholdest
Everything,—hast gazed, I tell thee, ne'er.
There she sat—so near me, yet remoter
Than a star—a blue-eyed bashful imp:
On her lap she held a happy bloater,
'Twixt her lips a yet more happy shrimp.
And I loved her, and our troth we plighted
On the morrow by the shingly shore:
In a fortnight to be disunited
By a bitter fate for evermore.
O my own, my beautiful, my blue-eyed!
To be young once more, and bite my thumb
At the world and all its cares with you, I'd
Give no inconsiderable sum.
Hand in hand we tramp'd the golden seaweed,
Soon as o'er the gray cliff peep'd the dawn:
Side by side, when came the hour for tea, we'd
Crunch the mottled shrimp and hairy prawn:—
Has she wedded some gigantic shrimper,
That sweet mite with whom I loved to play?
Is she girt with babes that whine and whimper,
That bright being who was always gay?
Yes, she has at least a dozen wee things!
Yes—I see her darning corduroys,
Scouring floors, and setting out the tea-things,
For a howling herd of hungry boys,
In a home that reeks of tar and sperm-oil!
But at intervals she thinks, I know,
Of those days which we, afar from turmoil,
Spent together forty years ago.
O my earliest love, still unforgotten,
With your downcast eyes of dreamy blue!
Never, somehow, could I seem to cotton
To another as I did to you!
——C. S. Calverley.
They tell me I am beautiful: they praise my
silken hair,
My little feet that silently slip on from stair to
stair:
They praise my pretty trustful face and innocent
grey eye;
Fond hands caress me oftentimes, yet would
that I might die!
Why was I born to be abhorr'd of man and bird
and beast?
The bullfinch marks me stealing by, and straight
his song hath ceased;
The shrewmouse eyes me shudderingly, then
flees; and worse than that,
The housedog he flees after me—why was I
born a cat?
Men prize the heartless hound who quits dry-
eyed his native land;
Who wags a mercenary tail and licks a tyrant
hand.
The leal true cat they prize not, that if e'er
compell'd to roam
Still flies, when let out of the bag, precipitately
home.
They call me cruel. Do I know if mouse or
song-bird feels?
I only know they make me light and salutary
meals:
And if, as 'tis my nature to, ere I devour I
tease'em,
Why should a low-bred gardener's boy pursue
me with a besom?
Should china fall or chandeliers, or anything but
stocks—
Nay stocks, when they're in flowerpots—the cat
expects hard knocks:
Should ever anything be missed—milk, coals,
umbrellas, brandy—
The cat's pitch'd into with a boot or any thing
that's handy.
"I remember, I remember," how one night I
"fleeted by,"
And gain'd the blessed tiles and gazed into the
cold clear sky.
"I remember, I remember, how my little lovers
came,"
And there, beneath the crescent moon, play'd
many a little game.
They fought—by good St Catharine,'twas a
fearsome sight to see
The coal-black crest, the glowering orbs, of
one gigantic He.
Like bow by some tall bowman bent at Hastings
or Poictiers,
His huge back curved, till none observed a
vestige of his ears:
He stood, an ebon crescent, flouting that ivory
moon;
Then raised the pibroch of his race, the Song
without a Tune;
Gleam'd his white teeth, his mammoth tail waved
. darkly to and fro,
As with one complex yell he burst, all claws,
upon the foe.
It thrills me now, that final Miaow—that weird
unearthly din:
Lone maidens heard it far away, and leap'd out
of their skin.
A potboy from his den o'erhead peep'd with a
scared wan face;
Then sent a random brickbat down, which
knock'd me into space.
Nine days I fell, or thereabouts: and, had we
not nine lives,
I wis I ne'er had seen again thy sausage-shop,
St Ives!
Had I, as some cats have, nine tails, how gladly
I would lick
The hand, and person generally, of him who
heaved that brick.
For me they fill the milkbowl up, and cull the
choice sardine:
But ah! I nevermore shall be the cat I once
have been!
The memories of that fatal night they haunt me
even now:
In dreams I see that rampant He, and tremble
at that Miaow.
——C. S. Calverley.