Chapter 19

Life ebbs from such old age, unmarked and silent,
As the slow neap-tide leaves yon stranded galley.--
Late she rocked merrily at the least impulse
That wind or wave could give; but now her keel
Is settling on the sand, her mast has ta'en
An angle with the sky, from which it shifts not.
Each wave receding shakes her less and less,
Till, bedded on the strand, she shall remain
Useless as motionless.
Old Play.

As the Antiquary lifted the latch of the hut, he was surprised to hear
the shrill tremulous voice of Elspeth chanting forth an old ballad in a
wild and doleful recitative.

"The herring loves the merry moonlight,
The mackerel loves the wind,
But the oyster loves the dredging sang,
For they come of a gentle kind."

A diligent collector of these legendary scraps of ancient poetry, his
foot refused to cross the threshold when his ear was thus arrested, and
his hand instinctively took pencil and memorandum-book. From time to time
the old woman spoke as if to the children--"Oh ay, hinnies, whisht!
whisht! and I'll begin a bonnier ane than that--

"Now haud your tongue, baith wife and carle,
And listen, great and sma',
And I will sing of Glenallan's Earl
That fought on the red Harlaw.

"The cronach's cried on Bennachie,
And doun the Don and a',
And hieland and lawland may mournfu' be
For the sair field of Harlaw.--

I dinna mind the neist verse weel--my memory's failed, and theres unco
thoughts come ower me--God keep us frae temptation!"

Here her voice sunk in indistinct muttering.

"It's a historical ballad," said Oldbuck, eagerly, "a genuine and
undoubted fragment of minstrelsy! Percy would admire its simplicity--
Ritson could not impugn its authenticity."

"Ay, but it's a sad thing," said Ochiltree, "to see human nature sae far
owertaen as to be skirling at auld sangs on the back of a loss like
hers."

"Hush! hush!" said the Antiquary--"she has gotten the thread of the story
again. "--And as he spoke, she sung--

"They saddled a hundred milk-white steeds,
They hae bridled a hundred black,
With a chafron of steel on each horse's head,
And a good knight upon his back. "--

"Chafron!" exclaimed the Antiquary,--"equivalent, perhaps, to
_cheveron;_--the word's worth a dollar,"--and down it went in his red
book.

"They hadna ridden a mile, a mile,
A mile, but barely ten,
When Donald came branking down the brae
Wi' twenty thousand men.

"Their tartans they were waving wide,
Their glaives were glancing clear,
Their pibrochs rung frae side to