BALLADS AND LOVE SONGS.

THE MIGHT OF LOVE.

"THERE is work, good man, for you to-day!" So the wife of Jamie cried,

"For a ship at Garl'ston, on Solway,

Is beached, and her coal's to be got away

"And, lassie, would you have me start, And make for Solway sands?

You know that I, for my poor part,

To help me, have nor horse nor cart-
I have only just my hands!"

"But, Jamie, be not, till ye try,

;

Of honest chances baulked
For, mind ye, man, I'll prophesy
That while the old ship's high and dry
Her master'll have her caulked."

And far and near the men were pressed,
As the wife saw in her dreams.

"Aye," Jamie said, "she knew the best,"
As he went under with the rest

To caulk the open seams.

And while the outward-flowing tide

Moaned like a dirge of woe,

The ship's mate from the beach-belt cried : "Her hull is heeling toward the side

Where the men are at work below!"

And the cartmen, wild and open-eyed,
Made for the Solway sands
Men heaving men like coals aside,
For now it was the master cried :

"Run for your lives, all hands!"

Like dead leaves in the sudden swell
Of the storm, upon that shout,
Brown hands went fluttering up and fell,
As, grazed by the sinking planks, pell mell
The men came hurtling out!

Thank God, thank God, the peril's past!
"No!no!" with blanching lip,

The master cries. “One man, the last,
Is caught, drawn in, and grappled fast
Betwixt the sands and the ship!"

"Back, back, all hands! Get what you can Or pick, or oar, or stave."

This way and that they breathless ran,
And came and fell to, every man,

To dig him out of his grave!

"Too slow! too slow! The weight will kill! Up, make your hawsers fast!"

Then every man took hold with a will

THE MIGHT OF LOVE.

A long pull and a strong pull - still

With never a stir o' th' mast!

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At it with might and main.

"Back to the sands! too slow, too slow! He's dying, dying! yet, heave ho! Heave ho! there, once again!"

And now on the beach at Garl'ston stood
A woman whose pale brow wore

Its love like a queenly crown; and the blood
Ran curdled and cold as she watched the flood
That was racing in to the shore.

On, on it trampled, stride by stride.
It was death to stand and wait;
And all that were free threw picks aside,
And came up dripping out o' th' tide,
And left the doomed to his fate.

But lo! the great sea trembling stands;
Then, crawling under the ship,
As if for the sake of the two white hands
Reaching over the wild, wet sands,

Slackened that terrible grip.

"Come to me, Jamie! God grants the way,"
She cries, "for lovers to meet."

And the sea, so cruel, grew kind, they say,
And, wrapping him tenderly round with spray,
Laid him dead at her feet.

"THE GRACE WIFE OF KEITH.”

No whit is gained, do you say to me,
In a hundred years, nor in two nor three,
In wise things, nor in holy

No whit since Bacon trod his ways,

And William Shakespeare wrote his plays!
Aye, aye, the world moves slowly.

But here is a lesson, man, to heed;
I have marked the pages, open and read;
We are yet enough unloving,
Given to evil and prone to fall,

But the record will show you, after all,
That still the world keeps moving.

All in the times of the good King James-
I have marked the deeds and their doers' names,
And over my pencil drawing-

One Geillis Duncan standeth the first

For helping of "anie kinde sick" accursed,
And doomed, without trial, to "thrawing.".

Read of her torturers given their scope
Of wrenching and binding her head with a rope,
Of taunting her word and her honor,

And of searching her body sae pure and fair
From the lady-white feet to the gouden hair
For the wizard's mark upon her!

Of how through fair coaxings and agonies' dread She came to acknowledge whatever they said,

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66 THE GRACE WIFE OF KEITH."

And, lastly, her shaken wits losing,

To prattle from nonsense and blasphemies wild
To the silly entreaties and tears of a child,
And then to the fatal accusing.

First naming Euphemia Macalzean,

A lord's young daughter, and fair as a queen ; Then Agnes, whose wisdom surpassed her ; "Grace Wyff of Keith," so her sentence lies, "Adjudged at Holyrood under the eyes Of the King, her royal master."

O, think of this Grace wife, fine and tall,
With a witch's bridle tied to the wall!
Her peril and pain enhancing

With owning the lie that on Hallowmas Eve
She with a witch crew sailed in a sieve
To Berwick Church, for a dancing!

Think of her owning, through brainsick fright,
How Geillis a Jew's-harp played that night,
And of Majesty sending speedy

Across the border and far away

For that same Geillis to dance and play,
Of infernal news made greedy!

Think of her true tongue made to tell
How she had raised a dog from a well
To conjure a Lady's daughters;

And how she had gript him neck and skin,
And, growling, thrust him down and in
To his hiding under the waters!