THE FAIRY THORN
Get up, our Anna dear, from the weary
spinning-wheel;
For your father's on the hill, and your mother
is asleep:
Come up above the crags, and we'll dance a
highland reel
Around the fairy thorn on the steep."
At Anna Grace's door 'twas thus the maidens
cried,
Three merry maidens fair in kirtles of the
green;
And Anna laid the rock and the weary wheel
aside,
The fairest of the four, I ween.
They're glancing through the glimmer of the
quiet eve,
Away in milky wavings of neck and ankle bare;
The heavy sliding stream in its sleepy song they
leave,
And the crags in the ghostly air;
And linking hand in hand, and singing as they go,
The maids along the hill-side have ta'en their
fearless way,
Till they come to where the rowan-trees in lonely
beauty grow
Beside the Fairy Hawthorn gray.
The Hawthorn stands between the ashes tall and
slim,
Like matron with her twin grand-daughters at
her knee;
The rowan-berries cluster o'er her low head
gray and dim
In ruddy kisses sweet to see.
The merry "maidens four have ranged them in a
row,
Between each lovely couple a stately rowan
stem,
And away in mazes wavy, like skimming birds
they go,
Oh never carolled bird like them!
But solemn is the silence of the silvery haze
That drinks away their voices in echoless re-
pose,
And dreamily the evening has stilled the haunted
braes,
And dreamier the gloaming grows.
And sinking one by one, like lark notes from
the sky
When the falcon's shadow saileth across the
open shaw,
Are hushed the maiden's voices, as cowering
down they lie
In the flutter of their sudden awe.
For, from the air above, and the grassy ground
beneath,
And from the mountain-ashes and the old
Whitethorn between,
A power of faint enchantment doth through
their beings breathe,
And they sink down together on the
green.
They sink together silent, and stealing side by
side,
They fling their lovely arms o'er their drooping
necks so fair,
Then vainly strive again their naked arms to hide,
For their shrinking necks again are bare.
Thus clasped and prostrate all, with their heads
together bowed,
Soft o'er their bosoms' beating—the only
human sound—
They hear the silky footsteps of the silent fairy
crowd,
Like a river in the air, gliding round.
No scream can any raise, no prayer can any say,
But wild, wild, the terror of the speechless
three—
For they feel fair Anna Grace drawn silently
away,
By whom they dare not look to see.
They feel their tresses twine with her parting
locks of gold,
And the curls elastic falling, as her head with-
draws;
They feel her sliding arms from their tranced
arms unfold,
But they may not look to see the cause:
For heavy on their senses the faint enchantment
lies
Through all that night of anguish and perilous
amaze;
And neither fear nor wonder can ope their
quivering eyes,
Or their limbs from the cold ground raise,
Till out of night the earth has rolled her dewy
side,
With every haunted mountain and streamy
vale below;
When, as the mist dissolves in the yellow
morning tide,
The maidens' trance dissolveth so.
Then fly the ghastly three as swiftly as they may,
And tell their tale of sorrow to anxious
friends in vain—
They pined away and died within the year and
day,
And ne'er was Anna Grace seen again.
—-Sir S. Ferguson.