I send my love letters
By larks on the wing;
My love sends me letters
When nightingales sing.

Without reading or writing,
Their burden we know:
They only say, “Love me,
Who love you so.”

III.

And if they ask for me, brother,
Say I come never home,
For I have taken a strange wife
Beyond the salt sea foam.

The green grass is my bridal bed,
The black tomb my good mother,
The stones and dust within the grave
Are my sister and my brother.

BALLADS

The Young Ruthven.

The King has gi’en the Queen a gift,
For her May-day’s propine,
He’s gi’en her a band o’ the diamond-stane,
Set in the siller fine.

The Queen she walked in Falkland yaird,
Beside the Hollans green,
And there she saw the bonniest man
That ever her eyes had seen.

His coat was the Ruthven white and red,
Sae sound asleep was he
The Queen she cried on May Beatrix,
That seely lad to see.