Henchmen, waiting for the signal,
At their chiefs imperious word
Start, to drive from hill and corrie
To the pass the watchful herd.
Closed were paths as with a netting,
Vain high courage, speed, or scent;
Every mesh, a man in ambush
Ready with a crossbow bent.
"Eachan, guard that glade and copsewood,
At your peril let none by!"
Cries the chief, while in the heather
Silently the huntsmen lie.
Shouting by the green morasses
Where the fairies dance at night,
Yelling 'mid the oak and birches
Come the beaters into sight.
And before them, rushing wildly
Speeds the driven herd of deer,
Whose wide antlers toss like branches
In the winter of the year.
Useless was the vassal's effort
To arrest the living flow;
And it passed by Eachan's passage
Spite of hound, and shout, and blow.
"Worse than woman! useless caitiff!
Why allowed you them to pass?
Back, no answer! Hark, men, hither!
Take his staff and bind him fast"
Hearing was with them obeying,
And the hunter's strong limbs lie
Bound with thongs from tawny oxen,
'Neath the chieftain's cruel eye.
"More than twoscore stags have passed him,
Mark the number on his flesh
With red stripes of this good ashwood,
Mend me thus this broken mesh!"
Ah, Loch Búy! faint and sullen
Beats the heart, once leal and free,
That had yielded life exulting
If it bled for thine and thee.