As they sang the last line, they sped away, in the forms of three crows, toward Eildon Hill.
That night was a dreadful one. A storm burst forth in all its fury, sweeping over hill and dale. The woods roared and crashed before the blast, and a driving rain dashed with such violence on the earth, that it seemed as if a thousand cataracts poured from the western heaven to mix with the tempest below. Now and again eldritch shrieks, as of some one perishing, were heard, and then the voices of angry spirits, yelling through the tempest, reached the ear. One of the inmates of the castle was reminded, by the raging storm, of the warlocks' hymn:
"Pother, pother,
My master and brother,
Who may endure thee,
Thus failing in fury?
King of the tempest that travels the plain
King of the snow, and the hail, and the rain,
Lend to thy lever yet seven times seven,
Blow up the blue flame for bolt and for levin,
The red forge of hell with the bellows of heaven!
With hoop and with hammer!
With yell and with yammer,
Hold them in play
Till the dawn of day!
Pother, pother!
My sovereign and brother.
O strain to thy lever,
This world to sever
In two or in three—
What joy it would be!
What toiling and mailing, and mighty commotions!
What rending of hills, and what roaring of oceans!
Ay, that is thy voice, I know it full well;
And that is thy whistle's majestic swell;
But why wilt thou ride thy furious race
Along the bounds of vacant space,
While there is tongue of flesh to scream,
And life to start, and blood to stream?
Yet pother, pother!
My sovereign and brother
And men shall see, ere the rising sun,
What deeds thy mighty arm hath done.
Michael Scott and his guests kept watch together during the eventful night; and when the friar and Charlie stepped out to the battlements in the morning, they beheld the great mountain of Eildon, which before then had but one cone, piled up in three hills, as described by us in chapter [XVI].
CHAPTER XXII.
Allan Ramsay—"The Gentle Shepherd"—Bauldy the Clown—Mause the reputed Witch—A Witch's Crantraips—Praying Backwards—Sad Misfortunes attributed to Mause—Supposed Power of the Devil to raise the Wind and send Rain and Thunder—Mause's Reflections—Sir William disturbed—Symon's Announcement—Promise to gain a Lassie's Heart—Doings of the supposed Witch—Witches' Tricks—Longfellow's "Golden Legend"—"Song of Hiawatha."
Allan Ramsay, who wrote in the first half of the eighteenth century, does not appear to have believed in witches or evil spirits. He, however, like other poets, found it convenient to introduce superstition into his poetical effusions. This will be seen from the following extracts from his Gentle Shepherd.
BAULDY.
"What's this?—I canna bear't!—'tis worse than hell,
To be sae burnt with love, yet daurna tell!
O Peggy! sweeter than the dawning day;
Sweeter than gowany glens or new-mawn hay;
Blyther than lambs that frisk out o'er the knows;
Straighter than aught that in the forest grows;
Her een the clearest blob of dew outshines;
The lily in her breast its beauty tines;
Her legs, her arms, her cheeks, her mouth, her een,
Will be my dead, that will be shortly seen!
For Pate looes her—waes me!—and she looes Pate
And I with Neps, by some unlucky fate,
Made a daft vow. O, but ane be a beast,
That makes rash aiths till he's afore the priest!
I darna speak my mind, else a' the three,
But doubt, wad prove ilk ane my enemy.
'Tis sair to thole;—I'll try some witchcraft art,
To break with ane, and win the other's heart.
Here Mausy lives, a witch that for sma' price
Can cast her cantraips, and gie me advice.
She can o'ercast the night, and cloud the moon,
And make the deils obedient to her crune;
At midnight hours, o'er the kirk-yard she raves,
And howks unchristen'd weans out of their graves;
Boils up their livers in a warlock's pow;
Rins withershins about the hemlock low;
And seven times does her prayers backwards pray,
Till Plotcock comes with lumps of Lapland clay,
Mixt with the venom of black taids and snakes:
Of this unsonsy pictures aft she makes
Of ony ane she hates,—and gars expire
With slow and racking pains afore a fire,
Stuck fu' of pins; the devilish pictures melt;
The pain by fowk they represent is felt.
And yonder's Mause: Ay, ay, she kens fu' weel,
When ane like me comes rinning to the deil!
She and her cat sit beeking in her yard:
To speak my errand, faith, amaist I'm fear'd!
But I maun do't, tho' I should never thrive:
They gallop fast that deils and lasses drive.