“Dear bairn, dear bairn, what do I ken—the like o’ me maun do as we’re bidden—guests are coming, my bairn—O, ay—there’s mony a braw an’ bonny lad coming this way—mony a ane that will gaur a young thing’s e’en stand i’ back water—
“They are coming! they are coming!
Alak! an’ wae’s me!
Though the sword be in the hand,
Yet the tear’s in the e’e.
Is there blood in the moorlands
Where the wild burnies rin?
Or what gars the water
Wind reid down the lin?
O billy, dear billy,
Your boding let be,
For it’s nought but the reid lift
That dazzles your e’e.”
“Prithee go on, Nanny; let me hear what it was that reddened the water?”
“Dear bairn, wha kens; some auld thing an’ out o’ date; but yet it is sae like the days that we hae seen, ane wad think the poeter that made it had the second sight. Mony a water as weel as the Clyde has run reid wi’ blude, an’ that no sae lang sin’ syne!—ay, an’ the wild burnies too! I hae seen them mysel leave a reid strip on the sand an’ the grey stanes—but the hoody craw durstna pick there!—Dear bairn, has the Chapelhope burn itsel never had the hue?”
Here Katharine’s glance and Nanny’s met each other, but were as quickly withdrawn, for they dreaded one another’s converse; but they were soon relieved from that dilemma by Nanny’s melancholy chime—
“In yon green houm there sat a knight,—
An’ the book lay open on his knee,
An’ he laid his hand on his rusty sword.
An’ turned to Heaven his watery e’e.
But in yon houm there is a kirk,
An’ in that kirk there is a pew,
An’ in that pew there sat a king,
Wha signed the deed we maun ever rue.
He wasna king o’ fair Scotland,
Though king o’ Scotland he should hae been,—
And he lookit north to the land he loved,
But aye the green leaves fell atween.