Next morning, before the rising of the sun, two young ladies, beautiful as cherubs, came to the jailor and asked admittance to the prisoner, by order of the king. The jailor took off his bonnet, bowed his grey head, and opened to them. The two lovers were still fast asleep, locked in each other’s arms, in a way so endearing, and at the same time so modest, that the two sisters stood for a considerable time bending over them in delightful amazement.
“There is a delicacy and a pathos in this love,” said the one, “into which the joys of sense have shed no ingredient. As their innocence in life hath been, so shall it remain;” and kneeling down, she gave three gentle strokes with her small golden rod, touching both with it at a time. The two lovers trembled, and seemed to be in slight convulsions; and in a short time they fluttered round the floor two beautiful moor-fowl, light of heart, and elated with joy. The two lovely and mysterious visitors then took them up, wrapt them in their snowy veils, and departed, each of them carrying one; and coming to Saint Michael’s Cross, they there dismissed them from their palms, after addressing them severally as follows:
“Hie thee away, my bonny moor-hen!
Keep to the south of the Skelf-hill Pen;
Blithe be thy heart, and soft thy bed,
Amang the blooms of the heather so red.
When the weird is sped that I must dree,
I’ll come and dwell in the wild with thee.
Keep thee afar from the fowler’s ken—
Hie thee away, my bonny moor-hen.”
“Cock of the mountain, and king of the moor,
A maiden’s bennison be thy dower;
For gentle and kind hath been thy life,
Free from malice, and free from strife.
Light be thy heart on the mountain grey,
And loud thy note at the break of day.
When five times fifty years are gone,
I’ll seek thee again ’mong the heath alone,
And change thy form, if that age shall prove
An age that virtue and truth can love.
True be thy love, and far thy reign,
On the Border dale, till I see thee again.”
When the jailor related what had happened, it may well be conceived what consternation prevailed over the whole country. The two moor-fowl were soon discovered on a wild hill in Tiviotdale, where they have remained ever since, until last year, that Wauchope shot the hen. He suspected what he had done, and was extremely sorry, but kept the secret to himself. On viewing the beauty of the bird, however, he said to himself,—“I believe I have liked women as well as any man, but not so well as to eat them; however, I’ll play a trick upon some, and see its effect. Accordingly he sent the moor-hen to a friend of his in Edinburgh, at whose table she was divided among a circle of friends and eaten, on the 20th of October 1817, and that was the final end of poor Pery, the Maid of Eildon. The effect on these gentlemen has been prodigious—the whole structure of their minds and feelings has undergone a complete change, and that grievously to the worse; and even their outward forms, on a near inspection, appear to be altered considerably. This change is so notorious as to have become proverbial all over the New Town of Edinburgh. When any one is in a querulous or peevish humour, they say,—“He has got a wing of Wauchope’s moor-hen.”
The cock is still alive, and well known to all the sportsmen on the Border, his habitation being on the side of Caret Rigg, which no moor-fowl dares to approach. As the five times fifty years are very nearly expired, it is hoped no gentleman will be so thoughtless as wantonly to destroy this wonderful and mysterious bird, and we may then live to have the history of the hunting, the fowling, fishing, and pastoral employments of that district, with all the changes that have taken place for the last two hundred and fifty years, by an eye-witness of them.
The king returned towards Edinburgh on the 14th of September, and on his way had twelve witches condemned and burnt at the Cross of Leader, after which act of duty his conscience became a good deal lightened, and his heart cheered in the ways of goodness; he hoped, likewise, to be rid of the spells of those emissaries of Satan that had beleaguered him all his life.
After they had passed the Esk, his two favourite white hounds were missing; the huntsmen judged them to be following some track, and waited till night, calling them always now and then aloud by their names. They were however lost, and did not return, nor could they ever be found, although called at every Cross in the kingdom, and high rewards offered.