She swore her by the grass sae grene,
Sae did she by the corn,100
She hadna seen him, Erl Richard,
Since Moninday at morn.
"Put na the wite on me," she said,
"It was my may Catherine:"
Then they hae cut baith fern and thorn,105
To burn that maiden in.
It wadna take upon her cheik,
Nor yet upon her chin;
Nor yet upon her yellow hair,
The maiden touch'd the clay-cauld corpse,
A drap it never bled;
The ladye laid her hand on him,
And soon the ground was red.
Out they hae ta'en her, may Catherine,115
And put her mistress in;
The flame tuik fast upon her cheik,
Tuik fast upon her chin;
Tuik fast upon her faire body—
[She burn'd like hollin-green].120
[30]. Clyde, in Celtic, means white.—Lockhart.
[86]. These are unquestionably the corpse-lights, called in Wales Canhwyllan Cyrph, which are sometimes seen to illuminate the spot where a dead body is concealed. The Editor is informed, that, some years ago, the corpse of a man, drowned in the Ettrick, below Selkirk, was discovered by means of these candles. Such lights are common in churchyards, and are probably of a phosphoric nature. But rustic superstition derives them from supernatural agency, and supposes, that, as soon as life has departed, a pale flame appears at the window of the house, in which the person had died, and glides towards the churchyard, tracing through every winding the route of the future funeral, and pausing where the bier is to rest. This and other opinions, relating to the "tomb-fires' livid gleam," seem to be of Runic extraction. Scott.
[87]. The deep holes, scooped in the rock by the eddies of a river, are called pots; the motion of the water having there some resemblance to a boiling caldron. Linn, means the pool beneath a cataract. Scott.
[120]. The lines immediately preceding, "The maiden touched," &c., and which are restored from tradition, refer to a superstition formerly received in most parts of Europe, and even resorted to by judicial authority, for the discovery of murder. In Germany, this experiment was called bahrrecht, or the law of the bier; because, the murdered body being stretched upon a bier, the suspected person was obliged to put one hand upon the wound and the other upon the mouth of the deceased, and, in that posture, call upon heaven to attest his innocence. If, during this ceremony, the blood gushed from the mouth, nose, or wound, a circumstance not unlikely to happen in the course of shifting or stirring the body, it was held sufficient evidence of the guilt of the party. Scott.