For your father’s on the hill, and your mother is asleep:
Come up above the crags, and we’ll dance a highland reel
Around the Fairy Thorn on the steep.”
At Anna Grace’s door’t was thus the maidens cried,
Three merry maidens fair in kirtles of the green;
And Anna laid the rock and the weary wheel aside,
The fairest of the four, I ween.
They’re glancing thro’ the glimmer of the quiet eve,
Away in milky wavings of neck and ankle bare;
The heavy-sliding stream in its sleepy song they leave,