She now abruptly left the hall, and proceeded to the place in the court occupied by those who were wassailing on the coloured water she had brewed for them with her fair hands. They were busily occupied by the manifestations of their mirth, which was not altogether simulated. A cessation of the noise evinced the effect of her presence among those who deified her.
"Up with the merry strain, my jolly revellers!" said she, smiling, and immediately "Bertram the Archer," in loud notes, rung in the ballium:—
"And Bertram held aloft the horn,
Filled wi' the bluid-red wyne,
And three times has he loudly sworn
His luve he winna tyne.
"My Anne sits on yon eastern tower,
An' greets baith day and night,
An' sorrows for her luver lost,
An' right turned into might.
"'Then hie ye all, my merry men,
To yonder lordly ha'!
An if they winna ope the gate,
We'll scale the burly wa'.
"'Hurra!' then shouted Bertram's men,
And loudly they hae sworn,
That they will right their gallant knigh
Before the opening morn."[a][2]
[2] Pinkerton gives only one verse of "Bertram the Archer," but Innerkepple's men did not require to be antiquaries.
Under the cover of the noise of the song, which was sung with bacchanalian glee, Katherine communicated her farther instructions to the man who had assumed the principal direction; and, retreating quickly, lest the wine merchant should come out and surprise her, she left the revellers to continue their work. She was soon again at her post at the window. The boon companions within the hall were still busy with their conversation and their wine; and by this time the shades of evening had begun to darken the view from the castle, and envelop the towers in gloom; the rooks had retired to rest, the owls had taken up the screech note which pains the sensitive ear of night, and the bats were beginning to flap their leathern wings on the rough sides of the old walls.
The sounds of the revellers in the court-yard began gradually to die away, and the strains of "Bertram the Archer" were limited to a weak repetition of the last lines, somewhat curtailed of their legitimate syllables:—