Читать книгу Story-Telling Ballads. Selected and Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the Boys' and Girls' Own Reading онлайн

26 страница из 60

To the lands o’ Elibank;

“Good faith, I wat Sir Gideon

Will no his kindness thank.”

He left his towers by Ettrick’s stream,

His minnie’s proverb scorning;

When Scotts set foot in the stirrup-ring,

The blood will flow ere morning.

Sir Gideon and young Willie Scott

Were ever deadly foes;

Ere they shall clasp each other’s hand,

The Gowan shall grow on the Rose.

They gained the lands o’ Elibank,

And gathered the gear together;

They counted tens, and came to scores,

And drove them out the heather.

There was not a Murray on the lea,

Young Scott his heart was light;

“There’ll be a dry breakfast at Elibank,

At Oakwood, a meal to-night.”

They got half way to Ettrick stream,

When they heard a sleuth-hound yell,

And Scott well kenned his mortal foe,

Pursued him o’er the fell.

Sir Gideon was a doure fierce man,

A terror to a foe;

He had a wife and daughters three,

Well dowered they were I trow.

He let young Harden steal his cows,

And, oh! his arm was slack;

But the grim old Knight was looking on