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

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He shall his own way take.”

Much wondered the Laird o’ Oakwood Tower,

As fell the evening gloom,

They did not hang him in the morn,

As he had heard his doom.

He heard the sentry shoot the bolt,

And a kind o’ murmuring;

And then his mother and sisters two

Wi’ loud outcries break in.

And, “O my Son!” the mother cried,

“Is there no other way,

To save thee from a cruel death,

At the hands o’ a fierce Murray?

“Marry his daughter, Willie dear,

And save thy mother’s life;

Tho’ she be ugly—what of that?

She’ll make a frugal wife.”

“Mother, I will not take his terms.

Who brought ye here?” he said.

“Who, but your messenger so good,

That kind and sonsy maid.”

They passed the time in grief and woe,

Throughout the dead of night;

Nor ever they ceased to weep wi’ him,

Until the morning’s light.

The loud horn blew out o’er the lea,

Sir Gideon stood him before;

“What is thy choice, young man?” he cried,

“Or ere this deed be o’er.”

“The gallows still before the wife,”

Young Harden stoutly said.

“And wi’ the hemp around my throat,