IX.

THE LEGEND OF MARY LEE.[A]

(Another Version.)

[Footnote A:  See the strange song of the same name in the Scottish Gallovidean Encyclopaedia, from which I borrow some of the maledictory epithets.  Grotesque they may be, but they are justified by the vocabulary of our old witch-sibyls used in curses and incantations, as we find in books of diablerie.]

Though Robert was heir to broad Kildearn,
  He had often with gipsies roved,
And from gipsies he came a name to earn,
  Which was dear to the maid he loved. 
To ladies fair he was Robert St. Clair,
  When he met them in companie;
To a certain one, and to her alone,
  He was only Robin-a-Ree.[2]

[Footnote 2:  Kingly, or royal, in the gipsy tongue.]

Through Kildearn’s woods they were wont to rove,
  And they knew well the trysting tree;
The green sward was their bed of love,
  And the green leaves their canopie. 
But the love of the virgin heart is shy,
  And hangs between hope and fear;
It is fed by the light of a lover’s eye,
  And it trusts thro’ the willing ear.

“My Mary!  I swear by yon Solway tide,
  Which is true to the queen of night,
That thou shalt be my chosen bride
  When I come to my lawful right: 
My father is now an aged man,
  And but few years more can see;
And when he dies, old Kildearn’s land
  Belongs to Robin-a-Ree.”

“Oh Robin, oh Robin,” and Mary sighed,
  “Aye faithfu’ to you I hae been,
As true as ever yon Solway tide
  Is true to yon silvery queen. 
And faithfu’ and true I will ever prove
  Till that happy day shall be,
When I will be in honoured love
  The wife o’ Robin-a-Ree.”

Green be thy leaves, thou “tree of troth,”
  And thy rowan berries red,
Where he has sworn that holy oath,
  If he stand to what he has said. 
But black and blasted may thou be,
  And thy berries a yellow green,
If he prove false to Mary Lee,
  Who so faithful to him has been.

For a woman’s art and a woman’s wile
  A man may well often slight,
At the worst they are but nature’s guile
  To procure what is nature’s right. 
But a woman’s wrath, when once inflamed
  By a sense of fond love betrayed,
No cunning device by cunning framed
  Has ever that passion laid.

II.

Passions will range and passions will change,
  And they leave no mortal in peace,
There is nothing in man that to us seems strange
  That to passion you may not trace. 
The heart that will breathe the warmest love
  Is the first oft to cease its glow,
The fairest flower in the forest grove
  Is often the first to dow.

A woman’s eye is aye quick to see
  The love of a lover decay: 
And why from the trusty trysting tree
  Does Robin now stay away? 
There are other trees in the wood as green,
  With as smooth a sward below,
Where lovers may lie in the balmy e’en,
  And their love to each other show.