[From Scott’s “William and Helen.”]

    “Dost fear? dost fear?  The moon shines clear:—­
      Dost fear to ride with me? 
    Hurrah!  Hurrah! the dead can ride”—­
      “O William, let them be!”

    “See there! see there!  What yonder swings
       And creaks ’mid whistling rain?”
    “Gibbet and steel, the accursed wheel;
       A murd’rer in his chain.

    “Halloa!  Thou felon, follow here: 
      To bridal bed we ride;
    And thou shalt prance a fetter dance
      Before me and my bride.”

    And hurry! hurry! clash, clash, clash! 
      The wasted form descends,[23]
    And fleet as wind through hazel bush
      The wild career attends.[23]

    Tramp, tramp! along the land they rode,
      Splash, splash! along the sea: 
    The scourge is red, the spur drops blood,
      The flashing pebbles flee.

    [From Taylor’s “Lenora.”]

    Look up, look up, an airy crewe
      In roundel dances reele. 
    The moone is bryghte and blue the night,
      May’st dimly see them wheel.[24]

    “Come to, come to, ye ghostlie crewe,
      Come to and follow me. 
    And daunce for us the wedding daunce
      When we in bed shall be.”

    And brush, brush, brush, the ghostlie crew
      Come wheeling o’er their heads,
    All rustling like the withered leaves
      That wyde the whirlwind spreads.

    Halloo! halloo!  Away they goe
      Unheeding wet or drye,
    And horse and rider snort and blowe,
      And sparkling pebbles flye.

    And all that in the moonshine lay
      Behynde them fled afar;
    And backward scudded overhead
      The skye and every star.

    Tramp, tramp across the land they speede,
      Splash, splash across the sea: 
    “Hurrah! the dead can ride apace,
      Dost fear to ride with me?”

It was this stanza which fascinated Scott, as repeated from memory by Mr. Cranstoun; and he retained it without much change in his version.  There is no mention of the sea in Buerger, whose hero is killed in the battle of Prague and travels only by land.  But Taylor nationalized and individualized the theme by making his William a knight of Richard the Lion Heart’s, who had fallen in Holy Land.  Scott followed him and made his a crusader in the army of Frederic Barbarossa.  Buerger’s poem was written in an eight-lined stanza, but Taylor and Scott both chose the common English ballad verse, with its folkloreish associations, as the best vehicle for reproducing the grewsome substance of the story; and Taylor gave an archaic cast to his diction, still further to heighten the effect.  Lewis considered his version a masterpiece of translation, and, indeed, “far superior, both in spirit and in harmony, to the German.”  Taylor showed almost equal skill in his rendering of Buerger’s next most popular ballad, “Des Pfarrer’s Tochter von Taubenhain,” first printed in the Monthly Magazine for April, 1796, under the somewhat odd title of “The Lass of Fair Wone.”