The proud and the wealthy
      To Phemie are bowing;
   No looks of love win they
      With sighing or suing;
   Far away maun I stand
      With my rude wooing,
   She’s a flow’ret too lovely
      Too bloom for my pu’ing.

   Oh were I yon violet
      On which she is walking;
   Oh were I yon small bird
      To which she is talking;
   Or yon rose in her hand,
      With its ripe ruddy blossom;
   Or some pure gentle thought
      To be blest with her bosom.

This minstrel interruption, while it established Phemie Irving’s claim to grace and to beauty, gave me additional confidence to pursue the story.

“But minstrel skill and true love-tale seemed to want their usual influence when they sought to win her attention; she was only observed to pay most respect to those youths who were most beloved by her brother; and the same hour that brought these twins to the world seemed to have breathed through them a sweetness and an affection of heart and mind which nothing could divide.  If, like the virgin queen of the immortal poet, she walked ‘in maiden meditation fancy free,’ her brother Elphin seemed alike untouched with the charms of the fairest virgins in Corrie.  He ploughed his field, he reaped his grain, he leaped, he ran, and wrestled, and danced, and sang, with more skill and life and grace than all other youths of the district; but he had no twilight and stolen interviews; when all other young men had their loves by their side, he was single, though not unsought, and his joy seemed never perfect save when his sister was near him.  If he loved to share his time with her, she loved to share her time with him alone, or with the beasts of the field, or the birds of the air.  She watched her little flock late, and she tended it early; not for the sordid love of the fleece, unless it was to make mantles for her brother, but with the look of one who had joy in its company.  The very wild creatures, the deer and the hares, seldom sought to shun her approach, and the bird forsook not its nest, nor stinted its song, when she drew nigh; such is the confidence which maiden innocence and beauty inspire.

“It happened one summer, about three years after they became orphans, that rain had been for a while withheld from the earth, the hillsides began to parch, the grass in the vales to wither, and the stream of Corrie was diminished between its banks to the size of an ordinary rill.  The shepherds drove their flocks to moorlands, and marsh and tarn had their reeds invaded by the scythe to supply the cattle with food.  The sheep of his sister were Elphin’s constant care; he drove them to the moistest pastures during the day, and he often watched them at midnight, when flocks, tempted by the sweet dewy grass, are known to browse eagerly, that he might guard them from the fox, and lead them to the choicest herbage.  In these nocturnal watchings he sometimes drove his little flock over the water of Corrie, for the fords were hardly ankle-deep; or permitted his sheep to cool themselves in the stream, and taste the grass which grew along the brink.  All this time not a drop of rain fell, nor did a cloud appear in the sky.