Ban and Arriere Ban: A Rally of Fugitive Rhymes
NEIGES D’ANTAN
IN ERCILDOUNE
In light of sunrise and sunsetting,The long days lingered, in forgettingThat ever passion, keen to holdWhat may not tarry, was of oldBeyond the doubtful stream whose floodRuns red waist-high with slain men’s blood.Was beauty once a thing that died?Was pleasure never satisfied?Was rest still broken by the vainDesire of action, bringing pain,To die in vapid rest again?All this was quite forgotten, thereNo winter brought us cold and care,Nor spring gave promise unfulfilled,Nor, with the heavy summer killed,The languid days droop autumnwards.So magical a season guardsThe constant prime of a green June.So slumbrous is the river’s tune,That knows no thunder of rushing rains,Nor ever in the summer wanes,Like waters of the summer-timeIn lands far from the fairy clime.Alas! no words can bring the bloomOf Fairyland, the lost perfume.The sweet low light, the magic air,To minds of who have not been there:Alas! no words, nor any spellCan lull the heart that knows too wellThe towers that by the river stand,The lost fair world of Fairyland.Ah, would that I had never beenThe lover of the Fairy Queen.Or would that I again might beAsleep below the Eildon Tree,And see her ride the forest wayAs on that morning of the May!Or would that through the little town,The grey old place of Ercildoune,And all along the sleepy streetThe soft fall of the white deer’s feetCame, with the mystical command,That I must back to Fairy Land!FOR A ROSE’S SAKE
FRENCH FOLK-SONGI laved my hands By the water-side,With willow leaves My hands I dried.The nightingale sang On the bough of a tree,Sing, sweet nightingale, It is well with thee.Thou hast heart’s delight, I have sad heart’s sorrow,For a false false maid That will wed to-morrow.It is all for a rose That I gave her not,And I would that it grew In the garden plot,And I would the rose-tree Were still to set,That my love Marie Might love me yet!THE BRIGAND’S GRAVE
MODERN GREEKThe moon came up above the hill, The sun went down the sea,‘Go, maids, and draw the well-water, But, lad, come here to me.Gird on my jack, and my old sword, For I have never a son,And you must be the chief of all When I am dead and gone.But you must take my old broadsword, And cut the green boughs of the tree,And strew the green boughs on the ground, To make a soft death-bed for me.And you must bring the holy priest, That I may sainèd be,For I have lived a roving life Fifty years under the greenwood tree.And you shall make a grave for me, And dig it deep and wide,That I may turn about and dream With my old gun by my side.And leave a window to the east And the swallows will bring the spring,And all the merry month of May The nightingales will sing.’THE NEW-LIVERIED YEAR
FROM CHARLES D’ORLÉANSThe year has changed his mantle cold Of wind, of rain, of bitter air,And he goes clad in cloth of gold Of laughing suns and season fair;No bird or beast of wood or wold But doth in cry or song declare‘The year has changed his mantle cold!’All founts, all rivers seaward rolled Their pleasant summer livery wear With silver studs on broidered vair,The world puts off its raiment old,The year has changed his mantle cold.MORE STRONG THAN DEATH
FROM VICTOR HUGOSince I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet,Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid,Since I have known your soul and all the bloom of it,And all the perfume rare, now buried in the shade,Since it was given to me to hear one happy whileThe words wherein your heart spoke all its mysteries,Since I have seen you weep, and since I have seen you smile,Your lips upon my lips, and your eyes upon my eyes;Since I have known above my forehead glance and gleam,A ray, a single ray of your star veiled always,Since I have felt the fall upon my lifetime’s streamOf one rose-petal plucked from the roses of your days;I now am bold to say to the swift-changing hours,Pass, pass upon your way, for I grow never old.Fleet to the dark abyss with all your fading flowers,One rose that none may pluck within my heart I hold.Your flying wings may smite, but they can never spillThe cup fulfilled of love from which my lips are wet,My heart has far more fire than you have frost to chill.My soul more love than you can make my soul forget.SILENTIA LUNAE
FROM RONSARDHide this one night thy crescent, kindly Moon, So shall Endymion faithful prove, and rest Loving and unawakened on thy breast;So shall no foul enchanter importuneThy quiet course, for now the night is boon, And through the friendly night unseen I fare Who dread the face of foemen unaware,And watch of hostile spies in the bright noon.Thou know’st, O Moon, the bitter power of Love.’Tis told how shepherd Pan found ways to move With a small gift thy heart; and of your grace,Sweet stars, be kind to this not alien fire,Because on earth ye did not scorn desire, Bethink ye, now ye hold your heavenly place.HIS LADY’S TOMB
FROM RONSARDAs in the gardens, all through May, the Rose, Lovely, and young, and rich apparelled, Makes sunrise jealous of her rosy red,When dawn upon the dew of dawning glows; Graces and Loves within her breast repose, The woods are faint with the sweet odour shed, Till rains and heavy suns have smitten deadThe languid flower and the loose leaves unclose, —So this, the perfect beauty of our days,When heaven and earth were vocal of her praise, The fates have slain, and her sweet soul reposes:And tears I bring, and sighs, and on her tombPour milk, and scatter buds of many a bloom, That, dead as living, Rose may be with roses.THE POET’S APOLOGY
No, the Muse has gone away,Does not haunt me much to-day.Everything she had to say Has been said!’Twas not much at any timeShe could hitch into a rhyme,Never was the Muse sublime, Who has fled!Any one who takes her inMay observe she’s rather thin;Little more than bone and skin Is the Muse;Scanty sacrifice she wonWhen her very best she’d done,And at her they poked their fun, In Reviews.‘Rhymes,’ in truth, ‘are stubborn things.’And to Rhyme she clung, and clings,But whatever song she sings Scarcely sells.If her tone be grave, they say‘Give us something rather gay.’If she’s skittish, then they pray ‘Something else!’Much she loved, for wading shod,To go forth with line and rod,Loved the heather, and the sod, Loved to restOn the crystal river’s brimWhere she saw the fishes swim,And she heard the thrushes’ hymn, By the Test!She, whatever way she went,Friendly was and innocent,Little need the Bard repent Of her lay.Of the babble and the rhyme,And the imitative chimeThat amused him on a time, — Now he’s grey.NOTES
Page 1
Jeanne d’Arc is said to have led a Scottish force at Lagny, when she defeated the Burgundian, Franquet d’Arras. A Scottish artist painted her banner; he was a James Polwarth, or a Hume of Polwarth, according to a conjecture of Mr. Hill Burton’s. A monk of Dunfermline, who continued Fordun’s Chronicle, avers that he was with the Maiden in her campaigns, and at her martyrdom. He calls her Puella a spiritu sancto excitata. Unluckily his manuscript breaks off in the middle of a sentence. At her trial, Jeanne said that she had only once seen her own portrait: it was in the hands of a Scottish archer. The story of the white dove which passed from her lips as they opened to her last cry of Jesus! was reported at the trial for her Rehabilitation (1450–56).
Page 2.
One of that Name
Two archers of the name of Lang, Lain, or Laing were in the French service about 1507. See the book on the Scottish Guard, by Father Forbes Leith, S. J.
Thy Church unto the Maid DeniesThese verses were written, curiously enough, the day before the Maiden was raised to the rank of ‘Venerable,’ a step towards her canonisation, which, we trust, will not be long delayed. It is not easy for any one to understand the whole miracle of the life and death of Jeanne d’Arc, and the absolutely unparalleled grandeur and charm of her character, without studying the full records of both her trials, as collected and published by M. Quicherat, for the Société de l’Histoire de France.
Page 4.
How they held the Bass
This story is versified from the account in Memoirs of the Rev. John Blackader, by Andrew Crichton, Minister of the Gospel. Second Edition. Edinburgh, 1826. Dunbar was retained as a prisoner, when negotiations for surrender, in 1691, were broken off by Middleton’s return with supplies. Halyburton was, it seems, captured later, and only escaped hanging by virtue of the terms extorted by Middleton. Patrick Walker tells the tale of Peden and the girl. Wodrow, in his Analecta, has the story of the Angel, or other shining spiritual presence, which is removed from its context in the ballad. The sufferings from weak beer are quoted in Mr. Blackader’s Memoirs. Mitchell was the undeniably brave Covenanter who shot at Sharp, and hit the Bishop of the Orkneys. He was tortured, and, by an act of perjury (probably unconscious) on the part of Lauderdale, was hanged. The sentiments of the poem are such as an old cavalier, surviving to 1743, might perhaps have entertained. ‘Wullie Wanbeard’ is a Jacobite name for the Prince of Orange, perhaps invented only by the post-Jacobite sentiment of the early nineteenth century.
Page 44.
Rousseau’s delight
The pervenche, or periwinkle.
Page 64
One of the college bells of St. Salvator, mentioned by Ferguson, is called ‘Kate Kennedy’; the heroine is unknown, but Bishop Kennedy founded the College. ‘Kate Kennedy’s Day’ was a kind of carnival, probably a survival from that festivity.
Page 77.
The Disappointment
As a matter of fact the Haunted House Committee of the Society for Psychical Research have never succeeded in seeing a ghost.
