And many a hunting song they sung,
And song of game and glee;

Then tuned to plaintive strains their tongue, 'Of Scotland's luve and lee.'

To wilder measures next they turn;
'The Black, Black Bull of Noroway!
Sudden the tapers cease to burn,
The minstrels cease to play.

Each hunter bold, of Keeldar's train,
Sat an enchanted man;

For, cold as ice, through every vein
The freezing life-blood ran.

Each rigid hand the whinger wrung,
Each gazed with glaring eye;
But Keeldar from the table sprung,
Unharmed by Gramarye.

He burst the doors; the roofs resound;
With yells the castle rung;

Before him, with a sudden bound,

His favourite blood-hound sprung.

Ere he could pass, the door was barred;
And, grating harsh from under,
With creaking, jarring noise, was heard
A sound like distant thunder.

The iron clash, the grinding sound,
Announce the dire sword-mill;
The piteous howlings of the hound
The dreadful dungeon fill.

With breath drawn in, the murderous crew
Stood listening to the yell;

And greater still their wonder grew,

As on their ear it fell.

They listened for a human shriek

Amidst the jarring sound;

They only heard in echoes weak
The murmurs of the hound.

The death-bell rung, and wide were flung

The castle gates amain;

While hurry out the armed rout,

Ah! ne'er before in Border feud
Was seen so dire a fray!

Through glittering lances Keeldar hewed
A red corse-paven way.

His helmet, formed of mermaid sand,
No lethal brand could dint;
No other arms could e'er withstand
The axe of earth-fast flint.

In Keeldar's plume the holly green
And rowan leaves nod on,
And vain Lord Soulis' sword was seen,
Though the hilt was adderstone.

Then up the Wee Brown Man he rose,
By Soulis of Liddesdale;-

'In vain,' he said, 'a thousand blows
Assail the charmed mail;

In vain by land your arrows glide,
In vain your falchions gleam-
No spell can stay the living tide,
Or charm the rushing stream.'

And now young Keeldar reacht the stream,
Above the foamy lin;

The Border lances round him gleam,

And force the warrior in.

The holly floated to the side,

And the leaf of the rowan pale.
Alas! no spell could charm the tide,
Nor the lance of Liddesdale.

Swift was the Cout o' Keeldar's course
Along the lily lee;

But home came never hound nor horse,

And never home came he.

Where weeps the birch with branches green,

Without the holy ground,

Between two old gray stones is seen

The warrior's ridgy mound.

And the hunters bold, of Keeldar's train,
Within yon castle's wall,

In deadly sleep must aye remain,

Till the ruined towers down fall.

Each in his hunter's garb arrayed,

Each holds his bugle horn;

Their keen hounds at their feet are laid,

That ne'er shall wake the morn.

[Stanza 1. Streamers'-northern lights.

St. 5. Earth-fast flint'-an insulated stone inclosed in a bed of earth. Its blow is reckoned uncommonly severe.

St. 6. Adderstone'-a name applied to celts and other round perforated stones. The vulgar suppose them to be perforated by the stings of adders. Among the Scottish peasantry it is held in high veneration.

St. 7. The Rowan tree,' or mountain ash, is still used by the peasantry, to avert the effects of charms and witchcraft.

St. 16. Urchin'-hedge-hog.

St. 24. The rocking stone, commonly held a Druidical monument, has always been held in superstitious veneration by the people, who suppose it to be inhabited by spirits. St. 33. Castles remarkable for size, strength, and antiquity, are by the common people commonly attributed to the Picts, or Pechs, who are not supposed to have trusted solely to their skill in masonry in constructing these edifices, but are believed to have bathed the foundation-stone with human blood, in order to propitiate the spirit of the soil.

St. 40. To present a bull's head before a person at a feast, was, in the ancient turbulent times of Scotland, a common signal for his assassination. Thus, Lindsay of Pitscottie relates in his History, p. 17, that efter the dinner was endit, once alle the delicate courses taken away, the chancellor (Sir William Crichton) presentit the bullis head befoir the Earle of Douglas, in signe and toaken of condemnation to the death.'

St. 42. The most ancient Scottish song known is here alluded to, and is given by Wintoun, in his Chronykil,' vol. i. p. 401: that alluded to in the following verse is a wild fanciful popular tale of enchantment, termed, The Black Bull of Noroway.' It is probably the same with the romance of the Three Futtit Dog of Noroway,' mentioned in the 'Complaynt of Scotland.'

St. 56. That no species of magic had any effect over a running stream was a common opinion among the vulgar, and is alluded to in Burns' admirable tale of 'Tam o' Shanter.' -Scott.]

[THIS ballad, written by Dr. Leyden, was first pub-
lished in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.'
It is founded,' says Sir Walter Scott, upon a
Gaelic traditional ballad called Macphail of Colon-
say and the Mermaid of Corrivrekin,' a dangerous
gulf, lying between the islands of Jura and Scarba.
The Gaelic story bears, that Macphail of Colonsay
was carried off by a mermaid while passing the
gulf above-mentioned; that they resided together,
in a grotto beneath the sea, for several years,
during which time she bore him five children; but
finally, he tired of her society, and having prevailed
upon her to carry him near the shore of Colonsay,
he escaped to land. The reader may find more
about mermaids in the Telliamed' of M. Maillet;
in Pontoppidan's Natural History of Norway';
and in an old work, the Kong's Shuggsio, or Royal
Mirror,' written, it is believed, about 1170. Some
very remarkable stories are also told of them in
Waldron's History of the Isle of Man."]

N Jura's heath how sweetly swell
The murmurs of the mountain bee!
How softly mourns the writhed shell

But softer floating o'er the deep,

The Mermaid's sweet sea-soothing lay, That charmed the dancing waves to sleep, Before the bark of Colonsay.

Aloft the purple pennons wave,

As, parting gay from Crinan's shore, From Morven's wars the seamen brave Their gallant chieftain homeward bore.

In youth's gay bloom, the brave Macphail Still blamed the lingering bark's delay; For her he chid the flagging sail,

The lovely maid of Colonsay.

And raise,' he cried, 'the song of love,
The maiden sung with tearful smile,
When first, o'er Jura's hills to rove,
We left afar the lonely isle !

"When on this ring of ruby red

Shall die," she said, "the crimson hue,
Know that thy favourite fair is dead,
Or proves to thee and love untrue."

Now, lightly poised, the rising oar
Disperses wide the foamy spray,
And, echoing far o'er Crinan's shore,
Resounds the song of Colonsay.

'Softly blow, thou western breeze,
Softly rustle through the sail!
Soothe to rest the furrowy seas,

Before my love, sweet western gale!

Where the wave is tinged with red,
And the russet sea-leaves grow,

Mariners, with prudent dread,

Shun the shelving reefs below.

As you pass through Jura's sound,
Bend your course by Scarba's shore;
Shun, O shun, the gulf profound,
Where Corrivrekin's surges roar!

If from that unbottomed deep,

With wrinkled form and wreathed train,

O'er the verge of Scarba's steep,