Читать книгу English and Scottish Ballads (Vol. 1-8) - Various Authors - Страница 114

Table of Contents

From Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 370.

"This Ballad, which possesses considerable beauty and pathos, is given from the recitation of a lady, now far advanced in years, with whose grandmother it was a deserved favourite. It is now for the first time printed. It bears some resemblance to Clerk Saunders."

Subjoined is a different copy from Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland.

Sweet Willie was a widow's son,

And he wore a milk-white weed O;

And weel could Willie read and write,

Far better ride on steed O.

Lady Margerie was the first ladye5

That drank to him the wine O;

And aye as the healths gaed round and round,

"Laddy, your love is mine O."

Lady Margerie was the first ladye

That drank to him the beer O;10

And aye as the healths gaed round and round,

Laddy, ye're welcome here O.

"You must come intill my bower,

When the evening bells do ring O;

And you must come intill my bower,15

When the evening mass doth sing O."

He's taen four-and-twenty braid arrows,

And laced them in a whang O;

And he's awa to Lady Margerie's bower,

As fast as he can gang O.20

He set his ae foot on the wa',

And the other on a stane O;

And he's kill'd a' the king's life guards,

He's kill'd them every man O.

"O open, open, Lady Margerie,25

Open and let me in O;

The weet weets a' my yellow hair,

And the dew draps on my chin O."

With her feet as white as sleet,

She strode her bower within O;30

And with her fingers lang and sma',

She's looten sweet Willie in O.

She's louted down unto his foot,

To lowze sweet Willie's shoon O;

The buckles were sae stiff they wadna lowze,35

The blood had frozen in O.

"O Willie, O Willie, I fear that thou

Hast bred me dule and sorrow;

The deed that thou hast done this nicht

Will kythe upon the morrow."40

In then came her father dear,

And a braid sword by his gare O;

And he's gien Willie, the widow's son,

A deep wound and a sair O.

"Lye yont, lye yont, Willie," she says,45

"Your sweat weets a' my side O;

Lye yont, lye yont, Willie," she says,

"For your sweat I downa bide O."

She turned her back unto the wa',

Her face unto the room O;50

And there she saw her auld father,

Fast walking up and doun O.

"Woe be to you, father," she said,

"And an ill deid may you die O;

For ye've killed Willie, the widow's son,55

And he would have married me O."

She turned her back unto the room,

Her face unto the wa' O;

And with a deep and heavy sich,

Her heart it brak in twa O.60