Elves and Heroes | Page 9

babe the stook behind!--

The fairies coming home at eve
Upon an eddy of the wind,
Would
cast their eyes with envy deep
Upon my heart's-love in his sleep.
What holy woman will ye find
To weave a spell and work a charm?

A holy woman, pure and kind,
Who'll keep my little babe from
harm--
Who'll make the evil changeling flee,
And bring my sweet
one back to me?
MY FAIRY LOVER.
My fairy lover, my fairy lover,
My fair, my rare one, come back to
me--
All night I'm sighing, for thee I'm crying,
I would be dying,
my love, for thee.
Thine eyes were glowing like blue-bells blowing,
With dew-drops
twinkling their silvery fires;
Thine heart was panting with love
enchanting,
For mine was granting its fond desires.
My fairy lover, my fairy lover,
My fair, my rare one, come back to
me--
All night I'm sighing, for thee I'm crying,
I would be dying,
my love, for thee.
Thy brow had brightness and lily-whiteness,
Thy cheeks were clear
as yon crimson sea;
Like broom-buds gleaming, thy locks were
streaming,
As I lay dreaming, my love, of thee.
My fairy lover, my fairy lover,
My fair, my rare one, come back to
me--
All night I'm sighing, for thee I'm crying,
I would be dying,
my love, for thee.

Thy lips that often with love would soften,
They beamed like blooms
for the honey-bee;
Thy voice came ringing like some bird singing

When thou wert bringing thy gifts to me.
My fairy lover, my fairy lover,
My fair, my rare one, come back to
me--
All night I'm sighing, for thee I'm crying,
I would be dying,
my love, for thee.
O thou'rt forgetting the hours we met in
The Vale of Tears at the
even-tide,
Or thou'd come near me to love and cheer me,
And
whisper clearly, "O be my bride!"
My fairy lover, my fairy lover,
My fair, my rare one, come back to
me--
All night I'm sighing, for thee I'm crying,
I would be dying,
my love, for thee.
What spell can bind thee? I search to find thee
Around the knoll that
thy home would be--
Where thou did'st hover, my fairy lover,
The
clods will cover and comfort me.
My fairy lover, my fairy lover,
My fair, my rare one, come back to
me--
All night I'm sighing, on thee I'm crying,
I would be dying,
my love, for thee.
THE FIANS OF KNOCKFARREL.
(A Ross-shire Legend.)
I.
On steep Knockfarrel had the Fians made,
For safe retreat, a high and
strong stockade
Around their dwellings. And when winter fell
And
o'er Strathpeffer laid its barren spell--
When days were bleak with
storm, and nights were drear
And dark and lonesome, well they loved
to hear
The songs of Ossian, peerless and sublime--
Their blind,
grey bard, grown old before his time,
Lamenting for his son--the

young, the brave
Oscar, who fell beside the western wave
In
Gavra's bloody and unequal fight.
Round Ossian would they gather in the night,
Beseeching him for
song ... And when he took
His clarsach, from the magic strings he
shook
A maze of trembling music, falling sweet
As mossy waters in
the summer heat;
And soft as fainting moor-winds when they leave

The fume of myrtle, on a dewy eve,
Bound flush'd and teeming tarns
that all night hear
Low elfin pipings in the woodlands near.
'Twas thus he sang of love, and in a dream
The fair maids sighed to
hear. But when his theme
Was the long chase that Finn and all his
men
Followed with lightsome heart from glen to glen--
His song
was free as morn, and clear and loud
As skylarks carolling below a
cloud
In sweet June weather ... And they heard the fall
Of mountain
streams, the huntsman's windy call
Across the heaving hills, the
baying hound
Among the rocks, while echoes answered round--

They heard, and shared the gladness of the chase.
He sang the glories of the Fian race,
Whose fame is flashed through
Alba far and wide--
Their valorous deeds he sang with joy and
pride ...
When their dark foemen from the west came o'er
The
ragged hills, and when on Croumba's shore
The Viking hordes
descending, fought and fled--
And when brave Conn, who would
avenge the Red,
By one-eyed Goll was slain. Of Finn he sang,
And
Dermaid, while the clash of conflict rang
In billowy music through
the heroes' hall--
And many a Fian gave the battle-call
When
Ossian sang.
Haggard and old, with slow
And falt'ring steps, went Winter through
the snow,
As if its dreary round would ne'er be done--
The last long
winter of their days--begun
Ere yet the latest flush of falling leaves

Had faded in the breath of chilling eves;
Nor ended in the days of
longer light,

When dawn and eve encroached upon the night--
A

weary time it was! The long Strath lay
Snow-wreathed and pathless,
and from day to day
The tempests raved across the low'ring skies,

And they grew weak and pale, with hollow eyes,
The while their
stores shrank low, waiting the dawn
Of that sweet season when
through woodlands wan
Fresh flowers flutter and the wild birds
sing--
For Winter on the forelock of the Spring
Its icy fingers laid.
The huntsmen pined
In their dim dwellings, wearily confined,

While