Bog-Myrtle and Peat Tales Chiefly of Galloway Gathered from the Years 1889 to 1895

Excerpt

BOOK FIRST

ADVENTURES

  Lo, in the dance the wine-drenched coronal
  From shoulder white and golden hair doth fall!
  A-nigh his breast each youth doth hold an head,
  Twin flushing cheeks and locks unfilleted;
  Swifter and swifter doth the revel move
  Athwart the dim recesses of the grove …
  Where Aphrodite reigneth in her prime,
  And laughter ringeth all the summer time.

  There hemlock branches make a languorous gloom,
  And heavy-headed poppies drip perfume
  In secret arbours set in garden close;
  And all the air, one glorious breath of rose,
  Shakes not a dainty petal from the trees.
  Nor stirs a ripple on the Cyprian seas.

"The Choice of Herakles."

THE MINISTER OF DOUR

  This window looketh towards the west,
    And o'er the meadows grey
  Glimmer the snows that coldly crest
    The hills of Galloway.

  The winter broods on all between—
    In every furrow lies;
  Nor is there aught of summer green,
    Nor blue of summer skies.

  Athwart the dark grey rain-clouds flash
    The seabird's sweeping wings,
  And through the stark and ghostly ash
    The wind of winter sings.

  The purple woods are dim with rain,
    The cornfields dank and bare;
  And eyes that look for golden grain
    Find only stubble there.

  And while I write, behold the night
    Comes slowly blotting all,
  And o'er grey waste and meadow bright
    The gloaming shadows fall.

"From Two Windows."

The wide frith lay under the manse windows of the parish of Dour. The village of Dour straggled, a score of white-washed cottages, along four hundred yards of rocky shore. There was a little port, to attempt which in a south-west wind was to risk an abrupt change of condition. This was what made half of the men in the parish of Dour God-fearing men. The other half feared the minister.

Abraham Ligartwood was the minister. He also feared God exceedingly, but he made up for it by not regarding man in the slightest. The manse of Dour was conspicuously set like a watch-tower on a hill—or like a baron's castle above the huts of his retainers. The fishermen out on the water made it their lighthouse. The lamp burned in the minister's study half the night, and was alight long ere the winter sun had reached the horizon.

Abraham Ligartwood would have been a better man had he been less painfully good. When he came to the parish of Dour he found that he had to succeed a man who had allowed his people to run wild. Dour was a garden filled with the degenerate fruit of a strange vine.

The minister said so in the pulpit. Dour smiled complacently, and considered that its hoary wickednesses would beat the minister in the long-run. But Dour did not at that time know the minister. It was the day of the free-traders. The traffic with the Isle of Man, whence the hardy fishermen ran their cargoes of Holland gin and ankers of French brandy, put good gear on the back of many a burgher's wife, and porridge into the belly of many a fisherman's bairn....