William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Restoration Verse. 1910.
The Daemon LoverAnonymous
O
This long seven years and mair?’
‘O I’m come back to seek my former vows
Ye granted me before.’
For they will breed sad strife;
O hold your tongue of your former vows,
For I am become a wife.’
And the tear blinded his e’e:
‘I wad never hae trodden on Irish ground,
If it had not been for thee.
Far, far beyond the sea;
I might have had a king’s daughter,
Had it not been for love o’ thee.’
Yer sel ye had to blame;
Ye might have taken the king’s daughter,
For ye kend that I was nane.
And my two babes also,
O what have you to take me to,
If with you I should go?’
The eighth brought me to land—
With four-and-twenty bold mariners,
And music on every hand.’
Kiss’d them baith cheek and chin:
‘O fair ye weel, my ain two babes,
For I’ll never see you again.’
No mariners could she behold;
But the sails were o’ the taffetie,
And the masts o’ the beaten gold.
A league but barely three,
When dismal grew his countenance,
And drumlie grew his e’e.
Bent not on the heaving seas;
The sails that were o’ the taffetie
Fill’d not in the east land breeze.
A league but barely three,
Until she espied his cloven foot,
And she wept right bitterlie.
‘Of your weeping now let me be;
I will shew you how the lilies grow
On the banks of Italy.’
That the sun shines sweetly on?’
‘O yon are the hills of heaven,’ he said,
‘Where you will never win.’
‘All so dreary wi’ frost and snow?’
‘O yon is the mountain of hell,’ he cried,
‘Where you and I will go.’
Aye taller he seemed for to be;
Until that the tops o’ that gallant ship
Nae taller were than he.
And the levin fill’d her e’e;
And waesome wail’d the snaw-white sprites
Upon the gurlie sea.
The foremast wi’ his knee;
And he brak that gallant ship in twain,
And sank her in the sea.