Is my soul tamed And baby-rid with the thought that flood or field ON Old Play. N the Scottish side of the sea of Solway, you may see from Allanbay and Skinverness the beautiful old castle of Caerlaverock, standing on a small woody promontory, bounded by the river Nith on one side, by the deep sea on another, by the almost impassable morass of Solway on a third; while far beyond, you observe the three spires of Dumfries, and the high green hills of Dalswinton and Keir. It was formerly the residence of the almost princely names of Douglas, Seaton, Kirkpatrick, and Maxwell: it is now the dwellingplace of the hawk and the owl; its courts are a lair for cattle, and its walls afford a midnight shelter to the passing smuggler; or, like those of the city doomed in Scripture, are places for the fishermen to dry their nets. Between this fine old ruin and the banks of the Nith, at the foot of a grove of pines, and within a stone-cast of tide-mark, the remains of a rude cottage are yet visible to the curious eye-the bramble and the wild-plum have in vain tried to triumph over the huge, gray, granite blocks which composed the foundations of its walls. The vestiges of a small garden may still be traced, more particularly in summer, when roses and 31 ATHENEUM VOL. 10. lilies, and other relics of its former beauty begin to open their bloom, clinging amid the neglect and desolation of the place, with something like human affection to the soil. This rustic ruin presents no attractions to the eye of the profound antiquary, compared to those of its more stately companion, Caerlaverock Castle; but with this rude cottage and its garden connects a tale so wild, and so moving, as to elevate it, in the contemplation of the peasantry, above all the princely feasts and feudal atrocities of its neighbour. It is now some fifty years since I visited the parish of Caerlaverock; but the memory of its people, its scenery, and the story of the Ghost with the Golden Casket, are as fresh with me as matters of yesterday. I had walked out to the river-bank one sweet afternoon of July, when the fishermen were hastening to dip their nets in the coming tide, and the broad waters of the Solway sea were swelling against bank and cliff, as far as the eye could reach. It was studded over with boats, and its more unfrequented bays were white with waterfowl. I sat down on a small grassy mound between the cottage ruins and the old garden plat, and gazed, with all the hitherto untasted pleasure of a stranger, on the beautiful scene before. Over the whole looked the stately green mountain of Criffel, confronting its more stately, but less beautiful neigh bour, Skiddaw; while between them flowed the deep, wide, sea of Solway, hemmed with cliff, and castle, and town. As I sat looking on the increasing multitude of waters, and watching the success of the fishermen, I became aware of the approach of an old man, leading, as one will conduct a dog in a string, a fine young milch cow, in a halter of twisted hair, which passing through the ends of two pieces of flat wood, fitted to the animal's cheek-bones, pressed her nose, and gave her great pain whenever she became disobedient. The cow seemed willing to enjoy the luxury of a browze on the rich pasture which surrounded the little ruined cottage; but in this humble wish she was not to be indulged, for the aged owner, coiling up the tether, and seizing her closely by the head, conducted her past the tempt ing herbage, towards a small and closecropt hillock, a good stone-cast distant. In this piece of self-denial the animal seemed reluctant to sympathize-she snuffed the fresh green pasture, and plunged, and startled, and nearly broke away. blue-ribbed boot-hose. Having laid his charge to the grass, he looked leisurely around him, and espying me— a stranger, and dressed above the manner of the peasantry, he acknowledged my presence by touching his bonnet; and, as if willing to communicate something of importance, he stuck the tether stake in the ground, and came to the old garden fence. Wishing to know the peasant's reasons for avoiding the ruins, I thus addressed him:-"This is a pretty spot, my aged friend, and the herbage looks so fresh and abundant, that I would advise thee to bring thy charge hither; and while she continued to browze, I would gladly listen to the history of thy white locks, for they seem to have been bleached in many tempests." "Ay, ay," said the peasant, shaking his white head with a grave smile," they have braved sundry tempests between sixteen and sixty; but touching this pasture, sir, I know nobody who would like to crop it-the aged cattle shun the place the birds. never build in the branches-the children never come near to play-and the aged never chuse it for a resting-place; but pointing it out, as they pass, to the young, tell them the story of its desolation. Sae ye see, sir, having no good will to such a spot of earth myself, I like little to see a stranger sitting in such an unblessed place; and I would as good as advise ye to come owre with me to the cowslip knoll-there are reasons mony that an honest man should nae sit there." I arose at once, and seating myself beside the peasant on the cowslip knoll, desired to know something of the history of the spot from which he had just warned me. The Caledonian looked on me with an air of embarrassment:-"I am just thinking," said he, "that as ye are an Englishman, I should nae acquaint ye with such a story. Ye'll make it, I'm doubting, a matter of reproach and vaunt, when ye gae hame, how Willie Borlan o'Caerlaverock told ye a tale of Scottish iniquity, that cowed all the stories in southron book or history." This unexpected obstacle was soon removed. "My sage and considerate friend," I said, "I have the blood in my bosom will keep me from revealing such a tale to the scoffer and I had often heard of the singular superstitions of the Scottish peasantry, and that every hillock had its song, every hill its ballad, and every valley its tale. I followed with my eye the old man and his cow; he went but a little way, till, seating himself on the ground, retaining still the tether in his hand, he said, "Now, bonnie lady, feast thy fill on this good green-sward-it is halesome and holy, compared to the sward at the doomed cottage of auld Gibbie Gyrape-leave that to smugglers' nags: Willie o'Brandyburn and Roaring Jock o'Kempstane will ca' the haunted ha' a hained bit--they are godless fearnoughts." I looked at the person of the peasant: he was a stout hale old man, with a weather-beaten face, furrowed something by time, and, perhaps, by sorrow. Though summer was at its warmest, he wore a broad chequered mantle, fastened at the bosom with a skewer of steel,-a broad bonnet, from beneath the circumference of which straggled a few thin locks, as white as driven snow, shining like amber, and softer than the finest flax,while his legs were warmly cased in Scorner. I am something of a Caerlaverock man the grandson of Marion Stobie of Dookdub." The peasant seized my hand-" Marion Stobie! bonnie Marion Stobie o' Dookdubwhom I woed so sair, and loved sae lang!--I shall tell the grandson of bonnie Marion Stobie ony tale he likes to ask for; and the Story of the Ghost and the Gowd Casket shall be foremost." heard mingling with the hasty clang of the waterfowls' wings as they forsook the waves, and sought shelter among the hollows of the rocks. The storm was nigh. The sky darkened down at once-clap after clap of thunder followed, and lightning flashed so vividly, and so frequent, that the wide and agitated expanse of Solway was visible from side to side-from St. Bees to Barnhourie. A very heavy rain, mingled with hail, succeeded; and a wind accompanied it, so fierce, and so high, that the white foam of the sea was showered as thick as snow on the summit of Caerlaverock Castle. Through this perilous sea, and amid this darkness and tempest, a bark was observed coming swiftly down the middle of the seaher sails rent-and her decks crowded with people. The carry, as it is called, ofthe tempest was direct from St. Bees to Caerlaverock; and experienced swains could see that the bark would be driven full on the fatal shoals of the Scottish side-but the lightning was so fierce that few dared venture to look on the approaching vessel, or take measures for endeavouring to preserve the lives of the unfortunate mariners. My father stood on the threshold of his door, and beheld all that passed in the bosom of the sea. The bark approached fasther canvas rent to threads, her masts nearly levelled with the deck, and the sea foaming over her so deep, and so "You may imagine, then," said the old Caerlaverock peasant, rising at once with the commencement of his story from his native dialect into very passable English-" you may imagine these ruined walls raised again in their beauty-whitened and covered with a coating of green brom; that garden, now desolate, filled with herbs in their season, and with flowers hemmed round with a fence of cherry and plum-trees; and the whole possessed by a young fisherman, who won a fair subsistence for his wife and children, from the waters of the Solway sea: you may imagine it, too, as far from the present time as fifty years.-There are only two persons living now, who remember when the Bonne-Homme-Richard, the first ship ever Richard Faulder commanded, was wrecked on the Pellocksand-one of these persons now addresses you the other is the fisherman who once owned that cottage-whose name ought never to be named, and whose life seems lengthened as a warning to the earth, how fierce God's judg-strong, as to threaten to sweep the rements are. Life changes-all breathing things have their time and their season; but the Solway flows in the same beauty-Criffel rises in the same majesty the light of morning comes, and the full moon arises now, as they did then--but this moralizing matters little. It was about the middle of harvest-I remember the day well-it had been sultry and suffocating, accompanied by rushings of wind,--sudden convulsions of the water, and cloudings of the sun :-I heard my father sigh, and say, 'dool-dool to them found on the deep sea to-night-there will happen strong storm and fearful tempest.' The day was closed, and the moon came over Skiddaw: all was perfectly clear and still-frequent dashings and whirling agitations of the sea were soon 6 mains of her crew from the little refuge the broken masts and splintered beams still afforded them. She now seemed within half a mile of the shore, when a strong flash of lightning, that appeared to hang over the bark for a moment, showed the figure of a lady, richly dressed, clinging to a youth who was pressing her to his bosom. My father exclaimed, Saddle me my black horse, and saddle me my gray, and bring them down to the Dead man's bank'-and swift in action as he was in resolve, he hastened to the shore, his servants following with his horses. The shore of Solway presented then, as it does now, the same varying line of coast-and the house of my father stood in the bosom of a little bay, nearly a mile from where we sit. The remains of an old forest interposed between the bay at Deadman's bank, and the bay at our feet; and mariners had learnt to wish that if it were their doom to be wrecked, it might be in the bay of douce William Borlan, rather than that of Gilbert Gyrape, the proprietor of that ruined cottage. But human wishes are vanities, wished either by sea or land.-I have heard my father say he could never forget the cries of the mariners, as the bark smote on the Pellock-bank, and the flood rushed through the chasms made by the concussion-but he would far less forget the agony of a ladythe loveliest that could be looked upon, and the calm and affectionate courage of the young man who supported her, and endeavoured to save her from destruction. Richard Faulder, the only man who survived, has often sat at my fire side, and sung me a very rude, but a very moving ballad, which he made on this accomplished and unhappy pair; and the old mariner assured me he had only added rhymes, and a descriptive line or two, to the language in which Sir William Musgrave endeavoured to soothe and support his wife." It seemed a thing truly singular, that at this very moment two young fishermen, who sat on the margin of the sea below us, watching their halve-nets, should sing, and with much sweetness, the very song the old man had described. They warbled verse and verse alternately and rock and bay seemed to retain, and then release the sound.— Nothing is so sweet as a song by the sea-side on a tranquil evening. SIR WILLIAM MUSGRAVE. First Fisherman. “O lady, lady, why do you weep? Though the wind be loosed on the raging deep, O lady, lady, why do you cry? First Fisherman. "O lady, lady, weep not, nor wail, And yawns for thee, like the yearning grave— Both. "O lady, lady, be bold and brave, The young fishermen having concluded their song, my companion proceeded-" The lightning still flashed vivid and fast, and the storm raged with unabating fury; for between the ship and the shore, the sea broke in frightful undulation, and leaped on the greensward several fathoms deep abreast. My father mounted on one horse, and holding another in his hand, stood prepared to give all the aid that a brave man could, to, the unhappy mariners; but neither horse nor man could endure the onset of that tremendous surge. The bark bore for a time the fury of the element-but a strong eastern wind came suddenly upon her, and, crushing her between the wave and the freestone bank, drove her from the entrance of my father's little bay towards the dwelling of Gibbie Gyrape, and the thick forest intervening, she was out of sight in a moment. My father saw, for the last time, the lady and her husband looking shoreward from the side of the vessel, as she drifted along; and as he galloped round the head of the forest, he heard for the last time the outcry of some, and the wail and intercession of others. When he came before the fisherman's house, a fearful sight presented itself the ship, dashed to atoms, covered the shore with its wreck, and with the bodies of the mariners—not a living soul escaped, save Richard Faulder, whom the fiend who guides the spectre-shallop of Solway had rendered proof to perils on the deep. The fisherman himself came suddenly from his cottage, all dripping and drenched, and my father addressed him.- 0, Gilbert, Gilbert, what a frightful sight ing man in a flock of a purer kind of is this has heaven blessed thee with Presbyterians-and a precept and example to the community. making thee the means of saving a hu- ly father never openly accused Gilbert the fisherman of having murdered the lady for her riches as she reached the shore, preserved, as was supposed, from sinking, by her long, wide, and stiff satin robes-but from that hour till the hour of his death, my father never broke bread with him-never shook him or his by the hand-nor spoke with them in wrath or in love. The fisherman, from that time too, waxed rich and prosperous-and from being the needy proprietor of a halvenet, and the tenant at will of a rude cottage, he became, by purchase, lord of a handsome inheritance-proceeded to build a bonny mansion, and called it Gyrape-ha'; and became a lead "Though the portioner of Gyrapeha' prospered wondrously-his claims to parochial distinction, and the continuance of his fortune, were treated with scorn by many, and with doubt by all: though nothing open or direct was said-looks, more cutting at times than the keenest speech, and actions, still more expressive, showed that the hearts of honest men were alienatedthe cause was left to his own penetration. The peasant scrupled to become his servant-sailors hesitated to receive his grain on board, lest perils should find them on the deep-the beggar ceased to solicit an awmous-the drover and the horse couper, an unscrupling generation, found out a more distant mode of concluding bargains than by shaking his hand-his daughters, handsome and blue-eyed, were neither wooed nor married--no maiden would hold tryste with his sons-though maidens were then as little loth as now; and the aged peasant, as he passed his new mansion, would shake his head and say-The voice of spilt blood will be lifted up against thee-and a spirit shall come up from the waters will make the corner-stone of thy hab itation tremble and quake.' It happened during the summer which succeeded this unfortunate shipwreck, that I accompanied my father to the Solway, to examine his nets. It was near midnight-the tide was making, and I sat down by his side and watched the coming of the waters. The shore was glittering in star-light as far as the eye could reach. Gilbert, the fisherman, had that morning removed from his cottage to his new mansion—the former was, therefore untenanted; and the latter, from its vantage ground on the crest of the hill, threw down to us the sound of mirth, and music, and dancing-a revelry common in Scotland, on taking possession of a new house. As we lay quietly looking on the swelling sea, and observing the water-fowl swimming and ducking in the encreasing waters, the sound of the merriment became more audible. My father listened to the mirth-looked to |