"Awake!" she cry'd, "thy true love calls,
Come from her midnight grave;
Now let thy pity hear the maid
Thy love refus'd to save.

"This is the dark and dreary hour
When injur'd ghosts complain;
Now yawning graves give up their dead,
To haunt the faithless swain.
"Bethink thee, William, of thy fault,
Thy pledge and broken oath:
And give me back my maiden vow,
And give me back my troth.
"Why did you promise love to me,
And not that promise keep?
Why did you swear mine eyes were bright,
Yet leave those eyes to weep?

"How could you say my face was fair,

And yet that face forsake?

How could you win my virgin heart,
Yet leave that heart to break?

"Why did you say my lip was sweet,
And made the scarlet pale?
And why did I, young witless maid,
Believe the flattering tale?

"That face, alas! no more is fair;
These lips no longer red:

Dark are my eyes, now clos'd in death,
And every charm is fled.

"The hungry worm my sister is;

This winding-sheet I wear :

And cold and weary lasts our night,

Till that last morn appear.

“But, hark! the cock has warn'd me hence ! A long and last adieu !

Come see, false man, how low she lies,

Who dy'd for love of you."

The lark sang loud; the morning smil'd

With beams of rosy red;

Pale William shook in ev'ry limb,

And raving left his bed.

*

He hyed him to the fatal place
Where Margaret's body lay:

And stretch'd him on the grass-green turf,
That wrapt her breathless clay:

And thrice he call'd on Margaret's name,
And thrice he wept full sore:

Then laid his cheek to her cold grave,

And word spake never more.

** In a late publication, intitled "The Friends," &c. Lond. 1773, 2 vols. 12mo. (in the first volume) is inserted a copy of the foregoing ballad, with very great variations, which the Editor of that work contends was the original; and that Mallet adopted it for his own, and altered it as here given. But the superior beauty and simplicity of the present copy gives it so much more the air of an original, that it will rather be believed that some transcriber altered it from Mallet's, and adapted the lines to his own taste; than which nothing is more common in popular songs and ballads.

XVII. LUCY AND COLIN

This ballad was written by Thomas Tickell, Esq. the celebrated friend of Mr. Addison, and Editor of his works. He was son of a clergyman in the north of England; had his education at Queen's College, Oxon; was under-secretary to Mr. Addison and Mr. Craggs, when successively secretaries of state; and was lastly (in June 1724) appointed secretary to the Lords Justices in Ireland, which place he held til his death in 1740. He acquired Mr. Addison's patronage by a poem in praise of the opera of Rosamond, written while he was at the university.

It is a tradition in Ireland that this song was written at Castletown, in the county of Kildare, at the request of the then Mrs. Conolly; probably on some event recent in that neighbourhood.

OF Leinster, fam'd for maidens fair,

Bright Lucy was the grace;

Nor e'er did Liffy's limpid stream
Reflect so fair a face.

Till luckless love and pining care
Impair'd her rosy hue,

Her coral lip and damask cheek,
And eyes of glossy blue.

Oh! have you seen a lily pale,

When beating rains descend?

So droop'd the slow-consuming maid;
Her life now near its end.

By Lucy warn'd, of flattering swains
Take heed, ye easy fair:

Of vengeance due to broken vows,
Ye perjur'd swains, beware.

Three times, all in the dead of night,
A bell was heard to ring;

And at her window, shrieking thrice,
The raven flap'd his wing.

Too well the love-lorn maiden knew
That solemn boding sound;
And thus, in dying words, bespoke
The virgins weeping round:
"I hear a voice you cannot hear,
Which says, I must not stay:
I see a hand you cannot see,
Which beckons me away.

"By a false heart, and broken vows,
In early youth I die.

Am I to blame, because his bride
Is thrice as rich as I?

"Ah, Colin! give not her thy vows;
Vows due to me alone:

Nor thou, fond maid, receive his kiss,
Nor think him all thy own.

"To-morrow in the church to wed,
Impatient, both prepare;

But know, fond maid, and know, false man, That Lucy will be there.

"Then, bear my corse, ye comrades, bear, The bridegroom blithe to meet;

He in his wedding-trim so gay,

I in my winding-sheet.'

She spoke, she died: her corse was borne, The bridegroom blithe to meet;

He in his wedding-trim so gay,

She in her winding-sheet.

Then what were perjur'd Colin's thoughts?
How were those nuptials kept?

The bride-men flock'd round Lucy dead,
And all the village wept.

Confusion, shame, remorse, despair,
At once his bosom swell:

The damps of death bedew'd his brow,
He shook, he groan'd, he fell.

From the vain bride (ah! bride no more),
The varying crimson fled,

When stretch'd before her rival's corse,
She saw her husband dead.

Then to his Lucy's new-made grave,
Convey'd by trembling swains,
One mould with her, beneath one sod,
For ever now remains.

Oft at their grave the constant hind
And plighted maid are seen;
With garlands gay, and true-love knots,
They deck the sacred green.

But, swain forsworn, whoe'er thou art,
This hallow'd spot forbear;
Remember Colin's dreadful fate,
And fear to meet him there.

XVIII. THE BOY AND THE MANTLE

AS REVISED AND ALTERED BY A MODERN HAND

Mr. Warton, in his ingenious Observations on Spenser, has given his opinion that the fiction of the Boy and the Mantle is taken from an old French piece intitled "Le Court Mantel," quoted by M. de St. Palaye, in his curious "Memoires sur l'ancienne Chevalerie," Paris, 1759, 2 tom. 12mo.; who tells us the story resembles that of Ariosto's enchanted cup. It is possible our English poet may have taken the hint of this subject from that old French Romance; but he does not appear to have copied it in the manner of execution; to which (if one may judge from the specimen given in the Memoires) that of the ballad does not bear the least resemblance. After all, it is most likely that all the old stories concerning King Arthur are originally of British growth, and that what the French and other southern nations have of this kind were at first exported from this island. See Memoires de l'Acad. des Inscrip. tom. xx. p. 352.

In the "Fabliaux ou Contes," 1781, 5 tom. 12mo. of M. Le Grand (tom. i. p. 54), is printed a modern version of the old tale "Le Court Mantel," under a new title, "Le Manteau maltaillé," which contains the story of this ballad much enlarged, so far as regards the Mantle, but without any mention of the Knife or the Horn.

IN Carleile dwelt King Arthur,
A prince of passing might;
And there maintain'd his table round,
Beset with many a knight.

And there he kept his Christmas
With mirth and princely cheare,
When, lo a straunge and cunning boy
Before him did appeare.

A kirtle and a mantle

This boy had him upon,
With brooches, rings, and owches,

Full daintily bedone.

He had a sarke of silk

About his middle meet;
And thus, with seemely curtesy,
He did King Arthur greet.

"God speed thee, brave King Arthur,
Thus feasting in thy bowre;
And Guenever thy goodly queen,

That fair and peerlesse flowre.

"Ye gallant lords, and lordings,
I wish you all take heed,
Lest, what ye deem a blooming rose,
Should prove a cankred weed."

Then straitway from his bosome
A little wand he drew;
And with it eke a mantle

Of wondrous shape and hew.

Now have thou here, King Arthur,
Have this here of mee,

And give unto thy comely queen,
All-shapen as you see.

"No wife it shall become,

That once hath been to blame."
Then every knight in Arthur's court
Slye glaunced at his dame.

And first came Lady Guenever,
The mantle she must trye.
This dame, she was new-fangled,
And of a roving eye.