"There is no room at my side, Robin;
There is no room at my feet.
My bed is dark and narrow now;
But, oh! my sleep is sweet."
OLD BALLAD.
During the time of King Charles I. and the wars of the great Marquis of
Montrose, his captain-general in Scotland—that terrible period when the
civil war was waged in England, and Scotland was rent in twain between
the armies of the Covenant and of the Cavaliers—William Calderwood of
Piteadie was the lover of Annora Moultray,[*] daughter of Symon, the
Laird of Seafield; a tower which stands upon the seashore, not far from
Kinghorn.
[*] Pronounced "Moutrie" in Scotland.
Both were young and handsome; both were the pride of the district at
kirk, market, and merry-meeting; and a time had been fixed for their
marriage when the troubles of the Covenant came. Calderwood adhered to
the king, and the father of his bride to Cromwell, and the Puritan
English.
So the poor lovers were separated; their engagement deemed broken by the
parents of Annora, who were dark, gloomy, and stern religionists—true
old Whigs of Fife; but on the day before William Calderwood departed to
join the great Marquis, who was advancing from the north at the head of
his victorious Highlanders, he contrived to have a farewell interview
with his mistress at the little ruined chapel of Eglise Marie, which
stood, within a few years ago, at Tyrie, in the fields near Grange.
In those days of ecclesiastical tyranny and social espionage, little
could escape the parish minister; so the Reverend Elijah Howler promptly
apprised Symon of Moultray of his daughter’s "foregathering" with the
ungodly one at that relic of Popery, the chapel of Mary. They were
surprised by the furious father, who exclaimed—
"Sackcloth and ashes! ye graceless limmer, begone to your spindle, and
thou, mansworn loon, draw!"
Unsheathing his sword, he rushed upon Calderwood, and would have slain
him, notwithstanding the sanctity of the place, but for the interference
of his youngest son, Philip, who accompanied him, and parried the
threatening sword.
He hurled, however, the deepest and most bitter reproaches upon
Calderwood, as "an apostate from the kirk of God; the adherent of a king
who had broken the Covenant; a leaguer with the mansworn and
God-forsaken James Grahame of Montrose, and his murdering gang of
Highland Philistines; the representative of a false brood, among whom no
daughter of his should ever mate without a father’s curse resting on her
bridal-bed," with much more to the same purpose.
The young gentleman strove to deprecate his anger; but, "Away!" the
fiery old man resumed; "hence, ye troubler o’ Israel, who hast hearkened
unto the devil and his prelates; and beware how ye cross the purpose o’
Symon o’ Seafield, for all the powers o’ hell may fail to balk my
vengeance!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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