The remorseless tragedy on which this ballad is founded took place upwards of a century ago. In the village of Romanby, near Northallerton, there resided a desperate band of coiners, whose respectability and cunning concealment precluded all possibility of suspicion as to their proceedings. The victim of their revenge was Mary Ward, the servant of one of those ruffians. Having obtained an accidental view of some secret apartments appropriated to their treasonable practices, she unguardedly communicated her knowledge to an acquaintance, which reaching her master's ears, he determined to destroy her. The most plausible story, time, and means were selected for this purpose. On a Sunday evening, after sunset, an unknown personage on horseback arrived at her master's mansion, half equipped, to give colour to his alleged haste, and stated that he was dispatched for Mary, as _her mother was dying_. She lingered to ask her master's permission, but he feigned sleep, and she departed without his leave. On the table of her room was her Bible, opened at these remarkable words in Job, "They shall seek me in the morning, and shall not find me; and where I am, they shall not come." Her home was at the distance of eight miles from Romanby, and Morton bridge, hard by the heath where she was murdered, is the traditionary scene of her nocturnal revisitings. The impression of her re-appearance is only poetically assumed, for there is too much of what Coleridge would term "the divinity of nature" around Morton bridge, to warrant its association with supernatural mysteries. Oh! sights are seen, and sounds are heard, On Morton bridge, at night, When to the woods the cheerful birds Have ta'en their silent flight. When through the mantle of the sky No cheering moonbeams delve, And the far village clock hath told The midnight hour of twelve. Then o'er the lonely path is heard The sigh of sable trees, With deadly moan of suff'ring strife Borne on the solemn breeze-- For Mary's spirit wanders there, In snowy robe array'd, To tell each trembling villager Where sleeps the murder'd maid. It was a Sabbath's eve of love, When nature seem'd more holy; And nought in life was dull, but she, Whose look was melancholy. She lean'd her tear-stain'd cheek of health Upon her lily arm; Poor, hapless girl! she could not tell What caus'd her wild alarm. Around the roses of her face Her flaxen ringlets fell; No lovelier bosom than her own Could guiltless sorrow swell! The Holy Book before her lay, That boon to mortals given, To teach the way from weeping earth To ever-glorious heaven; And Mary read prophetic words, That whisper'd of her doom:-- "Oh! they will search for me, but where I am, they cannot come!" The tears forsook her gentle eyes, And wet the sacred lore; And such a terror shook her frame, She ne'er had known before.