A Legend of Montrose

colour than the upper garment. The petticoat was formed of tartan silk, in the sett, or pattern, of which the colour of blue greatly predominated, so as to remove the tawdry effect too frequently produced in tartan, by the mixture and strong opposition of colours. An antique silver chain hung round her neck, and supported the WREST, or key, with which she turned her instrument. A small ruff rose above her collar, and was secured by a brooch of some value, an old keepsake from Lord Menteith. Her profusion of light hair almost hid her laughing eyes, while, with a smile and a blush, she mentioned that she had M'Aulay's directions to ask them if they chose music. Sir Duncan Campbell gazed with considerable surprise and interest at the lovely apparition, which thus interrupted his debate with Allan M'Aulay.

'Can this,' he said to him in a whisper, 'a creature so beautiful and so elegant, be a domestic musician of your brother's establishment?'

'By no means,' answered Allan, hastily, yet with some hesitation; 'she is a—a—near relation of our family —and treated,' he added, more firmly, 'as an adopted daughter of our father's house.'

As he spoke thus, he arose from his seat, and with that air of courtesy which every Highlander can assume when it suits him to practise it, he resigned it to Annot, and offered to her, at the same time, whatever refreshments the table afforded, with an assiduity which was probably designed to give Sir Duncan an impression of her rank and consequence. If such was Allan's purpose, however, it was unnecessary. Sir Duncan kept his eyes fixed upon Annot with an expression of much deeper interest than could have arisen from any impression that she was a person of consequence. Annot even felt embarrassed under the old knight's steady gaze; and it was not without considerable hesitation, that, tuning her instrument, and receiving an assenting look from Lord Menteith and Allan, she executed the following ballad, which our friend, Mr. Secundus M'Pherson, whose goodness we had before to acknowledge, has thus translated into the English tongue:

THE ORPHAN MAID.

November's hail-cloud drifts away, 
November's sunbeam wan 
Looks coldly on the castle grey, 
When forth comes Lady Anne. 

The orphan by the oak was set, 
Her arms, her feet, were bare, 
The hail-drops had not melted yet, 
Amid her raven hair. 

'And, Dame,' she said, 'by all the ties 
That child and mother know, 
Aid one who never knew these joys, 
Relieve an orphan's woe.' 

The Lady said, 'An orphan's state 
Is hard and sad to bear; 
Yet worse the widow'd mother's fate, 
Who mourns both lord and heir. 

'Twelve times the rolling year has sped, 
Since, when from vengeance wild 
Of fierce Strathallan's Chief I fled, 
Forth's eddies whelm'd my child.' 

'Twelve times the year its course has born,' 
The wandering maid replied, 
'Since fishers on St. Bridget's morn 
Drew nets on Campsie side. 

'St. Bridget sent no scaly spoil;— 
An infant, wellnigh dead, 
They saved, and rear'd in want and toil, 
To beg from you her bread.' 

That orphan maid the lady kiss'd— 
'My husband's looks you bear; 
St. Bridget and her morn be bless'd! 
You are his widow's heir.' 

They've robed that maid, so poor and pale, 
In silk and sandals rare; 
And pearls, for drops of frozen hail, 
Are glistening in her hair.

The admirers of pure Celtic antiquity, notwithstanding the elegance of the above translation, may be desirous to see a literal version from the original Gaelic, which we therefore subjoin; and have only to add, that the original is deposited with Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham.

LITERAL TRANSLATION.

The hail-blast had drifted away upon the wings of the gale of autumn. The sun looked from between the clouds, pale as the wounded hero who rears his head feebly on the heath when the roar of battle hath passed over him. 

Finele, the Lady of the Castle, came forth to see her maidens pass to the herds with their leglins [Milk- pails]. 

There sat an orphan maiden beneath the old oak-tree of appointment. The withered leaves fell around her, and her heart was more withered than they. 

The parent of the ice [poetically taken from the frost] still congealed the hail-drops in her hair; they were like the specks of white ashes on the twisted boughs of the blackened and half-consumed oak that blazes in the hall. 

And the maiden said, 'Give me comfort, Lady, I am an orphan child.' And the Lady replied, 'How can I give that which I have not? I am the widow of a slain lord,—the mother of a perished child. When I fled in my fear from the vengeance of my husband's foes, our bark was overwhelmed in the tide, and my infant perished. This was on St. Bridget's morn, near the strong Lyns of Campsie. May ill luck light upon the day.' And the maiden answered, 'It