p>
Ban and Arriere Ban: A Rally of Fugitive Rhymes
TO
ELEANOR CHARLOTTE SELLAR
‘Ban and Arrière Ban!’ a host
Broken, beaten, all unled,
They return as doth a ghost
From the dead.
Sad or glad my rallied rhymes,
Sought our dusty papers through,
For the sake of other times
Come to you.
Times and places new we know,
Faces fresh and seasons strange
But the friends of long ago
Do not change.
Many of the verses in this collection have appeared in Magazines: ‘How they held the Bass’ was in ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’; the ‘Ballad of the Philanthropist’ in ‘Punch’; ‘Calais Sands’ in ‘The Magazine of Art’ (Messrs. Cassell and Co.); and others are recaptured from ‘Longman’s Magazine,’ ‘Scribner’s,’ ‘The Illustrated London News,’ ‘The English Illustrated Magazine,’ ‘Wit and Wisdom’ (lines from Omar Khayyam), ‘The St. James’s Gazette,’ and possibly other serials. Some pieces are from commendatory verses for books, as for Mr. Jacobs’s ‘Æsop’; some are from Mr. Rider Haggard’s ‘World’s Desire,’ and ‘Cleopatra,’ two are from Kirk’s ‘Secret Commonwealth’ (Nutt, 1893), and ‘Neiges d’Antan,’ are from the author’s ‘Ballads and Lyrics of Old France,’ now long out of print.
ERRATUM
Reader, a blot hath escaped the watchfulness of the setter forth: if thou wilt thou mayst amend it. The sonnet on the forty-fourth page, against all right Italianate laws, hath but thirteen lines withal: add another to thy liking, if thou art a Maker; or, if thou art none, even be content with what is set before thee. If it be scant measure, be sure it is choicely good.
A SCOT TO JEANNE D’ARC
Dark Lily without blame,
Not upon us the shame,
Whose sires were to the Auld Alliance true,
They, by the Maiden’s side,
Victorious fought and died,
One stood by thee that fiery torment through,
Till the White Dove from thy pure lips had passed,
And thou wert with thine own St. Catherine at the last.
Once only didst thou see
In artist’s imagery,
Thine own face painted, and that precious thing
Was in an Archer’s hand
From the leal Northern land.
Alas, what price would not thy people bring
To win that portrait of the ruinous
Gulf of devouring years that hide the Maid from us!
Born of a lowly line,
Noteless as once was thine,
One of that name I would were kin to me,
Who, in the Scottish Guard
Won this for his reward,
To fight for France, and memory of thee:
Not upon us, dark Lily without blame,
Not on the North may fall the shadow of that shame.
On France and England both
The shame of broken troth,
Of coward hate and treason black must be;
If England slew thee, France
Sent not one word, one lance,
One coin to rescue or to ransom thee.
And still thy Church unto the Maid denies
The halo and the palms, the Beatific prize.
But yet thy people calls
Within the rescued walls
Of Orleans; and makes its prayer to thee;
What though the Church have chidden
These orisons forbidden,
Yet art thou with this earth’s immortal Three,
With him in Athens that of hemlock died,
And with thy Master dear whom the world crucified.
HOW THEY HELD THE BASS FOR KING JAMES – 1691–1693
Ye hae heard Whigs crack o’ the Saints in the Bass, my faith, a gruesome tale;
How the Remnant paid at a tippeny rate, for a quart o’ ha’penny ale!
But I’ll tell ye anither tale o’ the Bass, that’ll hearten ye up to hear,
Sae I pledge ye to Middleton first in a glass, and a health to the Young Chevalier!
The Bass stands frae North Berwick Law a league or less to sea,
About its feet the breakers beat, abune the sea-maws flee,
There’s castle stark and dungeon dark, wherein the godly lay,
That made their rant for the Covenant through mony a weary day.
For twal’ years lang the caverns rang wi’ preaching, prayer, and psalm,
Ye’d think the winds were soughing wild, when a’ the winds were calm,
There wad they preach, each Saint to each, and glower as the soldiers pass,
And Peden wared his malison on a bonny leaguer lass,
As she stood and daffed, while the warders laughed, and wha sae blithe as she,
But a wind o’ ill worked his warlock will, and flang her out to sea.
Then wha sae bright as the Saints that night, and an angel came, say they,
And sang in the cell where the Righteous dwell, but he took na a Saint away.
There yet might they be, for nane could flee, and nane daur’d break the jail,
And still the sobbing o’ the sea might mix wi’ their warlock wail,
But then came in black echty-echt, and bluidy echty-nine,
Wi’ Cess, and Press, and Presbytery, and a’ the dule sin’ syne,
The Saints won free wi’ the power o’ the key, and cavaliers maun pine!
It was Halyburton, Middleton, and Roy and young Dunbar,
That Livingstone took on Cromdale haughs, in the last fight of the war:
And they were warded in the Bass, till the time they should be slain,
Where bluidy Mitchell, and Blackader, and Earlston lang had lain;
Four lads alone, ’gainst a garrison, but Glory crowns their names,
For they brought it to pass that they took the Bass, and they held it for King James!
It isna by preaching half the night, ye’ll burst a dungeon door,
It wasna by dint o’ psalmody they broke the hold, they four,
For lang years three that rock in the sea bade Wullie Wanbeard gae swing,
And England and Scotland fause may be, but the Bass Rock stands
