It was the only time
Robert ever heard him sing. Mysie's eyes grew wider and wider as
she listened. When it was over,
'Did ye write that sang yersel', Mr. Ericson?' asked Robert.
'No,' answered Ericson. 'An old shepherd up in our parts used to say
it to me when I was a boy.'
'Didna he sing 't?' Robert questioned further.
'No, he didn't. But I heard an old woman crooning it to a child in
a solitary cottage on the shore of Stroma, near the Swalchie
whirlpool, and that was the tune she sang it to, if singing it could
be called.'
'I don't quite understand it, Mr. Ericson,' said Mysie. 'What does
it mean?'
'There was once a beautiful woman lived there-away,' began
Ericson.--But I have not room to give the story as he told it,
embellishing it, no doubt, as with such a mere tale was lawful
enough, from his own imagination. The substance was that a young
man fell in love with a beautiful witch, who let him go on loving
her till he cared for nothing but her, and then began to kill him by
laughing at him. For no witch can fall in love herself, however
much she may like to be loved. She mocked him till he drowned
himself in a pool on the seashore. Now the witch did not know that;
but as she walked along the shore, looking for things, she saw his
hand lying over the edge of a rocky basin. Nothing is more useful
to a witch than the hand of a man, so she went to pick it up. When
she found it fast to an arm, she would have chopped it off, but
seeing whose it was, she would, for some reason or other best known
to a witch, draw off his ring first.
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