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It was something to have grown up contemporary, as it were, with these songs. Many of them were written in the old Rowan homestead, just outside of Bardstown, Ky., where Louis Philippe lived and taught, and for a season Talleyrand made his abode. The Rowans were notable people.
To be sure, I laughed over this: but it was rather tremulous laughter; and I was glad to get my bundle on my staff's end and set out over the ford and up the hill upon the farther side; till just as I came on the green drove-road running wide through the heather, I took my last look of Kirk Essendean, the trees about the manse, and the big rowans in the kirkyard where my father and my mother lay.
The Pool of Ness is a great, black cauldron of clear water, with berries above and berries below, and high crags red with heather. There you may find shade in summer, and great blaeberries and ripening rowans in the wane of August. These last were the snare for Alice, who was ever an adventurer. For the moment she was the schoolgirl again, and all sordid elderly cares were tossed to the wind.
To all appearance the summer's pomp was still at fullest height, and although in the tilled acres green had given way to gold, though rowans were reddening, and the woods were dashed here and there with a tawny fierceness, yet light and warmth and colour were still present in undiminished measure, clean of any chilly premonitions of the passing year.
'Frae Auld Reekie, 'A guid New Year to ye a', 'For the Auld Folk at Hame, are among the most favoured of these devices. Can you not see the carrier, after half-a-day's journey on pinching hill-roads, draw up before a cottage in Teviotdale, or perhaps in Manor Glen among the rowans, and the old people receiving the parcel with moist eyes and a prayer for Jock or Jean in the city?
"I was oot o' the moor and I heard a lamb cryin'," he said uncertainly. "I thought it had lost its mither. It was cryin' pitifu'. I searched an' couldna find it. But the cryin' went on. It was waur than a lamb's cry It was waur " he spoke in reluctant jerks. "I followed until I cam' to it. There was a cluster o' young rowans with broom and gorse thick under them. The cryin' was there.
But they couldn't keep me out o' t' cove for all that; 'twere t' bonniest spot i' t' dale, an' I nivver gat stalled o' ramlin' about by t' watter-side an' amang t' rowans. There were a watterfall i' t' cove, wi' a dark cave behind it, an' 'twere all owerhung wi' eshes an' hazels. "One neet I were sittin' up for my father while fower o'clock i' t' morn.
Do you know anything of this Egyptian?" "What Egyptian? Is't a lassie wi' rowans in her hair?" "The same. Have you seen her?" "That I have. There's nothing agin her, is there? Whatever it is, I'll uphaud she didna do't, for a simpler, franker-spoken crittur couldna be." "Never mind what I want her for. When did you see her?"
On the road home she made no complaints when I put my arm round her, for was she not my own lass now. Moreover, it was dark. We were at our first good-night under the rowan-trees beside the byre, for rowans will keep the fairies away, and it is good farming to have them where the beasts will be walking under them every day.
The ground was padded with pine-needles, briony berries shone in the hedgerows below, and hips and haws and rowans also rioted in red. Brambles were heavy with blue-black berries, and the bracken was battered and brown on the steep hill-side.
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