第45章

`O lang, lang may the ladyes sit Wi' their face into their hand, Before they see Sir Patrick Spens Come sailing to the strand.'

Sir Patrick Spens.

We forced our toes into the crevices of the wall and peeped stealthily over the top. Two boys of eight or ten years, with two younger children, were busily engaged in building a castle. A great pile of stones had been hauled to the spot, evidently for the purpose of mending the wall, and these were serving as rich material for sport. The oldest of the company, a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked boy in an Eton jacket and broad white collar, was obviously commander-in-chief; and the next in size, whom he called Rafe, was a laddie of eight, in kilts. These two looked as if they might be scions of the aristocracy, while Dandie and the Wrig were fat little yokels of another sort. The miniature castle must have been the work of several mornings, and was worthy of the respectful but silent admiration with which we gazed upon it; but as the last stone was placed in the tower, the master builder looked up and spied our interested eyes peering at him over the wall. We were properly abashed, and ducked our heads discreetly at once, but were reassured by hearing him run rapidly towards us, calling, "Stop, if you please! Have you anything on just now--are you busy?"

We answered that we were quite at leisure.

"Then would you mind coming in to help us play `Sir Patrick Spens'?

There aren't enough of us to do it nicely."

This confidence was touching, and luckily it was not in the least misplaced. Playing `Sir Patrick Spens' was exactly in our line, little as he suspected it.

"Come and help?" I said. "Simply delighted! Do come, Fanny dear.

How can we get over the wall?"

"I'll show you the good broken place!" cried Sir Apple-Cheek; and following his directions we scrambled through, while Rafe took off his Highland bonnet ceremoniously and handed us down to earth.

"Hurrah! now it will be something like fun! Do you know `Sir Patrick Spens'?"

"Every word of it. Don't you want us to pass an examination before you allow us in the game?"

"No," he answered gravely; "it's a great help, of course, to know it, but it isn't necessary. I keep the words in my pocket to prompt Dandie, and the Wrig can only say two lines, she's so little."

(Here he produced some tattered leaves torn from a book of ballads.)

"We've done it many a time, but this is a new Dunfermline Castle, and we are trying the play in a different way. Rafe is the king, and Dandie is the `eldern knight,'--you remember him?"

"Certainly; he sat at the king's right knee."

"Yes, yes, that's the one! Then Rafe is Sir Patrick part of the time, and I the other part, because everybody likes to be him; but there's nobody left for the `lords o' Noroway' or the sailors, and the Wrig is the only maiden to sit on the shore, and she always forgets to comb her hair and weep at the right time."

The forgetful and placid Wrig (I afterwards learned that this is a Scots word for the youngest bird in the nest) was seated on the grass, with her fat hands full of pink thyme and white wild woodruff. The sun shone on her curly flaxen head. She wore a dark blue cotton frock with white dots, and a short-sleeved pinafore; and though she was utterly useless from a dramatic point of view, she was the sweetest little Scotch dumpling I ever looked upon. She had been tried and found wanting in most of the principal parts of the ballad, but when left out of the performance altogether she was wont to scream so lustily that all Crummylowe rushed to her assistance.

"Now let us practise a bit to see if we know what we are going to do," said Sir Apple-Cheek. "Rafe, you can be Sir Patrick this time.

The reason why we all like to be Sir Patrick," he explained, turning to me, "is that the lords o' Noroway say to him--`Ye Scottishmen spend a' our King's gowd, And a' our Queenis fee'; and then he answers,--`"Ye lee! ye lee! ye leers loud, Fu' loudly do ye lee!"' and a lot of splendid things like that. Well, I'll be the king," and accordingly he began:-`The King sits in Dunfermline tower, Drinking the bluid-red wine.

"O whaur will I get a skeely skipper To sail this new ship o' mine?"'

A dead silence ensued, whereupon the king said testily, "Now, Dandie, you never remember you're the eldern knight; go on!"

Thus reminded, Dandie recited:-`O up and spake an eldern knight, Sat at the King's right knee:

"Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor That ever sailed the sea."'

"Now I'll write my letter," said the king, who was endeavouring to make himself comfortable in his somewhat contracted tower.

`The King has written a braid letter And sealed it with his hand;

And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens, Was walking on the strand.'

"Read the letter out loud, Rafe, and then you'll remember what to do."

`"To Noroway! to Noroway!

To Noroway o'er the faem!

The King's daughter of Noroway, `Tis thou maun bring her hame,"' read Rafe.

"Now do the next part!"

"I can't; I'm going to chuck up that next part. I wish you'd do Sir Patrick until it comes to `Ye lee! `ye lee!'"

"No, that won't do, Rafe. We have to mix up everybody else, but it's too bad to spoil Sir Patrick."

"Well, I'll give him to you, then, and be the king. I don't mind so much now that we've got such a good tower; and why can't I stop up there even after the ship sets sail and look out over the sea with a telescope? That's the way Elizabeth did the time she was king."

"You can stay till you have to come down and be a dead Scots lord.

I'm not going to lie there as I did last time, with nobody but the Wrig for a Scots lord, and her forgetting to be dead!"

Sir Apple-Cheek then essayed the hard part `chucked up' by Rafe. It was rather difficult, I confess, as the first four lines were in pantomime, and required great versatility:-`The first word that Sir Patrick read, Fu' loud, loud laughed he:

The neist word that Sir Patrick read, The tear blinded his e'e.'

These conflicting emotions successfully simulated, Sir Patrick resumed:-`"O wha is he has done this deed, And tauld the King o' me,--To send us out, at this time o' the year, To sail upon the sea?"'