by Keats · Cluster: Joy · Animals · Comic Verse Song
Abstract
A Scots-dialect ballad-song of a wedding party riding home through the glen while the speaker, left out, sheds sad tears. It pairs a Scottish rural setting, marriage festivity, and grief.
Connections
Motifs: Marriage, Horse Themes & Concepts: Grief and Loss, Alienation Forms & Genres: Comic Verse Song, Ballad Ballade Settings: Scotland the Highlands
Testo integrale / Full text
From a Letter to Tom Keats
Ah! ken ye what I met the day
Out oure the mountains
A coming down by craggies grey
An mossie fountains -
Ah goud hair’d Marie yeve I pray
Ane minute’s guessing -
For that I met upon the way
Is past expressing.
As I stood where a rocky brig
A torrent crosses
10
I spied upon a misty rig
A troup o’ horses -
And as they trotted down the glen
I sped to meet them
To see if I might know the men
To stop and greet them.
First Willie on his sleek mare came
At canting gallop
His long hair rustled like a flame
On board a shallop.
20
Then came his brother Rab and then
Young Peggy’s mither
And Peggy too - adown the glen
They went together -
I saw her wrappit in her hood
Fra wind and raining -
Her cheek was flush wi’ timid blood
Twixt growth and waning -
She turn’d her dazed head full oft
For there her brithers
30
Came riding with her bridegroom soft
And mony ithers.
Young Tam came up an’ eyed me quick
With reddened cheek -
Braw Tam was daffed’’ like a chick -
He coud na speak -
Ah Marie they are all gane hame
Through blustering weather
An’ every heart is full on flame
A’ light as feather.
40
Ah! Marie they are all gone hame
Fra happy wedding,
Whilst I - Ah is it not a shame?
Sad tears am shedding.