Perthshire in bygone days

260 PEBTHSHIRE IN BYGONE DAYS.
"Within a few months he was carrying a musket and knap-
sack across the trodden and hungry orange groves of Old
Castile, and under Sir David Baird eventually joined Sir
John Moore's retreat upon Corunna. The same evening,
the 16th of January, 1809, that they buried Sir John Moore
in the centre of the battery at Corunna, they buried "William
Herdman under the green turf on the outside of the battery
walls, and within a few feet of the ebbing and flowing
waters of the Bay of Biscay.
The first news William Herdman's father and mother
heard of him, after his enlistment, were the news of his
death — terribly distracting news to them, accompanied as
they were with full details of his last moments on the field
of battle.
Andrew Sharpe had observed that, since Herdman's
departure, Ellen Eankine was greatly changed. Her
passionate blue eyes had begun to fade, and her luxuriant
brown hair, the pride of better days, to get tangled and
dry ; but when the news of his death came she sank into
helpless idiocy, and, despite the careful watchings of her
distressed parents, she stole from them in a luckless moment,
and taking the back of the hill, went crooning and singing
for a whole week away through the howe of Strathmore,
the burden of her song, taken no doubt from Sharpe —
Oh ! Corunna's lone shore.
The interest taken in the beautiful but crazed maiden, and
the kindness shown to her wherever she went, have been
the theme of many a story. She has been described by
those who had seen her, as walking at a rapid pace, bare-
headed and bare-footed, waving a red handkerchief in her
right hand, and under her white, naked left arm carrying
her masses of brown hair tied up in an inextricable
bundle.
CORUNNA'S LONE SHORE.
Do you weep for the woes of poor wandering Nelly ?
I love you for that, but of love now no more,
All I had long ago lies entomb'd with my Billy,
Whose grave rises green on Corunna's lone shore.
Oh 1 they tell me my Billy look'd noble when dying,
That round him the boldest in battle stood crying,
While from his deep wound life's red floods were drying.
At evening's pale close on Corunna's lone shore.