Poetry > Lady of the lake
(19)
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LADY OP THE LAKE.
9
of the lively, but somewhat licentious, old ballad;
in which the denouement of a royal intrigue takes
place as follows:
“ He took a bugle frae his side,
He blew both loud and shrill,
And four-and-twenty belted knights
Came skipping ower the hill;
Then he took out a little knife.
Let a’ his duddies fa’,
And he was the hrawest gentleman
That was amang them a’.
And we’ll go no more a-roving,” &c.
This discovery, as Mr Pepys says of the rent
in his camlet cloak, was but a trifle, yet it troubled
me ; and I was at a good deal of pains to efface
any marks by which X thought my secret could be
traced before the conclusion, when I relied on it
with the same hope of producing effect, with which
the Irish post-boy is said to reserve a “trot for the
avenue.”
I took uncommon pains to verify the accuracy
of the local circumstances of this story. I recol¬
lect, in particular, that to ascertain whether I was
telling a probable tale, I went into Perthshire, to
see whether liing James could actually have ridden
from the banks of Poch Vennachar to Stirling
9
of the lively, but somewhat licentious, old ballad;
in which the denouement of a royal intrigue takes
place as follows:
“ He took a bugle frae his side,
He blew both loud and shrill,
And four-and-twenty belted knights
Came skipping ower the hill;
Then he took out a little knife.
Let a’ his duddies fa’,
And he was the hrawest gentleman
That was amang them a’.
And we’ll go no more a-roving,” &c.
This discovery, as Mr Pepys says of the rent
in his camlet cloak, was but a trifle, yet it troubled
me ; and I was at a good deal of pains to efface
any marks by which X thought my secret could be
traced before the conclusion, when I relied on it
with the same hope of producing effect, with which
the Irish post-boy is said to reserve a “trot for the
avenue.”
I took uncommon pains to verify the accuracy
of the local circumstances of this story. I recol¬
lect, in particular, that to ascertain whether I was
telling a probable tale, I went into Perthshire, to
see whether liing James could actually have ridden
from the banks of Poch Vennachar to Stirling
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Antiquarian books of Scotland > Poetry > Lady of the lake > (19) |
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Permanent URL | https://digital.nls.uk/109507142 |
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Description | Thousands of printed books from the Antiquarian Books of Scotland collection which dates from 1641 to the 1980s. The collection consists of 14,800 books which were published in Scotland or have a Scottish connection, e.g. through the author, printer or owner. Subjects covered include sport, education, diseases, adventure, occupations, Jacobites, politics and religion. Among the 29 languages represented are English, Gaelic, Italian, French, Russian and Swedish. |
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