And his rotten heart be given
Now to feed the fowls of heaven:
Take his bowels from his body;
On the fire to make them ready;
Strew his ashes in the air,
Ne'er to be remember'd mair!
The clock struck one; the crafty carlins fled,
The fire or victim was no longer seen;
But as they skipped o'er the silent dead,
This wild canzonet closed the mystic scene :
Now the fatal die is cast,
Now the deeds of death are done,
Now his sentence it is past,
And his wicked race is run.
Fiends infernal, bear his soul
To your dreary dark abode ;
There for ever let it be
Banish'd from the sight of God!
No mournful sound of passing bell
Proclaim the peasant's funeral knell,
But as the morning dawns, of heath,
On which he closed his eyes in death,
Before the door a beacon blaze,
With ceremonies wild they raise;
Which to the neighbours seem to say,
This is poor Mungo's funeral day !
As when of yore, the beacon light
Each clansman summon'd to the fight,
From ev'ry hamlet, hut, and fold,
In dingle, dell, or wood or wold,
They hurry forth, in best array,
To bear their kinsman's corse away.
Though the wood weasel's trod the pine,
And crows in clam'rous concert join,
No more the chirping wheel we see
Wearing the rugged axle tree,
As laden down the scroggy brae
The cart of wickers wend away;
And as the clouds creep up the height,
No more the maidens meet our sight,
Who, till the rocks around them rung,
Gregor na Rura sweetly sung :
Or Morag's mournful ditty chimed,
As o'er the crottlie* crags they climb'd,
To see his funeral dress complete,
And roll him in his winding sheet:
To Mungo's hut they hie away,
"Tis the last tribute they can pay.
The peasant's funeral thus we find
Not many folks have left behind;
For even Roy, the chieftain's man,
Who wins within the hazy glen,
With shaven beard, and cravat clean,
A tartan kilt, and doublet sheen,
Well mounted on his walley'd mare,
As lantern as the lankest hare,
Without a lash, without a snag,
Or even saddle on the nag,
Both rock and dallop gallops o'er,
To meet the mourners gone before.
Who would not wish a child to have
To see him laid into the grave,
That would at last, with feeling heart,
Like Mungo's boy, perform his part?
Though Sorrow sends forth many a sigh,
And starting tears bedim his eye,
The Dragie drink he serves about
To maids within and men without,
Till giddy conversation rise
Into reiterated noise,
And as they stagger round the bier,
When distant far the noise we hear.
Was ever any corse before
Removed by such a motley corps?
Old maids and boys in front appear,
Old men and matrons in the rear ;
The centre crowd, of varied hue,
In full confusion meet the view;
A cloud of bonnets here is seen,
With hoods and curchies white between ;
There, many a party-coloured plaid
Loose dangling o'er the shoulder laid
And as the wind unfolds his kilt, There seen is Dugald's dagger hilt, Which, with the staff beneath his arm, Is ready on the least alarm.
Where track of wheel, or print of shoe,
Has seldom met the trav'ller's view,
Across the unfrequented brae
They seem to shape the shortest way;
There in the heather, moving slow,
In sad procession on they go,
Till suddenly the solemn pace
Converted is into a race:
Another funeral they perceive
Before them running to the grave;
But as beneath the coffin's weight
They stand to pant upon the height,
Fast by them borne is Mungo's bier,
And leaves them lagging in the rear.
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