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Home  »  English Poetry II  »  427. The Outlaw

English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

Sir Walter Scott

427. The Outlaw


O BRIGNALL banks are wild and fair,

And Greta woods are green,

And you may gather garlands there

Would grace a summer-queen.

And as I rode by Dalton-Hall

Beneath the turrets high,

A Maiden on the castle-wall

Was singing merrily:

‘O Brignall Banks are fresh and fair,

And Greta woods are green;

I’d rather rove with Edmund there

Than reign our English queen.’

‘If, Maiden, thou wouldst wend with me,

To leave both tower and town,

Thou first must guess what life lead we

That dwell by dale and down.

And if thou canst that riddle read,

As read full well you may,

Then to the greenwood shalt thou speed

As blithe as Queen of May.’

Yet sung she, ‘Brignall banks are fair,

And Greta woods are green;

I’d rather rove with Edmund there

Than reign our English queen.

‘I read you, by your bugle-horn

And by your palfrey good,

I read you for a ranger sworn

To keep the king’s greenwood.’

‘A Ranger, lady, winds his horn,

And ’tis at peep of light;

His blast is heard at merry morn,

And mine at dead of night.’

Yet sung she, ‘Brignall banks are fair,

And Greta woods are gay;

I would I were with Edmund there

To reign his Queen of May!

‘With burnish’d brand and musketoon

So gallantly you come,

I read you for a bold Dragoon

That lists the tuck of drum.’

‘I list no more the tuck of drum,

No more the trumpet near;

But when the beetle sounds his hum

My comrades take the spear.

And O! though Brignall banks be fair

And Greta woods be gay,

Yet mickle must the maiden dare

Would reign my Queen of May!

‘Maiden! a nameless life I lead,

A nameless death I’ll die;

The fiend whose lantern lights the mead

Were better mate than I!

And when I’m with my comrades met

Beneath the greenwood bough,—

What once we were we all forget,

Nor think what we are now.’

Chorus

‘Yet Brignall banks are fresh and fair,

And Greta woods are green,

And you may gather garlands there

Would grace a summer-queen.’