Pettybaw kirk is trimmed with yellow broom from these dear Scottish banks and braes; and waving their green fans and plumes up and down the aisle where I shall walk a bride, are tall ferns and bracken from Crummylowe Glen, where we played ballads.
As I look back upon it, the life here has been all a ballad from first to last. Like the elfin Tam Lin,
and these hasty nuptials are a fittingly romantic ending to the summer’s poetry. I am in a mood, were it necessary, to be ‘ta’en by the milk-white hand,’ lifted to a pillion on a coal-black charger, and spirited ‘o’er the border an’ awa’’ by my dear Jock o’ Hazeldean. Unhappily, all is quite regular and aboveboard; no ‘lord o’ Langley dale’ contests the prize with the bridegroom, but the marriage is at least unique and unconventional; no one can rob me of that sweet consolation.
So ‘gallop down the westlin skies,’ dear Sun, but, prythee, gallop back to-morrow! ‘Gang soon to bed,’ an you will, but rise again betimes! Give me Queen’s weather, dear Sun, and shine a benison upon my wedding-morn!
[Exit Penelope into the ballad-land of maiden dreams.]