So he sat down and
he wrote, not knowing and not regarding a lonely woman's heart, to whom
his word would be as the word of a God, in the lonely cottage lying in
the lee of the Long Wood of Barbrax.
The junior reporter turned out a triumph of the new journalism. "This
is a book which may be a genuine source of pride to every native of the
ancient province of Galloway," he wrote. "Galloway has been celebrated
for black cattle and for wool, as also for a certain bucolic belatedness
of temperament, but Galloway has never hitherto produced a poetess. One
has arisen in the person of Miss Janet Bal-- something or other. We have
not an interpreter at hand, and so cannot wrestle with the intricacies
of the authoress's name, which appears to be some Galwegian form of
Erse or Choctaw. Miss Bal--and so forth--has a true fount of pathos and
humour. In what touching language she chronicles the death of two young
lambs which fell down into one of the puddles they call rivers down
there, and were either drowned or choked with the dirt:
"'They were two bonny, bonny lambs,
That played upon the daisied lea,
And loudly mourned their woolly dams
Above the drumly flowing Dee.
Pages:
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54