The Fairy Thorn

"Get up, our Anna dear, from the weary spinning wheel;

 For your father's on the hill, and your mother is asleep:

Come up above the crags, and we'll dance a highland reel  

 Around the fairy thorn on the steep."

At Anna Grace's door 'twas thus the maidens cried,

 Three merry maidens fair in kirtles of the green;  

And Anna laid the sock and the weary wheel aside,  

 The fairest of the four, I ween.  

They're glancing through the glimmer of the quiet eve,  

 Away in milky wavings of neck and ankle bare;

The heavy-sliding stream in its sleeply song they leave,  

 And the crags in the ghostly air:

And linking hand in hand, and singing as they go,  

 The maids along the hill-side have ta'en their fearless way,  

Till they come to where the rowan trees in lovely beauty grow

 Beside the Fairy Hawthorn gray.  

The hawthorn stands between the ashes tall and slim,  

 Like matron with her twin grand-daughters at her knee;  

The rowan berries cluster o'er her low head gray and dim  

 In ruddy kisses sweet to see.