The Fair Maid of Perth; Or, St. Valentine's Day

Palm Sunday now dawned. At an earlier period of the Christian Church, the use of any of the days of Passion Week for the purpose of combat would have been accounted a profanity...

Perth, boasting, as we have already mentioned, so large a portion of the beauties of inanimate nature, has at no time been without its own share of those charms which are at onc...

How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills, Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills Their mountain pipe, so fill the mountaineers With the fierce native daring whi...

“What, Conachar!” he replied, as he started from sleep, “is the morning so far advanced?” and, raising his eyes, the person of whom he was dreaming stood before him; and at the...

In winter’s tedious nights, sit by the fire, With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales Of woeful ages, long ago betid: And, ere thou bid goodnight, to quit their grief,...

The wild rumours which flew through the town, speedily followed by the tolling of the alarm bells spread general consternation. The nobles and knights, with their followers, gat...

The character and quality of Sir Patrick Charteris, the Provost of Perth, being such as we have sketched in the last chapter, let us now return to the deputation which was in th...

The night which sunk down on the sickbed of Ramorny was not doomed to be a quiet one. Two hours had passed since curfew bell, then rung at seven o’clock at night, and in those p...

The party were now, by a secret passage, admitted within the church, the outward doors of which, usually left open, had been closed against every one in consequence of the recen...

The course of our story will be best pursued by attending that of Simon Glover. It is not our purpose to indicate the exact local boundaries of the two contending clans, especia...

We return to the revellers, who had, half an hour before, witnessed, with such boisterous applause, Oliver’s feat of agility, being the last which the poor bonnet maker was ever...

The High Church of St. John in Perth, being that of the patron saint of the burgh, had been selected by the magistrates as that in which the community was likely to have most fa...

Will you go to the Hielands, Lizzy Lyndesay, Will you go the Hielands wi’ me? Will you go to the Hielands, Lizzy Lyndesay, My bride and my darling to be?

We must return to the characters of our dramatic narrative whom we left at Perth, when we accompanied the glover and his fair daughter to Kinfauns, and from that hospitable mans...

The conclave of citizens appointed to meet for investigating the affray of the preceding evening had now assembled. The workroom of Simon Glover was filled to crowding by person...

In the same council room of the conventual palace of the Dominicans, King Robert was seated with his brother Albany, whose affected austerity of virtue, and real art and dissimu...

We have shown the secrets of the confessional; those of the sick chamber are not hidden from us. The darkened apartment, where salves and medicines showed that the leech had bee...

We are now to recall to our reader’s recollection, that Simon Glover and his fair daughter had been hurried from their residence without having time to announce to Henry Smith e...

We must here trace a little more correctly the events which had been indistinctly seen from the window of the royal apartments, and yet more indistinctly reported by those who w...

The breakfast was served, and the thin soft cakes, made of flour and honey according to the family receipt, were not only commended with all the partiality of a father and a lov...

When, after an entertainment the prolonging of which was like torture to the wounded knight, the Earl of Crawford at length took horse, to go to his distant quarters in the Cast...

The council room of Perth presented a singular spectacle. In a gloomy apartment, ill and inconveniently lighted by two windows of different form and of unequal size, were assemb...

The ominous anxiety of our armourer had not played him false. When the good glover parted with his intended son in law, after the judicial combat had been decided, he found what...

Up! lady fair, and braid thy hair, And rouse thee in the breezy air, Up! quit thy bower, late wears the hour, Long have the rooks caw’d round the tower.

The Duke of Albany was, like his royal brother, named Robert. The Christian name of the latter had been John until he was called to the throne; when the superstition of the time...

It was early in the afternoon of St. Valentine’s Day that the prior of the Dominicans was engaged in discharge of his duties as confessor to a penitent of no small importance. T...

Ah, me! in sooth he was a shameless wight, Sore given to revel and ungodly glee: Few earthly things found favour in his sight, Save concubines and carnal companie, And flaunting...

The sturdy armourer was not, it may be believed, slack in keeping the appointment assigned by his intended father in law. He went through the process of his toilet with more tha...

What want these outlaws conquerors should have But history’s purchased page to call them great, A wider space, an ornamented grave? Their hopes were not less warm, their souls w...

The armourer’s heart swelled big with various and contending sensations, so that it seemed as if it would burst the leathern doublet under which it was shrouded. He arose, turne...

The incidents of a narrative of this kind must be adapted to each other, as the wards of a key must tally accurately with those of the lock to which it belongs. The reader, howe...

“I have been devising a mode,” said the well meaning provost, “by which I may make you both secure for a week or two from the malice of your enemies, when I have little doubt I...

We now return to the Fair Maid of Perth, who had been sent from the horrible scene at Falkland by order of the Douglas, to be placed under the protection of his daughter, the no...

While the King rode slowly back to the convent which he then occupied, Albany, with a discomposed aspect and faltering voice, asked the Earl of Douglas: “Will not your lordship,...

The morning of Ash Wednesday arose pale and bleak, as usual at this season in Scotland, where the worst and most inclement weather often occurs in the early spring months. It wa...

“Behold the Tiber,” the vain Roman cried, Viewing the ample Tay from Baiglie’s side; But where’s the Scot that would the vaunt repay, And hail the puny Tiber for the Tay?