[From Quentin Durward, chapter iv. : "The maid of the little turret, of the veil, and of the lute, sang exactly such an air as we are accustomed to suppose flowed from the lips of the high-born dames of chivalry, when knights and troubadours listened and languished."]

D

[From Woodstock, chapter xxvi. :-"He sung. . . the air of a French rondelai, to which some of the wits or sonnetters, in his gay and roving train, had adapted English verses."]

[From The Fair Maid of Perth, chapter xxx. :-"The maiden sung a melancholy dirge in Norman-French."]

ROUNDELAY.

AKEN, lords and ladies gay,

On the mountain dawns the day;
All the jolly chase is here,

With hawk and horse, and hunting spear;
Hounds are in their couples yelling,
Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling,
Merrily, merrily mingle they,
"Waken, lords and ladies gay."

Waken, lords and ladies gay,

The mist has left the mountain grey;
Springlets in the dawn are streaming,
Diamonds on the brake are gleaming,
And the foresters have busy been,
To track the buck in thicket green;
Now we come to chaunt our lay,
"Waken, lords and ladies gay."

Waken, lords and ladies gay,
To the greenwood haste away;
We can show you where he lies,
Fleet of foot, and tall of size ;
We can show the marks he made
When 'gainst the oak his antlers frayed;
You shall see him brought to bay,
"Waken, lords and ladies gay."

Louder, louder chaunt the lay,
Waken, lords and ladies gay;
Tell them, youth and mirth and glee,
Run a course as well as we;

Time, stern huntsman ! who can baulk
Staunch as hound, and fleet as hawk?

Think of this, and rise with day,
Gentle lords and ladies gay.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

[From the Conclusion of Mr. Strutt's Romance of Queenhoo Hall, by the Author of Waverley:"Peretto, with his two attendant minstrels, stepping beneath the windows of the stranger's apartments, joined in [this] roundelay, the deep voices of the rangers and falconers making a chorus that caused the very battlements to ring again."]

[From Tales and Sketches: Katie Cheyne, where it is sung by Duncan Stewart :-"I sang sic a sang, ane made o' the moment, clean aff-loof, none of your long-studied dreigh-of-coming compositions.""]