The Douglas, too, I wot not why,
Hath 'bated of his courtesy:

No longer in his halls I'll stay."
Then bade his band they should array
For march against the dawning day.

MARMION.

INTRODUCTION TO CANTO SIXTH.

ΤΟ

RICHARD HEBER, ESQ.

Mertoun House, Christmas.

HEAP on more wood!-the wind is chill;

But let it whistle as it will,

We'll keep our Christmas merry still.
Each age has deem'd the new-born year
The fittest time for festal cheer:
Even, heathen yet, the savage Dane
At Iol more deep the mead did drain ;2

1 [Mertoun-House, the seat of Hugh Scott, Esq., of Harden, is beautifully situated on the Tweed, about two miles below Dryburgh Abbey.]

2 The Iol of the heathen Danes (a word still applied to Christmas in Scotland) was solemnized with great festivity. The humour of the Danes at table displayed itself in pelting each other with bones; and Torfæus tells a long and curious story in the History of Hrolfe Kraka, of one Hottus, an inmate of the Court of Denmark, who was so generally assailed with these missiles, that he constructed, out of the bones with which he was overwhelmed, a very respectable

High on the beach his galleys drew,
And feasted all his pirate crew;
Then in his low and pine-built hall,
Where shields and axes deck'd the wall,
They gorged upon the half-dress'd steer;
Caroused in seas of sable beer;
While round, in brutal jest, were thrown
The half-gnaw'd rib, and marrowbone,
Or listen'd all, in grim delight,

While scalds yell'd out the joys of fight.
Then forth, in frenzy, would they hie,
While wildly-loose their red locks fly,
And dancing round the blazing pile,
They make such barbarous mirth the while,
As best might to the mind recall
The boisterous joys of Odin's hall.

And well our Christian sires of old Loved when the year its course had roll'd, And brought blithe Christmas back again, With all his hospitable train.

Domestic and religious rite

Gave honour to the holy night;

On Christmas eve the bells were rung;

intrenchment, against those who continued the raillery. The dances of the northern warriors round the great fires of pinetrees, are commemorated by Olaus Magnus, who says they danced with such fury, holding each other by the hands, that, if the grasp of any failed, he was pitched into the fire with the velocity of a sling. The sufferer, on such occasions, was instantly plucked out, and obliged to quaff off a certain measure of ale, as a penalty for "spoiling the king's fire."