s having been battered by the ships of the Parliament under Deane,
during the long civil war, this part of the castle was much more ruinous
than the rest, and exhibited a great chasm, through which Mannering could
observe the sea, and the little vessel (an armed lugger), which retained
her station in the centre of the bay. [Footnote: The outline of the above
description, as far as the supposed ruins are concerned, will be found
somewhat to resemble the noble remains of Carlaverock Castle, six or
seven miles from Dumfries, and near to Lochar Moss.] While Mannering was
gazing round the ruins, he heard from the interior of an apartment on the
left hand the voice of the gipsy he had seen on the preceding evening. He
soon found an aperture through which he could observe her without being
himself visible; and could not help feeling that her figure, her
employment, and her situation conveyed the exact impression of an ancient
sibyl.

She sate upon a broken corner-stone in the angle of a paved apartment,
part of which she had swept clean to afford a smooth space for the
evolutions of her spindle. A strong sunbeam through a lofty and narrow
window fell upon her wild dress and features, and afforded her light for
her occupation; the rest of the apartment was very gloomy. Equipt in a
habit which mingled the national dress of the Scottish common people with
something of an Eastern costume, she spun a thread drawn from wool of
three different colours, black, white, and grey, by assistance of those
ancient implements of housewifery now almost banished from the land, the
distaff and spindle. As she spun, she sung what seemed to be a charm.
Mannering, after in vain attempting to make himself master of the exact
words of her song, afterwards attempted the following paraphrase of what,
from a few intelligible phrases, he concluded to be its purport:--

Twist ye, twine ye! even so
Mingle shades of joy and woe,
Hope, and fear, and peace, and strife,
In the thread of human life.

While the mystic twist is spinning,
And the infant's life beginning,
Dimly seen through twilight bending,
Lo, what varied shapes attending!

Passions wild, and Follies vain,
Pleasures soon exchanged for pain,
Doubt, and Jealousy, and Fear
In the magic dance appear.

Now they wax, and now they dwindle,
Whirling with the whirling spindle.
Twist ye, twine ye! even so
Mingle human