ik,
Nor yet upon her chin;
Nor yet upon her yellow hair,
To cleanse the deadly sin.

The maiden touched the clay-cauld corpse,
A drap it never bled;
The ladye laid her hand on him,
And soon the 'ground was red.

Out they hae ta'en her, may Catherine,
And put her mistress in:
The flame tuik fast upon her cheik,
Tuik fast upon her chin,
Tuik fast upon her faire bodye--
She burn'd like hollins green.[E]

[Footnote A: _Birled_--Plied.]

[Footnote B: _Douk_--Dive.]

[Footnote C: _Weil-heid_--Eddy.]

[Footnote D: _Sackless_--Guiltless.]

[Footnote E: _Hollins green_--Green holly.]

NOTES ON EARL RICHARD.

_The candles burned bright._--P. 403. v. 4.

These are unquestionably the corpse lights, called in Wales _Canhwyllan
Cyrph_, which are sometimes seen to illuminate the spot where a dead
body is concealed. The editor is informed, that, some years ago, the
corpse of a man, drowned in the Ettrick, below Selkirk, was discovered
by means of these candles. Such lights are common in church-yards, and
are probably of a phosphoric nature. But rustic superstition derives
them from supernatural agency, and supposes, that, as soon as life has
departed, a pale flame appears at the window of the house, in which the
person had died, and glides towards the church-yard, tracing through
every winding the route of the future funeral, and pausing where the
bier is to rest. This and other opinions, relating to the "tomb-fires'
livid gleam," seem to be of Runic extraction.

_The deepest pot in a' the linn._--P. 403. v. 5.

The deep holes, scooped in the rock by the eddies of a river, are called
_pots;_ the motion of the water having there some resemblance to a
boiling cauldron.

_Linn_, means the pool beneath a cataract.

_The maiden touched the clay-cauld corpse,
A drop it never bled._--P. 405. v. I.

This verse, which is restored from tradition, refers to a superstition
formerly received in most parts of Europe, and even resorted to, by
judicial authority, for the discovery of murder. In Germany, this
experiment was called _bahr-recht_, or the law of the bier; because,
the murdered body being stretched upon a bier, the suspected person was
obliged to put one hand upon the wound, and the other upon the mouth
of the deceased, and, in that posture, call upon heaven to attest his
innocence. If, during this ceremony, the blood gushed from the mouth,
nose, or wound, a cir