Ancient Scottish ballads, recovered from tradition, and never before ...

Ancient Scottish ballads, recovered from tradition, and never before ... Ancient Scottish ballads, recovered from tradition, and never before ...

29.03.2013 Views

216 Then for their life ye sair shall dree, Ye sail be hangit on a tree, Or thrown into the poison'd lake, To feed the toads and rattle-snake."

NOTES DUKE OF PERTH'S THREE DAUGHTERS. Or thrown into the poison'd lake, Tofeed the toads and rattlesnake p. 216, v. 18. Those readers who are versant in tales of knight-er- rantry, will here be reminded of knights, who, in search of perilous enterprises, had often to cross nox- ious lakes teeming with pestilential vapours, and swarming with serpents, and other venomous reptiles, that opposed their baneful and offensive influence to im- pede or destroy these bold adventurers. Though the " poisoned lake" seems the fiction of romance, yet his- tory in her record of human cruelty, shows that the use of venomous animals to inflict a lingering and painful death, was not unknown in Britain. The Saxon Chronicle, in detailing the cruelties exercised by the Normans upon the Anglo-Saxons, during the

216<br />

Then for their life ye sair shall dree,<br />

Ye sail be hangit on a tree,<br />

Or thrown into the poison'd lake,<br />

To feed the toads <strong>and</strong> rattle-snake."

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