Poem by Anonymous

Barthram’s Dirge

THEY shot him dead at the Nine-Stone Rig,
  Beside the Headless Cross,
And they left him lying in his blood,
  Upon the moor and moss.

*        *        *        *        *

They made a bier of the broken bough,
  The sauch and the aspin gray,
And they bore him to the Lady Chapel,
  And waked him there all day.

A lady came to that lonely bower,
  And threw her robes aside,
She tore her ling [long] yellow hair,
  And knelt at Barthram’s side.

She bathed him in the Lady-Well
  His wounds so deep and sair,
And she plaited a garland for his breast,
  And a garland for his hair.

They rowed him in a lily-sheet,
  And bare him to his earth,
And the Gray Friars sung the dead man’s mass,
  As they passed the Chapel Garth.

They buried him at [the mirk] midnight,
  When the dew fell cold and still,
When the aspin gray forgot to play,
  And the mist clung to the hill.

They dug his grave but a bare foot deep,
  By the edge of the Ninestone Burn,
And they covered him o’er with the heather-flower,
  The moss and the Lady fern.

A Gray Friar staid upon the grave,
  And sang till the morning tide,
And a friar shall sing for Barthram’s soul,
  While the Headless Cross shall bide.

1. Gathering of Atholl
2. The Banks o’ Glaizart
3. Fare Ye Weel, My Auld Wife
4. The Aisle of Tombs
5. Sir Richard Whittington’s Advancement

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