Tamlane

A STORY FROM AN OLD SCOTCH BALLAD

FAIR Janet was the daughter of the Earl of March, and she was so beautiful that many knights and noble gentlemen had asked her to marry them, but she would say yes to none of them.

One day she sat at her window sewing a seam, and she heard the sound of a horn down in the forest. It blew so sweet and it blew so clear that she laid down her seam to listen, and it seemed to her that it called “Janet, fair Janet, come hither!”

Fair Janet dropped her sewing and down to the wood she ran. She looked about her, and there stood a handsome knight. From head to foot he was dressed in green, and in his hand he held a silver horn, and when he saw her he raised it to his lips and blew again so soft and clear that Janet had never heard anything like it.

“Now tell me,” said she, “is that a fairy horn that it blows so sweet a note?”

“It is indeed a fairy horn,” answered the stranger, “and it was in Fairyland that I learned to wind it. In many a forest have I blown it, north and south, and east and west, and you are the first to hear and answer it.”

Then fair Janet was afraid, for she thought the stranger must be a fairy knight, and she did not know what charm he might cast about her.

The knight saw she was frightened, so he said, “From Fairyland I brought it, yet I am of human flesh and blood like you. I am the son of the Earl of Murray, and once my name was John, though in Fairyland they call me Tamlane. When I was a child, the fairies stole me, and they have kept me with them ever since. Bright and fair it is in Fairyland, and I am the Queen’s favoured knight, but my heart wearies to be back in my own country and living with my own kind once more.”