struck his imagination very forcibly and afterwards he could not rest because he was so anxious to know whether the song of a dying swan was a fact and not merely a myth.
Moved by this absorbing impulse, he went a short time later into the Park at Closeburn with the intention of shooting sparrows with his cross-bow, and at that moment, unluckily, the prophetic swans came sailing upon the lake in his direction.
Without a thought as to what might be the result of his action, Robert aimed his bow at one of the swans, and the arrow, winging its way over the lake, hit its mark so surely that the swan perished on the spot. Its companion gave a shrill and lamentable scream and vanished forthwith.
Robert, filled with remorse at what he had done, buried the body of his victim, which had drifted to the shores of the lake, and told nobody what had taken place. But for many years, much to the surprise of the family, no swans came to Closeburn.
Much later, when the matter had been almost forgotten, a single swan returned, but, unlike the earlier visitants, it was shy to wildness, and upon its breast was seen a blood-red stain.
People shook their heads and said this phantom swan boded the family no good, and their prognostications came true, for though the swan with the bleeding breast came more rarely than the others had done, every time it appeared it heralded misfortune. First the sudden death of the Lord of Closeburn occurred at home and then one of his relatives was lost in a shipwreck. And again at the third nuptials of Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick, the first baronet of that name, his son and heir Roger, who was in good health at the time, caught sight of the swan, and in full conviction that the warning was meant to tell of impending evil, he went home duly despondent. His father rallied him on his mood, which he said proceeded from a jealous dislike of his new stepmother. But Roger answered, "Perhaps before long, you too may be sorrowing," and that very night he gave up the ghost.
Since then, tradition says, that the mystic wounded swan has never been seen at Closeburn, and the tragic revenge has been completely fulfilled.
According to the account of Sir Walter Scott, supernatural appearances announce death to the ancient Highland family of the MacLeans of Lochbuy. The spirit of an ancestor who was slain in battle is heard to gallop along a stony bank and then to ride thrice around the family residence ringing his fairy bridle and thus intimating the approaching calamity. The reference to this legend occurs in "The Lady of the Lake."