The housemaster looked on his son as the old carle spake, and a cloud gathered on his face a while; and when Stone-face had made an end he spake:
‘This is long and evil talk for the end of a merry day, O fosterer! Wilt thou not drink a draught, O Redesman, and then stand up and set thy fiddle-bow a-dancing, and cause it draw some fair words after it? For my cousin’s face hath grown sadder than a young maid’s should be, and my son’s eyes gleam with thoughts that are far away from us and abroad in the wild-wood seeking marvels.’
Then arose a man of middle-age from the top of the endlong bench on the east side of the hall: a man tall, thin and scant-haired, with a nose like an eagle’s neb: he reached out his hand for the bowl, and when they had given to him he handled it, and raised it aloft and cried:
‘Here I drink a double health to Face-of-god and the Bride, and the love that lieth between them, and the love betwixt them twain and us.’
He drank therewith, and the wine went up and down the hall, and all men drank, both carles and queens, with shouting and great joy. Then Redesman put down the cup (for it had come into his hands again), and reached his hand to the wall behind him, and took down his fiddle hanging there in its case, and drew it out and fell to tuning it, while the hall grew silent to hearken: then he handled the bow and laid it on the strings till they wailed and chuckled sweetly, and when the song was well awake and stirring briskly, then he lifted up his voice and sang:
‘O why on this morning, ye maids, are ye tripping Aloof from the meadows yet fresh with the dew, Where under the west wind the river is lipping The fragrance of mint, the white blooms and the blue?
For rough is the Portway where panting ye wander; On your feet and your gown-hems the dust lieth dun; Come trip through the grass and the meadow-sweet yonder, And forget neath the willows the sword of the sun.
Though fair are the moon-daisies down by the river, And soft is the grass and the white clover sweet; Though twixt us and the rock-wall the hot glare doth quiver, And the dust of the wheel-way is dun on our feet;
Yet here on the way shall we walk on this morning Though the sun burneth here, and sweet, cool is the mead; For here when in old days the Burg gave its warning, Stood stark under weapons the doughty of deed.