

Transcribed from the 1895 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org





                                 BALLADS


                                * * * * *

                                    BY

                          ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]

                             _SECOND EDITION_

                                * * * * *

                                  LONDON
                       CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY

                                   1895

                                * * * * *




CONTENTS

THE SONG OF RAHÉRO: A LEGEND OF TAHITI—
       DEDICATION: TO ORI A ORI                    1
              I.  THE SLAYING OF TÁMATÉA           3
             II.  THE VENGING OF TÁMATÉA          20
            III.  RAHÉRO                          40
       NOTES TO THE SONG OF RAHÉRO                55
THE FEAST OF FAMINE: MARQUESAN MANNERS—
              I.  THE PRIEST’S VIGIL              61
             II.  THE LOVERS                      67
            III.  THE FEAST                       75
             IV.  THE RAID                        86
       NOTES TO THE FEAST OF FAMINE               95
TICONDEROGA: A LEGEND OF THE WEST HIGHLANDS—
       TICONDEROGA                                99
              I.  THE SAYING OF THE NAME         100
             II.  THE SEEKING OF THE NAME        109
            III.  THE PLACE OF THE NAME          113
       NOTES TO TICONDEROGA                      119
HEATHER ALE: A GALLOWAY LEGEND—
       HEATHER ALE                               123
       NOTE TO HEATHER ALE                       129
CHRISTMAS AT SEA—
       CHRISTMAS AT SEA                          133




THE SONG OF RAHÉRO
A LEGEND OF TAHITI


TO ORI A ORI


   ORI, my brother in the island mode,
   In every tongue and meaning much my friend,
   This story of your country and your clan,
   In your loved house, your too much honoured guest,
   I made in English.  Take it, being done;
   And let me sign it with the name you gave.

                                                                TERIITERA.



I. THE SLAYING OF TÁMATÉA


   IT fell in the days of old, as the men of Taiárapu tell,
   A youth went forth to the fishing, and fortune favoured him well.
   Támatéa his name: gullible, simple, and kind,
   Comely of countenance, nimble of body, empty of mind,
   His mother ruled him and loved him beyond the wont of a wife,
   Serving the lad for eyes and living herself in his life.
   Alone from the sea and the fishing came Támatéa the fair,
   Urging his boat to the beach, and the mother awaited him there,
   —“Long may you live!” said she.  “Your fishing has sped to a wish.
   And now let us choose for the king the fairest of all your fish.
   For fear inhabits the palace and grudging grows in the land,
   Marked is the sluggardly foot and marked the niggardly hand,
   The hours and the miles are counted, the tributes numbered and
   weighed,
   And woe to him that comes short, and woe to him that delayed!”

   So spoke on the beach the mother, and counselled the wiser thing.
   For Rahéro stirred in the country and secretly mined the king.
   Nor were the signals wanting of how the leaven wrought,
   In the cords of obedience loosed and the tributes grudgingly brought.
   And when last to the temple of Oro the boat with the victim sped,
   And the priest uncovered the basket and looked on the face of the
   dead,
   Trembling fell upon all at sight of an ominous thing,
   For there was the aito {5} dead, and he of the house of the king.

   So spake on the beach the mother, matter worthy of note,
   And wattled a basket well, and chose a fish from the boat;
   And Támatéa the pliable shouldered the basket and went,
   And travelled, and sang as he travelled, a lad that was well content.
   Still the way of his going was round by the roaring coast,
   Where the ring of the reef is broke and the trades run riot the most.
   On his left, with smoke as of battle, the billows battered the land;
   Unscalable, turreted mountains rose on the inner hand.
   And cape, and village, and river, and vale, and mountain above,
   Each had a name in the land for men to remember and love;
   And never the name of a place, but lo! a song in its praise:
   Ancient and unforgotten, songs of the earlier days,
   That the elders taught to the young, and at night, in the full of the
   moon,
   Garlanded boys and maidens sang together in tune.
   Támatéa the placable went with a lingering foot;
   He sang as loud as a bird, he whistled hoarse as a flute;
   He broiled in the sun, he breathed in the grateful shadow of trees,
   In the icy stream of the rivers he waded over the knees;
   And still in his empty mind crowded, a thousand-fold,
   The deeds of the strong and the songs of the cunning heroes of old.

   And now was he come to a place Taiárapu honoured the most,
   Where a silent valley of woods debouched on the noisy coast,
   Spewing a level river.  There was a haunt of Pai. {7}
   There, in his potent youth, when his parents drove him to die,
   Honoura lived like a beast, lacking the lamp and the fire,
   Washed by the rains of the trade and clotting his hair in the mire;
   And there, so mighty his hands, he bent the tree to his foot—
   So keen the spur of his hunger, he plucked it naked of fruit.
   There