(_For the Mirror_.)


The remorseless tragedy on which this ballad is founded, took place
upwards of a century ago. In the retired village of Romanby, near
Northallerton, Yorkshire, there resided a desperate band of coiners,
whose respectability and cunning concealment precluded all possibility of
suspicion as to their proceedings. The victim of their revenge was Mary
Ward, the servant of one of those ruffians. Having obtained an accidental
view of some secret apartments appropriated to their treasonable
practices, she unguardedly communicated her knowledge to an acquaintance;
which reaching her master's ears, he determined to destroy her. The most
plausible story, time, and means were selected for this purpose. On a
Sunday evening, after sunset, an unknown personage on horseback arrived
at her master's mansion, half equipped, to give colour to his alleged
haste, and slated that he was dispatched for Mary, as _her mother was
dying_. She lingered to ask her master's permission; but he feigned sleep,
and she departed without his leave. On the table of her room was her
Bible, opened at those remarkable words in Job, "They shall seek me _in
the morning_, and shall not find me; and where I am, they shall not come."
Her home was at the distance of eight miles from Romanby; and Morton
bridge, hard by the heath where she was murdered, is the traditionary
scene of her nocturnal revisitings. The author has seen the tree said to
have been distorted by her in endeavouring to climb the fence; and has
visited the village and bridge, from which his descriptions are
accurately taken. The impression of her re-appearance is only
_poetically_ assumed, for there is too much of what Coleridge would term
"the divinity of nature" around Morton Bridge, to warrant its association
with supernatural mysteries.