The curious measures, lords and ladies treading
The self-same strains--the king looks back by chance
And spies a strange intruder fill the dance,
Namely, a mere anatomy, quite bare,
His naked limbs both without flesh and hair
(As he deciphers Death), who stalks about,
Keeping true measure till the dance be out.

Inexplicable, however, as the presence of this unearthly, mysterious
personage was felt to be by all engaged in the marriage revels, it
was regarded as the forerunner of some approaching catastrophe.
Prophets and seers lost no time in turning the affair to their own
interest, and amongst them Thomas the Rhymer predicted that the 16th
of March would be "the stormiest day that ever was witnessed in
Scotland." But when the supposed ill-fated day arrived, it was the
very reverse of stormy, being still and mild, and public opinion began
to ridicule the prophetic utterance of Thomas the Rhymer, when, to the
amazement and consternation of all, there came the appalling news,
"The king is dead," whereupon Thomas the Rhymer ejaculated, "That is
the storm which I meant, and there was never tempest which will bring
to Scotland more ill-luck."

The disappearance of the heir to a property, which has always been a
favourite subject with novelists and romance writers, has occasionally
happened in real life, and a Shropshire legend relates how, long ago,
the heir of the house of Corbet went away to the wars, and remained
absent so many years that his family--as in the case of Enoch
Arden--gave up all hope of ever seeing him again, and eventually
mourned for him as dead. His younger brother succeeded to the
property, and prepared to take to himself a wife, and reign in the old