In his banner far streaming
The crescent is gleaming,

And fiercely his bands through the serried links burst.

Ha! quenched is the crescent's light-lo! where he bleeding lies!

True were the words he recklessly braved;

Mark ye his glazing eye,

List ye his dying cry!

"Triumph! the bird in my bosom I've saved."

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

PERCY'S CROSS is a pillar commemorative of the death of SIR RALPH PERCY, who was killed at the Battle of Hedgley Moor, in one of the contests between the Yorkists and Lancastrians in the year 1463, when nearly all the vassal population of Northumberland were destroyed. The cross stands in a field on the east side of the road leading from Morpeth to Wooler, and at a short distance to the north of the 21st milestone. The arms of Percy and Lucy and other heraldic insignia are rudely sculptured on the four sides Of the dark grey stone,

Now shattered by time and rugged grown,

Memorial of deeds gone by,

Yet woos the passing wanderer's eye—

Lone vestige of the mighty past!

Upreared by long-sepulchred hands,

Like monarch old in exile cast,

In ruined majesty it stands

Casting an aspect of the tomb,
A shade of monumental gloom,
O'er the rude heath, that far and wide,
(As travellers' weary eye may ken),
Scarce shews a trace of human pride-
A distant residence of men.

'Tis sculptured with devices o'er,

And mottoes of the brave of yore;

But there time's wasting breath hath been,
And the winter winds of heaven keen,

And the tempest's rush and the drenching rain,
That will not beat for an age in vain,

Mouldering the artist's toil away,

Wasting all in slow decay.

'Tis of the PERCY's deathless fame,

That dark grey

Cross remains to tell;

It bears the PERCY'S honoured name,
For near its base the PERCY fell.
And there, when evening's shadows brown,
Dark Hedgley, on thy heath sank down,
Oft have I lingered, till the gale,

That died in murmurs faint away,

Seemed laden with a feeble wail,

O'er that lone relic worn and grey.
And oft imagination's eye,

Dim through the mist could there descry
Dark shadowy forms careering by;

Each wielding in its cloudy hand
The semblance of a spear or brand,
As if the spirits of the brave,
Who found on Hedgley Moor their

grave,

To mourn above the vestige came,
That bears their chieftain's honoured name.

Vide Service's Reminiscences.

THE LEGEND

OF

SHEWIN' SHIELS;

OR,

CUDDY O' THE STEEL.

(HEXHAMSHIRE.)

"Season your admiration for a while,
With an attent ear, till I may deliver
Upon the witness of these same pages,
This marvel to you."

SHEWIN' SHIELS lies on the western extremity of Warden parish, in Tynedale Ward. Its castle is in ruins, and is "as solitary a spot as sorrow can desire." Popular tradition says that King Arthur and his court are enchanted near the ruins of Shewin' Shiels Castle, in the "cavern of the enchanted warriors," to which the following legend owes its existence. To this cognomen should be appended the sub-title of the "Seven Sleepers," which is generally done by the best story-tellers in "the north countrie." Camden mistook this place for the station of HUNNUM, "but," says Horsley, "I saw nothing that was Roman in it."