She didn’t notice me at first, she just carried on humming her sweet, sad tune until a branch under my boot made her look. I sat down on the bench next to her, admiring her soft, white fur in the golden light. She told me of her love, a grand white hart named Bernard of Perigord. He was the biggest and strongest of all the white harts in the forest but had been shot down one fine October afternoon by a hunter. As French legend goes, any person who takes the life of a white hart is doomed to a life of unrequited love, and that hunter did indeed die a lonely and bitter soul. However, poor Elspeth was also sentenced to a life of loneliness without her beloved Bernard. She packed her bobbins and her lace making pins and ran far, far way from France until she found somewhere with a wall high enough to keep her safe from hunters herself!
So every year, on the anniversary of her dear Bernard’s falling, she sits and sings in her garden.