Ivanhoe by Walter Scott — Read

I found them winding of Marcello's corpse. / And there was such a solemn melody, / 'Twixt doleful songs, tears, and sad elegies -- / Such as old grandames, watching by the dead, / Are wont to outwear the night with. / - Old Play

The mode of entering the great tower of Coningsburgh Castle is very peculiar, and partakes of the rude simplicity of the early times in which it was erected. A flight of steps, so deep and narrow as to be almost precipitous, leads up to a low portal in the south side of the tower, by which the adventurous antiquary may still, or at least could a few years since, gain access to a small stair within the thickness of the main wall of the tower, which leads up to the third story of the building -- the two lower being dungeons or vaults, which neither receive air nor light, save by a square hole in the third story, with which they seem to have communicated by a ladder. The access to the upper apartments in the tower which consist in all of four stories, is given by stairs which are carried up through the external buttresses.