Chapter I: Dream'd I Lay Where Flowers Were Springing

These two stanzas I composed when I was seventeen, and are among the oldest of my printed pieces.

* * * * *

AH! THE POOR SHEPHERD'S MOURNFUL FATE.

Tune--"Gallashiels."

The old title, "Sour Plums o' Gallashiels," probably was the beginning of a song to this air, which is now lost.

The tune of Gallashiels was composed about the beginning of the present century by the Laird of Gallashiel's piper.

* * * * *

THE BANKS OF THE DEVON.

These verses were composed on a charming girl, a Miss Charlotte Hamilton, who is now married to James M'Kitrick Adair, Esq., physician. She is sister to my worthy friend Gavin Hamilton, of Mauchline, and was born on the banks of the Ayr, but was, at the time I wrote these lines, residing at Herveyston, in Clackmannanshire, on the romantic banks of the little river Devon. I first heard the air from a lady in Inverness, and got the notes taken down for this work.

* * * * *

MILL, MILL O.

The original, or at least a song evidently prior to Ramsay's is still extant.--It runs thus,

CHORUS.

"The mill, mill O, and the kill, kill O,
And the coggin o' Peggy's wheel, O,
The sack and the sieve, and a' she did leave,
And danc'd the miller's reel O.--

As I came down yon waterside,
And by yon shellin-hill O,
There I spied a bonie bonie lass,
And a lass that I lov'd right well O."

* * * * *

WE RAN AND THEY RAN.

The author of "We ran and they ran"--was a Rev. Mr. Murdoch M'Lennan, minister at Crathie, Dee-side.

* * * * *

WALY, WALY.

In the west country I have heard a different edition of the second stanza.--Instead of the four lines, beginning with, "When cockle-shells, &c.," the other way ran thus:--

"O wherefore need I busk my head,
Or wherefore need I kame my hair,
Sin my fause luve has me forsook,
And sys, he'll never luve me mair."

* * * * *

DUNCAN GRAY.

Dr. Blacklock informed me that he had often heard the tradition, that this air was composed by a carman in Glasgow.

* * * * *

DUMBARTON DRUMS.

This is the last of the West-Highland airs; and from it over the whole tract of country to the confines of Tweedside, there is hardly a tune or song that one can say has taken its origin from any place or transaction in that part of Scotland.--The oldest Ayrshire reel, is Stewarton Lasses, which was made by the father of the present Sir Walter Montgomery Cunningham, alias Lord Lysle; since which period there has indeed been local music in that country in great plenty.--Johnie Faa is the only old song which I could ever trace as belonging to the extensive county of Ayr.

* * * * *

CAULD KAIL IN ABERDEEN.

This song is by the Duke of Gordon.--The old verses are,

"There's cauld kail in Aberdeen,
And castocks in Strathbogie;
When ilka lad maun hae his lass,
Then fye, gie me my coggie.

CHORUS.

My coggie, Sirs, my coggie, Sirs,
I cannot want my coggie;
I wadna gie my three-girr'd cap
For e'er a quene on Bogie.--

There's Johnie Smith has got a wife,
That scrimps him o' his coggie,
If she were mine, upon my life
I wad douk her in a bogie."

* * * * *

FOR LAKE OF GOLD.

The country girls in Ayrshire, instead of the line--

"She me forsook for a great duke,"

say

"For Athole's duke she me forsook;"

which I take to be the original reading.

These were composed by the late Dr. Austin, physician at Edinburgh.--He had courted a lady, to whom he was shortly to have been married; but the Duke of Athole having seen her, became so much in love with her, that he made proposals of marriage, which were accepted of, and she jilted the doctor.

* * * * *

HERE'S A HEALTH TO MY TRUE LOVE, &c.

This song is Dr. Blacklock's. He told me that tradition gives the air to our James IV. of Scotland.

* * * * *

HEY TUTTI TAITI.

I Have met the tradition universally over Scotland, and particularly about Stirling, in the neighbourhood of the scene, that this air was Robert Bruce's march at the battle of Bannockburn.

* * * * *

RAVING WINDS AROUND HER BLOWING.

I Composed these verses on Miss Isabella M'Leod, of Raza, alluding to her feelings on the death of her sister, and the still more melancholy death of her sister's husband, the late Earl of Loudon; who shot himself out of sheer heart-break at some mortifications he suffered, owing to the deranged state of his finances.

* * * * *

TAK YOUR AULD CLOAK ABOUT YE.

A part of this old song, according to the English set of it, is quoted in Shakspeare.

* * * * *

YE GODS, WAS STREPHON'S PICTURE BLEST?

Tune--"Fourteenth of October."

The title of this air shows that it alludes to the famous king Crispian, the patron of the honourable corporation of shoemakers.--St. Crispian's day falls on the fourteenth of October old style, as the old proverb tells:

"On the fourteenth of October
Was ne'er a sutor sober."

* * * * *

SINCE ROBB'D OF ALL THAT CHARM'D MY VIEWS.

The old name of this air is, "the Blossom o' the Raspberry." The song is Dr. Blacklock's.

* * * * *

YOUNG DAMON.

This air is by Oswald.

* * * * *

KIRK WAD LET ME BE.

Tradition in the western parts of Scotland tells that this old song, of which there are still three stanzas extant, once saved a covenanting clergyman out of a scrape. It was a little prior to the revolution, a period when being a Scots covenanter was being a felon, that one of their clergy, who was at that very time hunted by the merciless soldiery, fell in, by accident, with a party of the military. The soldiers were not exactly acquainted with the person of the reverend gentleman of whom they were in search; but from suspicious circumstances, they fancied that they had got one of that cloth and opprobrious persuasion among them in the person of this stranger. "Mass John" to extricate himself, assumed a freedom of manners, very unlike the gloomy strictness of his sect; and among other convivial exhibitions, sung (and some traditions say, composed on the spur of the occasion) "Kirk wad let me be," with such effect, that the soldiers swore he was a d----d honest fellow, and that it was impossible _he_ could belong to those hellish conventicles; and so gave him his liberty.

The first stanza of this song, a little altered, is a favourite kind of dramatic interlude acted at country weddings, in the south-west parts of the kingdom. A young fellow is dressed up like an old beggar; a peruke, commonly made of carded tow, represents hoary locks; an old bonnet; a ragged plaid, or surtout, bound with a straw rope for a girdle; a pair of old shoes, with straw ropes twisted round his ankles, as is done by shepherds in snowy weather: his face they disguise as like wretched old age as they can: in this plight he is brought into the wedding-house, frequently to the astonishment of strangers, who are not in the secret, and begins to sing--

"O, I am a silly auld man,
My name it is auld Glenae," &c.

He is asked to drink, and by and bye to dance, which after some uncouth excuses he is prevailed on to do, the fiddler playing the tune, which here is commonly called "Auld Glenae;" in short he is all the time so plied with liquor that he is understood to get intoxicated, and with all the ridiculous gesticulations of an old drunken beggar, he dances and staggers until he falls on the floor; yet still in all his riot, nay, in his rolling and tumbling on the floor, with some or other drunken motion of his body, he beats time to the music, till at last he is supposed to be carried out dead drunk.

* * * * *

MUSING ON THE ROARING OCEAN.

I composed these verses out of compliment to a Mrs. M'Lachlan, whose husband is an officer in the East Indies.

* * * * *

BLYTHE WAS SHE.

I composed these verses while I stayed at Ochtertyre with Sir William Murray.--The lady, who was also at Ochtertyre at the same time, was the well-known toast, Miss Euphemia Murray, of Lentrose; she was called, and very justly, "The Flower of Strathmore."

* * * * *

JOHNNIE FAA, OR THE GYPSIE LADDIE.

The people in Ayrshire begin this song--

"The gypsies cam to my Lord Cassilis' yett."--

They have a great many more stanzas in this song than I ever yet saw in any printed copy.--The castle is still remaining at Maybole, where his lordship shut up his wayward spouse, and kept her for life.

* * * * *

TO DAUNTON ME.

The two following old stanzas to this tune have some merit:

"To daunton me, to daunton me,
O ken ye what it is that'll daunton me?--
There's eighty-eight and eighty-nine,
And a' that I hae borne sinsyne,
There's cess and press and Presbytrie,
I think it will do meikle for to daunton me.

But to wanton me, to wanton me,
O ken ye what it is that wad wanton me--
To see gude corn upon the rigs,
And banishment amang the Whigs,
And right restor'd where right sud be,
I think it would do meikle for to wanton me."

* * * * *

THE BONNIE LASS MADE THE BED TO ME.

"The Bonnie Lass made the Bed to me," was composed on an amour of Charles II. when skulking in the North, about Aberdeen, in the time of the usurpation. He formed _une petite affaire_ with a daughter of the house of Portletham, who was the "lass that made the bed to him:"--two verses of it are,

"I kiss'd her lips sae rosy red,
While the tear stood blinkin in her e'e;
I said, My lassie, dinna cry,
For ye ay shall make the bed to me.

She took her mither's holland sheets,
And made them a' in sarks to me;
Blythe and merry may she be,
The lass that made the bed to me."

* * * * *

ABSENCE.

A song in the manner of Shenstone.

This song and air are both by Dr. Blacklock.

* * * * *