The Complete Works of Robert Burns Part 276

THE HIGHLAND QUEEN.

This Highland Queen, music and poetry, was composed by Mr. M'Vicar, purser of the Solebay man-of-war.--This I had from Dr. Blacklock.

BESS THE GAWKIE.

This song shows that the Scottish muses did not all leave us when we lost Ramsay and Oswald, as I have good reason to believe that the verses and music are both posterior to the days of these two gentlemen. It is a beautiful song, and in the genuine Scots taste. We have few pastoral compositions, I mean the pastoral of nature, that are equal to this.

OH, OPEN THE DOOR, LORD GREGORY.

It is somewhat singular, that in Lanark, Renfrew, Ayr, Wigton, Kirkudbright, and Dumfries-s.h.i.+res, there is scarcely an old song or tune which, from the t.i.tle, &c., can be guessed to belong to, or be the production of these countries. This, I conjecture, is one of these very few; as the ballad, which is a long one, is called, both by tradition and in printed collections, "The La.s.s of Lochroyan," which I take to be Lochroyan, in Galloway.

THE BANKS OF THE TWEED.

This song is one of the many attempts that English composers have made to imitate the Scottish manner, and which I shall, in these strictures, beg leave to distinguish by the appellation of Anglo-Scottish productions. The music is pretty good, but the verses are just above contempt.

THE BEDS OF SWEET ROSES.

This song, as far as I know, for the first time appears here in print.--When I was a boy, it was a very popular song in Ayrs.h.i.+re. I remember to have heard those fanatics, the Buchanites, sing some of their nonsensical rhymes, which they dignify with the name of hymns, to this air.

ROSLIN CASTLE.

These beautiful verses were the production of a Richard Hewit, a young man that Dr. Blacklock, to whom I am indebted for the anecdote, kept for some years as amanuensis. I do not know who is the author of the second song to the tune. Tytler, in his amusing history of Scots music, gives the air to Oswald; but in Oswald's own collection of Scots tunes, where he affixes an asterisk to those he himself composed, he does not make the least claim to the tune.

SAW YE JOHNNIE c.u.mMIN? QUO' SHE.

This song, for genuine humour in the verses, and lively originality in the air, is unparalleled. I take it to be very old.

CLOUT THE CALDRON.

A tradition is mentioned in the "Bee," that the second Bishop Chisholm, of Dunblane, used to say, that if he were going to be hanged, nothing would soothe his mind so much by the way as to hear "Clout the Caldron" played.

I have met with another tradition, that the old song to this tune,

"Hae ye onie pots or pans, Or onie broken chanlers,"

was composed on one of the Kenmure family, in the cavalier times; and alluded to an amour he had, while under hiding, in the disguise of an itinerant tinker. The air is also known by the name of

"The blacksmith and his ap.r.o.n,"

which from the rhythm, seems to have been a line of some old song to the tune.

SAW YE MY PEGGY.

This charming song is much older, and indeed superior to Ramsay's verses, "The Toast," as he calls them. There is another set of the words, much older still, and which I take to be the original one, but though it has a very great deal of merit, it is not quite ladies'

reading.

The original words, for they can scarcely be called verses, seem to be as follows; a song familiar from the cradle to every Scottish ear.

"Saw ye my Maggie, Saw ye my Maggie, Saw ye my Maggie Linkin o'er the lea?

High kilted was she, High kilted was she, High kilted was she, Her coat aboon her knee.

What mark has your Maggie, What mark has your Maggie, What mark has your Maggie, That ane may ken her be?"

Though it by no means follows that the silliest verses to an air must, for that reason, be the original song; yet I take this ballad, of which I have quoted part, to be old verses. The two songs in Ramsay, one of them evidently his own, are never to be met with in the fire-side circle of our peasantry; while that which I take to be the old song, is in every shepherd's mouth. Ramsay, I suppose, had thought the old verses unworthy of a place in his collection.

THE FLOWERS OF EDINBURGH.

This song is one of the many effusions of Scots Jacobitism.--The t.i.tle "Flowers of Edinburgh," has no manner of connexion with the present verses, so I suspect there has been an older set of words, of which the t.i.tle is all that remains.

By the bye, it is singular enough that the Scottish muses were all Jacobites.--I have paid more attention to every description of Scots songs than perhaps anybody living has done, and I do not recollect one single stanza, or even the t.i.tle of the most trifling Scots air, which has the least panegyrical reference to the families of Na.s.sau or Brunswick; while there are hundreds satirizing them.--This may be thought no panegyric on the Scots Poets, but I mean it as such. For myself, I would always take it as a compliment to have it said, that my heart ran before my head,--and surely the gallant though unfortunate house of Stewart, the kings of our fathers for so many heroic ages, is a theme * * * * * *

JAMIE GAY.

Jamie Gay is another and a tolerable Anglo-Scottish piece.