Blest wi' content, and milk, and mealO leeze me on my spinning-wheel! On ilka hand the burnies trot, On lofty aiks the cushats wail, Wi' sma' to sell, and less to buy, BEWARE O' BONNIE ANN. I COMPOSED this song out of compliment t Miss Ann Masterton, the daughter of my frien Allan Masterton, the author of the air of Strathallan's Lament, and two or three others in this work. YE gallants bright I red ye right, Beware o' bonnie Ann; Your heart she will trepan. That sweetly ye might span. Youth, grace, and love, attendant move, In a' their charms, and conquering arms, Ir is remarkable of this air, that it is the confine of that country where the greatest part of our Lowland music, (so far as from the title, words, &c. we can localize it), has been composed. From Craigie-burn, near Moffat, until one reaches the West Highlands, we have scarcely one slow air of any antiquity. The song was composed on a passion which a Mr. Gillespie, a particular friend of mine, had for a Miss Lorimer, afterwards a Mrs. Whelpdale. The young lady was born at Craigieburn wood. The chorus is part of an old foolish ballad. Beyond thee, dearie, beyond thee, dearie, BLYTHE HAE I BEEN ON YON HILL Tune-" Liggeram cosh." BLYTHE hae I been on yon hill, As the lambs before me; Careless ilka thought and free, As the breeze flew o'er me: Now nae langer sport and play, Mirth or sang can please me: Lesley is sae fair and coy, Care and anguish seize me. Heavy, heavy is the task, Hopeless love declaring: Trembling, I dow nocht but glowr, Sighing, dumb, despairing! If she winna ease the thraws, In my bosom swelling; Underneath the grass-green sod, Soon maun be my dwelling. Farewell! and ne'er such sorrows tear He wanders as free as the wind on his mountains, REPLY TO THE ABOVE. BY A YOUNG ENGLISH GENTLEWOMAN. FOUND STAY, my Willie-yet believe me, CHLOE. ALTERED FROM AN OLD ENGLISH SONG Ir was the charming month of May, The youthful, charming Chloe; From peaceful slumber she arose, Wad wring my bosom shouldst thou leave me. Girt on her mantle and her hose, Tell me that thou yet art true, And a' my wrongs shall be forgiven; And when this heart proves false to thee, Yon sun shall cease its course in heaven. But to think I was betray'd, That falsehood e'er our loves should sunder! To take the floweret to my breast, And find the guilefu' serpent under ! Could I hope thou'dst ne'er deceive me, CALEDONIA. THEIR groves O sweet myrtles let foreign lands reckon, Where bright-beaming summers exalt the perfume; Far dearer to me yon lone glen o' green breckan, With the burn stealing under the lang yellow broom. Far dearer to me yon humble broom bowers, unseen; For there, lightly tripping amang the wild flowers, Though rich is the breeze, in their gay sunny vallies, And cauld Caledonia's blast on the wave; Their sweet-scented woodlands, that skirt the proud palace, And o'er the flowery mead she goes, The feather'd people you might see Burns wrote this song in compliment to Mrs. Burns during their honeymoon. The air, with many others of equal beauty, was the composition of a Mr. Marshall, who, in Burns's time, was butler to the Duke of Gordon. The This beautiful song-beautiful for both its amatory and its patriotic sentiment-seems to have been com. posed by Burns during the period when he was courting the lady who afterwards became his wife. present generation is much interested in this lady, and deservedly; as, in addition to her poetical history, which is an extremely interesting one, she is a personage of the greatest private worth, and in every respect deserving to be esteemed as the widow of Scotland's best and most endeared bard. The following anecdote will perhaps be held as testifying, in no inconsiderat de degree, to a quality which she may not hitherto have been supposed to possess-her wit. It is generally known, that Mrs. Burns has, ever since her husband's death, occupied exactly the same house in Dumfries, which she inhabited before that event, and that it is customary for strangers, who happen to pass through or visit the town, to pay their respects to her, with or without letters of introduction, precisely as they do to the churchyard, the bridge, the harbour, or any other public object of curiosity about the place. A gay young English gentleman one day visited Mrs. Burns, and after he had seen all that she had to show -the bedroom in which the poet died, his original por trait by Nasmyth, his family-bible, with the names and birth-days of himself, his wife, and children, written on a blank-leaf by his own hand, and some other little trifles of the same nature-he proceeded to intreat that she would have the kindness to present him with some relic of the poet, which he might carry away with him, as a wonder, to show in his own country. "Indeed, Sir," said Mrs. Burns, "I have given away so many re lies of Mr. Burns, that, to tell ye the truth, I have not one left."-"Oh, you must surely have something," said the persevering Saxon; "any thing will do-any little scrap of his handwriting-the least thing you please. All I want is just a relic of the poet; and any thing, you know, will do for a relic." Some further What are they?-the haunt o' the tyrant and altercation took place, the lady reasserting that she had slave! The slave's spicy forests and gold-bubbling fountains, The brave Caledonian views wi' disdain; no relic to give, and he as repeatedly renewing his request. At length, fairly tired out with the man's im portunities, Mrs. Burns said to him, with a smile, 'Deed, Sir, unless ye tak mysell, then, I dinna see how you are to get what you want; for, really, I'm the only relic o' him that I ken o'." The petitioner at once withdrew his request. |