Then tell me how to woo thee, love; O tell me how to woo thee! If gay attire delight thine eye, I'll tend thy chamber door all night, But if fond love thy heart can gain, Nae maiden lays her skaith to me; For you. you alone I ride the ring, For you I wear the blue; The late Mr. Graham of Gartmore wrote this elegant and chivalrous song. The chorus is the echo of a fragment of old verse, and might be omitted, like many other supplemental rhymes of the same nature which are scattered among our lyrics, without offering any injury to the song. My heart's in the highlands, my heart is not here; The hills of the highlands for ever I love. Farewell to the mountains high cover'd with snow! The first half stanza of this song is old, the rest is the work of Burns. Of the old song I am sorry I can give no larger specimen. It was the lamentation, I understand, of a highland lady who, wedded to some churlish lowland lord, languished for her green glens, her boundless hills, and her sylvan liberty. O GIN MY LOVE WERE YON RED RÓSE. O gin my love were yon red rose That grows upon the castle wa', Into its bonnie breast to fa'! O were my love yon lilac fair, Wi' purple blossoms to the spring; When wearied on my little wing: When youthfu' May its bloom renew'd. The first eight lines of this song are very old, very beautiful, and very generally admired. The succeeding eight lines are by Burns; but they fail in continuing without abatement the exquisite original feeling and delicacy of the old. The poet, after expressing his admiration of the fragment, says, "I have often tried to eke a stanza to it, but in vain after balancing myself for a musing of five minutes on the hind legs of my elbow chair, I produced the following, which are far inferior to the foregoing, I frankly confess." The peasantry, in whose hands all old verses are diversified by numerous variations, have attempted in vain to imitate the starting sentiment : O were my love yon lily white That grows within the garden green, I wad lie near its bloom at e'en. Another variation substitutes a leek for the lily, which may indicate that the lover was of Welsh descent. There are varieties without end, and stray verses without number, all echoing in a fainter or ruder way the sentiment of the ancient verse. BESS AND HER SPINNING WHEEL. O leeze me on my spinning wheel, On ilka hand the burnies trot, And meet below my theekit cot; The sun blinks kindly in the biel', On lofty aiks the cushats wail, Wi' sma' to sell, and less to buy, O wha wad leave this humble state, The old song of "The Lass and her spinning wheel" must have been present to Burns's mind when he wrote this sweeter and gentler strain. The early song is ani |