In Ramsay's work there is found yet one other source of illustration for the dark subject in hand-the names of tunes prefixed to the various songs. Some of these indicate the existence of songs which he does not preserve, and which are now lost. Others refer to songs still popular, or for which other verses have latterly been substituted. It may be worth while to present the reader in this place with a list of all the airs, the age of which, or of the songs connected with them, the Editor could not, at any other part of the present compilation, find fixed so early, as well as of such as have not now any songs corresponding to their titles: Wae's my heart that we should sunder; Carle, an the King come; Auld Lang Syne; Hallow Even; I wish my love were in a mire ;* The Fourteenth of October; The Bonniest Lass in a' the warld; The Kirk wad let me be; Dainty Davie; Saw ye my Peggy; Blink over the burn, sweet Betty; The bonny greyeyed morning; Logan Water; Chami ma chattle, na duce skar me; My apron, deary; I fixed my fancy on her; I loo'ed a bonny lady; Mary Scott; Green Sleeves; Bonny Jean; The Lass of Livingstone; John Anderson, my joe; Come kiss; Rothes Lament, or Pinky House; Tibby Fowler in the Glen; Fy, gae rub her ower wi' strae; The Mill, Mill, O!; Where shall our Gudeman lie; My love Annie's very bonny; Where Helen lies; [Fair Helen of Kirkconnel;] Gallowshiels; Ranting Roaring Willie; This is no mine ain house; Sae merry as we twa hae been; My Daddie forbad, my Minny forbad; Steer her up, and haud her gaun; Bessy's Haggis; Jocky blythe and gay; Valiant Jocky; When absent from the nymph I love ; Gillikranky; The happy Clown; Jenny beguiled the Wabster; [surely this must have been an early version of "Jenny dang the Weaver"-the song given under it is in the same metre with that admired production ;] I'll gar you be fain to follow me; We'll a' to Kelso

go;

* Mr Alexander Campbell has communicated the initial lines of this obsolete song:

"I wish my love were in a mire,

And I just on aboon her."

1

Love's Goddess in a myrtle grove; The glancing of her apron; Auld Sir Simon the King; A roke and a wee pickle tow; Jenny Nettles; Somebody; The gallant Shoemaker; O! dear mother, what shall I do? Cauld Kale in Aberdeen; The Mucking o' Geordie's Byre; Leith Wynd; Hero and Leander; Kind Robin lo'es me; 'Twas within a furlong of Edinburgh town, [un English imitation.]

That this was, indeed, the golden age of Scottish music and song is abundantly clear. How else should we find men and women of fashion exerting themselves to imitate and rival the poetic productions of the swains? How else should Ramsay's volume have been intended, as he himself says, to "steal itself into the ladies' bosoms?" How else should he have said of his book,

The wanton wee thing will rejoice,

When tented by a sparkling ee,
The spinnet tinkling to her voice,
It lying on her lovely knee!

But, among the many facts which go to prove this, perhaps the most conclusive is the publication, in 1725, of a collection of Scottish songs and airs, called "The Orpheus Caledonius," which appeared at London, and which its editor, William Thompson, professes to have designed for the use of persons of quality, and dedicates to the Princess of Wales.*

While the Scotch airs were in this high and palmy state, the simple singing of Scotch songs, without any accompaniment whatever, was one of the chief amusements resorted to by the best society in Edinburgh, at those delightful assemblages, then so fashionable, but now so exploded, called evening parties. Ramsay's Collection might truly be called the Tea-Table Miscellany, for, according to the recollection of all aged persons of condition with whom I have conversed, the Deil's Buke itself+ found some difficulty in keeping its ground against it at the tea-table, and nothing was then hailed with such rapture as Lady -'s or Mr

• Consort of George H., and afterwards Queen Caroline. + Cards.

's song. I have heard one express tradition, which gives local and personal certainty to this fact. Early in the last century, there was scarcely a more delightful singer of the pathetic melodies of Scotland than Lady Murray of Stanhope, daughter of Lady Grizel Baillie, the authoress of "Were na my heart licht, I wad die." Lady Murray lived in a flat in the Parliament square, where she frequently assembled her friends of both sexes at tea-parties, which, on account of the extreme sweetness of her manners, and her accomplishments as a singer, were esteemed the most delightful affairs that could well be. She used to sing Lord Yester's set of Tweedside, in particular, with such thrilling pathos, that at each cadence at the end of the verses, where the despairing swain laments the necessity of "laying his banes far from the Tweed," there was generally a sob of tenderness heard to burst from the company, and they never failed to be found in tears at the conclusion.

It may be expected that some notice should here be taken of the Jacobite ditties, which, in the earlier part of the last century, constituted so large a portion of our body of national song. But Jacobite song is in reality an excrescence from the body of Scottish song, not a part of its body corporate. By far the greater part of these political canticles are merely parodies and imitations of other songs; for the Jacobites, like the Puritan clergy of the two preceding centuries, had the sagacity to form their compositions on the frame-work and foundation-stones of songs which were favourites with the public. Another and still worse mischief is, that they were only of late years put into an historical form. Thus, although there can be no question as to the great merit of these productions, they unfortunately furnish us with no facts to illustrate the history of general song.

Throughout the central portion of the last century, we find Scottish song still forming a great portion of the entertainment of the better orders of people in Scotland. Sir Gilbert Elliot, Dr Austin, Sir John Clerk of Pennycuik, Dr Webster, Miss Jane Elliot, and Mrs Cockburn, all of whom moved in the very

best circle of society at Edinburgh, were then active writers of verses to Scotch tunes; a proof that there was yet nothing unfashionable about it. The public is only acquainted with one song by each of these individuals; but some of them in reality wrote many such things. I have seen a manuscript written by an aged lady of quality in the decade of 1770-80, which contains a great number of the fugitive compositions of the period under notice, and, in particular, of Sir Gilbert Elliot and Mrs Cockburn. The period which produced "the Flowers of the Forest" (both sets), and the fine song beginning, "My sheep I neglected," "could not be considered as one barren in song,

That the reader may have a just idea of the sort of good society which thus gave encouragement to Scottish song about the middle of the last century, I beg to introduce a brief characteristic notice of Mrs Cockburn, with which I have been politely favoured by Sir Walter Scott, her surviving friend.

"Mrs Catherine Cockburn, authoress of those verses to the tune of the Flowers of the Forest, which begin,

I've seen the smiling of fortune beguiling,

was daughter to Rutherford, Esq. of Fairnalee in Selkirkshire. A turret in the old house of Fairnalee is still shown as the place where the poem was written. The occasion was a calamitous period in Selkirkshire, or Ettrick Forest, when no fewer than seven lairds or proprietors, men of ancient family and inheritance, having been engaged in some imprudent speculations, became insolvent in one year.

Cock

"Miss C. Rutherford was married to burn, son of Cockburn of Ormiston, Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland. Mr Cockburn acted as Commissioner for the Duke of Hamilton of that day; and being, as might be expected from his family, a sincere friend to the Revolution and Protestant succession, he used his interest with his principal to prevent him from joining in the intrigues which preceded the insurrection of 1745, to which his Grace is supposed to have had a strong inclination.

"Mrs Cockburn was herself a keen Whig. I re

member having heard repeated a parody on Prince Charles's proclamation, in burlesque verse, to the tune of Clout the Caldron.' In the midst of the siege or blockade of the Castle of Edinburgh, the carriage in which Mrs Cockburn was returning from a visit to Ravelstone, was stopped by the Highland guard at the West Port; and, as she had a copy of the parody about her person, she was not a little alarmed at the consequences; especially as the officer talked of searching the carriage for letters and correspondence with the Whigs in the city. Fortunately, the arms on the coach were recognised as belonging to a gentleman favourable to the cause of the Adventurer, so that Mrs Cockburn escaped, with the caution not to carry political squibs about her person in future.

"Apparently, she was fond of parody; as I have heard a very clever one of her writing, upon the old song, Nancy's to the greenwood gane.' The occa sion of her writing it was the rejection of her brother's hand by a fantastic young lady of fashion. The first verse ran thus:

Nancy's to the Assembly gane,
To hear the fops a' chattering;
And Willie he has followed her,
To win her love by flattering.

"I farther remember only the last verse, which describes the sort of exquisite then in fashion :

Wad ye had bonny Nancy?
Na, I'll hae ane has learned to fence,
And that can please my fancy;
Ane that can flatter, bow, and dance,

And make love to the ladies,

That kens how folk behave in France,
And's bauld amang the cadies."

"Mrs Cockburn was authoress of many other little pieces, particularly a set of toasts descriptive of some of her friends, and sent to a company where most of

* An old-fashioned species of serviceable attendants, between the street-porter and the valet-de-place, peculiar to Edinburgh. A great number were always hanging about the doors of the Assembly Rooms.