No More Learning

"No cold approach, no alter'd mien,
Just what would make suspicion start;
No pause the dire extremes between,
He made me blest--and broke my heart! "

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THE BONIE WEE THING.

Composed on my little idol "the charming, lovely Davies. "

* * * * *


THE TITHER MORN.

This tune is originally from the Highlands. I have heard a Gaelic song
to it, which I was told was very clever, but not by any means a lady's
song.

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A MOTHER'S LAMENT FOR THE DEATH OF HER SON.

This most beautiful tune is, I think, the happiest composition of that
bard-born genius, John Riddel, of the family of Glencarnock, at Ayr.
The words were composed to commemorate the much-lamented and premature
death of James Ferguson, Esq. , jun. of Craigdarroch.

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DAINTIE DAVIE.

This song, tradition says, and the composition itself confirms it, was
composed on the Rev. David Williamson's begetting the daughter of Lady
Cherrytrees with child, while a party of dragoons were searching her
house to apprehend him for being an adherent to the solemn league and
covenant. The pious woman had put a lady's night-cap on him, and had
laid him a-bed with her own daughter, and passed him to the soldiery
as a lady, her daughter's bed-fellow.
A mutilated stanza or two are to
be found in Herd's collection, but the original song consists of five
or six stanzas, and were their _delicacy_ equal to their _wit_ and
_humour_, they would merit a place in any collection. The first stanza
is

"Being pursued by the dragoons,
Within my bed he was laid down;
And weel I wat he was worth his room,
For he was my Daintie Davie. "

Ramsay's song, "Luckie Nansy," though he calls it an old song with
additions, seems to be all his own except the chorus:

"I was a telling you,
Luckie Nansy, Luckie Nansy
Auld springs wad ding the new,
But ye wad never trow me. "

Which I should conjecture to be part of a song prior to the affair of
Williamson.

* * * * *


BOB O' DUMBLANE.

RAMSAY, as usual, has modernized this song. The original,
which I learned on the spot, from my old hostess in the principal inn
there, is--

"Lassie, lend me your braw hemp heckle,
And I'll lend you my thripplin-kame;
My heckle is broken, it canna be gotten,
And we'll gae dance the bob o' Dumblane.

Twa gaed to the wood, to the wood, to the wood.
Twa gaed to the wood--three came hame;
An' it be na weel bobbit, weel bobbit, weel bobbit
An' it be na weel bobbit, we'll bob it again. "

I insert this song to introduce the following anecdote, which I have
heard well authenticated. In the evening of the day of the battle of
Dumblane, (Sheriff Muir,) when the action was over, a Scots officer in
Argyll's army, observed to His Grace, that he was afraid the rebels
would give out to the world that _they_ had gotten the victory. --"Weel,
weel," returned his Grace, alluding to the foregoing ballad, "if they
think it be nae weel bobbit, we'll bob it again. "

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 293: _Fan_, when--the dialect of Angus. ]

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THE BORDER TOUR.


Left Edinburgh (May 6, 1787)--Lammermuir-hills miserably dreary, but
at times very picturesque. Lanton-edge, a glorious view of the
Merse--Reach Berrywell--old Mr.