No More Learning

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-shires, there is scarcely an old song or
tune which, from the title, &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 Lass 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 Ayrshire. 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 CUMMIN? 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 apron,"

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.