LASSIE WI' THE LINT-WHITE LOCKS. Chorus. Lassie wi' the lint-white locks, Bonnie lassie, artless lassie, Now nature cleeds the flowery lea, Lassie wi', etc. The primrose bank, and wimpling burn, And when the welcome simmer-shower When Cynthia lights, wi' silver ray, Lassie wi', etc. And when the howling wintry blast I'll comfort thee, my dearie, O. Lassie wi' the lint-white locks, Scott Douglas comments on the unaccountable fact that the second stanza of the above was omitted by Currie, Thomson, Cunningham, and Chambers, all of whom had, like himself, access to the Burns-Thomson correspondence. Careless editing alone may be held to account for the omission. As touching the piece as a whole, Cunningham has an interesting note. "Those acquainted with the poet's life and habits of study," he says, "will procure much of both in the sweet song, 'Lassie wi' the Lint-White Locks.' Dumfries is a small town; a few steps carried Burns to green lanes, daisied brae-sides, and quiet stream banks. Men returning from labour were sure to meet him all under the light of the moon,' sauntering forth as if he had no aim; his hands behind his back, his hat turned up a little behind by the shortness of his neck, and noting all, yet seeming to note nothing. Those who got near enough to him without being seen, might hear him humming some old Scots air, and fitting verses to it-the scene and the season supplying the imagery, and the Jeans, the Nancies, the Philleses of his admiration, furnishing bright eyes, white hands, and waving tresses, as the turn of the song required." It is a scene such as only one poet could imagine for another. "I'll ay ca' in by yon Town," is claimed by some as a song inspired by Chloris, which is not unlikely, although the poet's own wife may have been the heroine. Equally "O, wat ye wha's in yon Town," has been taken to be a Chloris song; and perhaps, in its first form it was, too, but by changing Jeanie to Lucy, the poet made the verses serve as a tributory offering to the wife of Richard A. Oswald of Auchencruive; and, in a letter to Mr. John Syme, enclosing a copy, he says:-"I have endeavoured to do justice to what would be Mr. Oswald's feelings on seeing, in the scene I have drawn, the habitation of his Lucy." Songs distinctly celebrating Chloris yet are "O stay, sweet warbling woodlark, stay," "Mark yonder pomp of lordly fashion," "Forlorn my love, no comfort near," "It was the charming month of May," and the lines "On Chloris being ill," in which he prays: "Hear me, Powers Divine ! Oh, in pity hear me ; Take aught else of mine, And yet, in spite of all that fervour we know that the time came, near the end of his life, when he could write:-" In my by-past songs I dislike one thing-the name of Chloris, and further, that he was prepared to admit in deference to George Thomson that "flaxen locks' cannot enter into an elegant description of beauty." It may be allowed in favour of his change of opinion, of course, that no classical name like Chloris or Daphne, or the like, should ever enter into any Scots song. And then as to "flaxen locks"—well, he perhaps really came to think so; and he only asked flowing" to be put in "flaxen's" place. But Scott Douglas hints at another reason for desiring the change. Old Lorimer, a nondescript mixture of the farmer and publican, though he bore the reputation for some time of being in affluent circumstances, was in reality a practised smuggler of the exciseable commodities he dealt in, and ultimately became a bankrupt. His wife, during the poet's later years, developed into a deplorable drunkard, and it seems pretty certain that for nearly twelve months prior to his death, says Scott Douglas, " Burns felt a distaste to the 66 whole family, perhaps not even excepting the fair enslaver whose charms had inspired so many of his purest and best love-songs." Nearly all the more prominent of Burns's song-heroines evidently had "a sair weird to dree." Poor Chloris, whose life was clouded in its gay morn, and was in a measure clouded to the end, died in Edinburgh in 1831, where she had lived alone for many years. Her grave in Preston Street Burial Ground remained unmarked in any special way until 1901. Then the Edinburgh Ninety Burns Club erected a memorial stone in the form of an Ionic Cross, to direct all lovers of the poet and admirers of his song-model-in-chief, "The Lassie wi' "The Lassie wi' the Lint-White Locks," to the little bit of earth-nevermore mean claywhich encloses her bones. THE DUCHESS OF GORDON ALMOST, if not actually the first lady of rank to welcome the ploughman-poet to Edinburgh in the winter of 1786-7, and to be fascinated by the brilliance of his conversation, no less than by the extraordinary quality of his verse, was the gay and witty Jean, Duchess of Gordon, for the time being the acknowledged leader of society in the Scottish capital. That they were each mentally attracted by the other is indeed evident. The Duchess is reported to have told Sir Walter Scott that Burns was the only man she had ever met whose conversation "fairly carried her off her feet; and the poet, on the other hand, we know, admired the Duchess for her sallies of ready wit and bursts of not too refined humour. There was something besides, perhaps in the romantic career of each, that engaged the fancy of the other. Here was a man, fresh from the plough-stilts, who by one gigantic stride had planted himself in the midst of the foremost academic life of the land, and by the splendour of his genius was dazzling and delighting such learned pundits and leaders of thought and action as Principal Robertson, Professor Dugald Stewart, the Honourable Henry Erskine, Dr. Hugh Blair, Dr. Adam Ferguson, Dr. Gregory, Fraser Tytler of Woodhouselee; Lords Monboddo, Glencairn, and Eglinton, and everybody who was anybody. To the sprightly Duchess he could not fail to be attractive. There, on the other hand, was a woman who, by the fascination of her eye and the sprightly vivacity of her |