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TO A BLACKBIRD.

TUNE-Scots Queen.

[This, like the lyric at page 228-Talk not of Love, is the joint composition of "Clarinda" and Burns. We will adopt the same course with this piece as we did with the other, giving the lady's verses in the note, and the same, as amended by Burns, in the text. Clarinda composed the lines one day on hearing a blackbird sing, while walking with her children at the head of Bruntsfield Links, Edinburgh. They have a manifest reference to her own desolate condition, deserted as she was by a faithless husband:

"Go on, sweet bird, and soothe my care,
Thy cheerful notes will hush despair;
Thy tuneful warblings, void of art,
Thrill sweetly through my aching heart.
Now choose thy mate, and fondly love,
And all the charming transport prove;
Those sweet emotions all enjoy,
Let Love and Song thy hours employ;
Whilst I, a lovelorn exile, live,
And rapture nor receive nor give.
Go on, sweet bird, and soothe my care,
Thy cheerful notes will hush despair."]

Go on, sweet bird, and soothe my care,
Thy tuneful notes will hush despair;
Thy plaintive warblings, void of art,
Thrill sweetly thro' my aching heart.
Now choose thy mate, and fondly love,
And all the charming transport prove;
While I a lovelorn exile live,
Nor transport or receive or give.

For thee is laughing nature gay;
For thee she pours the vernal day :
For me in vain is nature drest,
While joy's a stranger to my breast!
These sweet emotions all enjoy ;
Let Love and Song thy hours employ !
Go on, sweet bird, and soothe my care,
Thy tuneful notes will hush despair.

AN' I'LL KISS THEE YET.

TUNE-Braes o' Balquhidder.

[In a MS. copy of this song, the following verse-omitted in Johnson-is inserted immediately after the first stanza and chorus:

"Ilk care and fear, when thou art near,

I ever mair defy them, O:

Young kings upon their hansel throne

Are nae sae blest as I am, O."

The poet afterwards remodelled this song for George Thomson's collection, to answer the tune of Cauld Kail, for which Thomson seems to have had a great penchant. He enclosed it in a letter, under date August, 1793, in which he says, "The last stanza of the song I now send you contains the very words that Coila taught me many years ago, and which I set to an old Scots reel in Johnson's Museum.

It has been ascertained, through information of the poet's sister (Mrs. Begg) to R. Chambers, and to the late Capt. C. Gray, R.M., that when Burns was 22 years old, he fell in love with a young woman named Ellison Begbie, who was servant with a family on the banks of the Cessnock, about two miles from Lochlea. He addressed several letters to her, which are printed among his correspondence, her name appearing only under the initial "E;" and he also composed a beautiful song in her praise, beginning-On Cessnock Banks there lives a lass. Although this fair one ultimately rejected the poet, and became the wife of another man, it is certain that his passion for her was serious, and that the issue cost him many a heart-ache. It was suggested by a minute inquirer into the early history of Burns, that the present song, and also a juvenile lyric, displaying deep passion, called-Mary Morison, might have been inspired by that young woman's charms; and Mrs. Begg, on hearing his reasons for so thinking, admitted the strong probability that those suggestions were well founded.

Stenhouse tells us that Stephen Clarke wrote below the score of this song the following words:-"I am charmed with this song almost as much as the lover is with bonie Peggy Alison."]

CHORUS.

An' I'll kiss thee yet, yet,

An' I'll kiss thee o'er again;

An' I'll kiss thee yet, yet,
My bonie Peggy Alison.

WHEN in my arms, wi' a' thy charms,
I clasp my countless treasure, O!
I seek nae mair o' Heav'n to share,
Than sic a moment's pleasure, O!
When in my arms, &c.

And by thy een sae bonie blue,

I swear I'm thine for ever, O!
And on thy lips I seal my vow,
And break it shall I never, O!
And by thy een, &c.

RATTLIN', ROARIN' WILLIE.

[Burns notes this production thus:-"The last stanza of this song is mine: it was composed out of compliment to one of the worthiest fellows in the world, William Dunbar, Esq., writer to the signet, Edinburgh, and Colonel of the Crochallan corps-a club of wits who took that title at the time of raising the fencible regiments." We are thus to conclude that the two preceding verses are old, although helped a little by the poet. In March, 1789, Burns makes the following honourable mention of the "Colonel" in a letter to Peter Hill, to whom he then presented a ewe-milk cheese, giving him a list of friends who were to get a slice of it:-"My facetious friend Dunbar I would wish also to be a partaker; not to digest his spleen, for that he laughs off, but to digest his last night's wine at the last field-day of the Crochallan corps."]

O RATTLIN', roarin' Willie,

O he held to the fair;

An' for to sell his fiddle,

And buy some other ware;
But parting wi' his fiddle,

The saut tear blin't his e'e;
And rattlin', roarin' Willie,
Ye're welcome hame to me!

O Willie, come sell your fiddle,
O sell your fiddle sae fine;
O Willie, come sell your fiddle,
And buy a pint o' wine.

If I should sell my fiddle,

The warld would think I was mad,

For mony a rantin' day

My fiddle and I hae had.

As I cam by Crochallan,
I cannily keekit ben:
Rattlin', roarin' Willie

Was sitting at yon boord-en-
Sitting at yon boord-en',

And amang gude companie;
Rattlin', roarin' Willie,

Ye're welcome hame to me!

WHERE BRAVING ANGRY WINTER'S STORMS.

TUNE-Neil Gow's Lamentation for Abercairny.

[Burns acknowledged the authorship of this rather philosophical song. He says in a letter to its inspirer, Miss Margaret Chalmers, inclosing the present song, and also another beginning-My Peggy's face, my Peggy's form:-"The poetic compliments I pay cannot be misunderstood: I have complimented you chiefly, almost solely on your mental charms. Shall I be plain with you? I will: so look to it. Personal attractions, madam, you have above par-wit, understanding, and worth, you possess in the first class." Miss Chalmers, two years after these songs were composed, became Mrs. Lewis Hay, of Forbes & Co.'s bank, Edinburgh.-(See note to song. The banks of the Devon, page 220, for some information concerning this lady.) Shortly before leaving Edinburgh, in February 1788, he wrote to her as follows:-"You must not desert me. Your friendship, I think I can count on, though I should date my letters from a marching regiment. Early in life, and all my life, I reckoned on a recruiting drum as my forlorn hope." When the poet lay in Mr. Cruickshank's house, with his bruised limb, a month or two before this, he wrote to her in these words:"I would give my best song to my worst enemy-I mean the merit of making it, to have you and Charlotte by me. You are angelic creatures, and would pour oil and wine into my wounded spirit." After his marriage, he wrote to her thus, from Ellisland, in September, 1788:-"I have lived more of real life with you in eight days than I can do with almost anybody I meet with in eight years; and when I think on the improbability of meeting you in this world again, I could sit down and cry like a child."]

WHERE, braving angry winter's storms,
The lofty Ochils rise;

Far in their shade, my Peggy's charms
First blest my wondering eyes,—
As one, who, by some savage stream,
A lonely gem surveys,

Astonish'd, doubly marks its beam,
With art's most polish'd blaze.

Blest be the wild, sequester'd shade,
And blest the day and hour,
Where Peggy's charms I first survey'd,
When first I felt their pow'r!
The tyrant death, with grim control,
May seize my fleeting breath;

But tearing Peggy from my soul
Must be a stronger death.

TIBBIE, I HAE SEEN THE DAY.

TUNE-Invercauld's Reel.

[The authorship of this clever song is acknowledged in Johnson. The poet, in his notes, tells us that he composed it before leaving Mount Oliphant, when only about seventeen years old. Mrs. Begg, in reply to some questions raised by the writer of these notes, in 1850, remarked as follows regarding this song:"This must have been composed in Lochlea; for Tibbie Steen, the heroine, was unknown to Burns at Mount Oliphant. She lived at 'Little Hill,' a farm marching with that of Lochlea: the thing was well known in the neighbourhood, no one doubting it."]

CHORUS.

O Tibbie, I hae seen the day,
Ye would na been sae shy;
For laik o' gear ye lightly me,
But, trowth, I care na by.

YESTREEN I met ye on the moor,
Ye spak na, but gaed by like stoure;
Ye geck at me because I'm poor,
But fient a hair care I!
Tibbie, I hae, &c.

I doubt na, lass, but ye may think,
Because ye hae the name o' clink,
That ye can please me at a wink,
Whene'er ye like to try.
Tibbie, I hae, &c.

But sorrow tak him that's sae mean,
Altho' his pouch o' coin were clean,
Wha follows ony saucy quean
That looks sae proud and high.
Tibbie, I hae, &c.

Altho' a lad were e'er sae smart ;
If that he want the yellow dirt,
Ye'll cast your head anither airt,
And answer him fu' dry.
Tibbie, I hae, &c.

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