Tibby's shape and airs are fine, But let it be with this provision, I get the other to my lane, In prospect plano and fruition. When Allan Ramsay wrote this song, he ought in prudence to have read to his Muse the obligation under which he had laid her in his preface, of being remarkably staid and sedate. She is indeed "a leaper and a dancer," but she leaps as high as an opera girl here, and seems equally unconscious of offending the devout eyes of those for whose pleasure she is moving. With all its failings this is a lively buoyant song: the indecision of the lover, and the hankering swither in which two beauties keep him, is well imagined. One of the lines requires illustration. My wyson with the maiden shore. That is though you threaten to behead him with the Earl of Morton's engine of death, the Maiden, he should not be able to tell which of them he would take. The preceding line probably alludes to those noted instruments of torture, the "thumbikins;" of which King William said, when they were applied to his royal thumbs, "They would make me confess any thing!" THE COLLIER'S BONNY LASSIE. The collier has a daughter, And O she's wondrous bonny; He had the art to please ye, Secur'd the heart of Willie. He lov'd beyond expression The charms that were about her, And panted for possession ; His life was dull without her. After mature resolving, Close to his breast he held her ; In saftest flames dissolving, My bonnie collier's daughter, The Collier's Bonnie Lassie was a girl of some naïveté; but though Allan Ramsay has given us a good song, I am not sure that his verses have that kind of fresh original hue which belongs to the old :-. The Collier has a daughter, She's black, but O she's bonnie; A laird he was that loved her, Rich both in lands and money. I'm o'er young to wed the laird, And o'er black to be a lady; The collier has a daughter, I vow she's wond'rous pretty; The collier has a daughter, She's black-but O, she's witty! He shawed her gowd in gowpins, Such is the song which I have heard sung as the old words. AH THE POOR SHEPHERD'S MOURNFUL FATE. Ah the poor shepherd's mournful fate, When doom'd to love, and doom'd to languish, To bear the scornful fair one's hate, Nor dare disclose his anguish! Yet eager looks, and dying sighs, My secret soul discover ; While rapture, trembling through mine eyes, Reveals how much I love her. The tender glance, the reddening cheek, For, oh that form so heavenly fair, That artless blush, and modest air, So fatally beguiling! Thy every look, and every grace, So charm whene'er I view thee, Till death o'ertake me in the chase Still will my hopes pursue thee: Low at thy feet to breathe my last, 66 This is one of the most elegant and beautiful songs in the language. It was written by Hamilton of Bangour; but so little has its charms been felt in England, that Dr. Johnson would not allow it to be poetry, because "blushes" and "wishes" were not corresponding rhymes, and Dr. Aikin published it as the production of an Englishman, without knowing the author. Burns says, the old name was Sour plums of Galloshiels," and that the piper of the laird of Galloshiels composed the air about the year 1700. The old words have been entirely silenced by this fine song; and with regard to the piper's claim upon the air, I have not observed that Hamilton, in his poem of the Fair Maid of Galloshiels, mentions the genius of the piper for original composition. I have, it is true, only seen a portion of the poem, which records a contest between a fiddler and a piper for the maid of Galloshiels, of which the lady herself, with a manifest violation of equity, is made sole judge. The description of the bagpipe made by Glenderule is exquisite, and in the true Homeric style, where all is painted for the eye. |