MY AULD MAN. TUNE-Saw ye my Father? IN the land of Fife there lived a wicked wife, Who sorely did lament, and made her complaint, In cam her cousin Kate, when it was growing late, She said, What's gude for an auld man? O wheit-breid and wine, and a kinnen new slain; That's gude for an auld man, Cam ye in to jeer, or cam ye in to scorn, And what for came ye in? For bear-bread and water, I'm sure, is much better- Now the auld man's deid, and, without remeid, Lie still wi' my blessing! of thee I hae nae missing; Within a little mair than three quarters of a year, She was married to a young man then, Who drank at the wine, and tippled at the beer, And spent more gear than he wan. O black grew her brows, and howe grew her een, And cauld grew her pat and her And now she sighs, and aye pan: she says, I wish I had my silly auld man!* From Ritson's "Scottish Songs," 1793, into which the editor mentions that it was copied from some common collection, whose title he did not remember. It has often been the task of the Scottish muse to point out the evils of ill-assorted alliances; but she has scarcely ever done so with SAW YE MY PEGGY. TUNE-Saw ye my Peggy? SAW ye nae my Peggy, O! how Peggy charms me; Nought but charms all over: That's a law to me. Who would leave a lover, When I hope to gain her, -so much humour, and, at the same time, so much force of moral painting, as in the present case. No tune is assigned to the song in Ritson's Collee tion; but the present editor has ventured to suggest the fine air, "Saw ye my father," rather as being suitable to the peculiar rhythm of the verses, than to the spirit of the composition, Could I but obtain her, THE BRIDAL O'T. ALEXANDER ROSS.t TUNE-Lucy Campbell. THEY say that Jockey'll speed weel o't, I hope we'll hae a bridal o't: From Johnson's Musical Museum, vol. I., 1787. "This charming song," says Burns, [Cromek's Reliques,]" 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, as follows-a song familiar from the cradle to every Scottish ear: Saw ye my Maggie, Linkin ower the lea? High-kiltit was she, Her coat aboon her knee. What mark has your Maggie, Though it by no means follows that the silliest verses to an air must, for that reason, be the original song, yet I take this ballad, of which I have quoted part, to be the old verses. The two songs in Ramsay, one of them evidently his own, are never to be met with in the fire-side circle of our peasantry; while that which I take to be the old song is in every shepherd's mouth." Author of the Fortunate Shepherdess, a dramatic poem in the Mearns dialect. For yesternight, nae farther gane, An we had but a bridal o't, An we had but a bridal o't, And young folk like the coming o't, And scribblers they bang up their rhymes, And pipers they the bumming o't. The lasses like a bridal o't, The lasses like a bridal o't; Their braws maun be in rank and file, Although that they should guide ill o't. The boddom o' the kist is then Turned up into the inmost o't; The end that held the keeks sae clean, The bangster at the threshing o't, And ilka day's a clashing o't: The pipers and the fiddlers o't, Can smell a bridal unco far, And like to be the middlers o't: Chatting, with familiar dalliance. Fan* thick and three-fauld they convene, Fan they hae done wi' eating o't, ROYAL CHARLIE. TUNE-The auld Wife ayont the fire. OUR gallant Scottish prince was clad When-the vulgar dialect of the north-east coast of Scotland. † Whirls. From Johnson's Musical Museum, vol. III., 1790. The spirit of a vulgar Scottish wedding is here delineated with uncommon vivacity and force of expression. It may be noted, in particular, that nothing could be more correctly descriptive of the system of dancing which obtains at that and all other such assemblages than the last verse. It could only have been improved by some notice of the whoop, or hoogh! a wild, short cry which the male dancers utter at the more animated passages of the saltation-dancing it cannot be called-and which forms, perhaps, one of the most remarkable features in the performance. |