Rest, ye wild storms, in the cave of your slumbers, How your dread howling a lover alarms! Wauken ye breezes, row gently ye billows, And waft my dear laddie ance mair to my arms. But oh, if he's faithless, and minds na his Nannie, Flow still between us, thou wide roaring main ! May I never see it, may I never trow it, But, dying, believe that my Willie's my ain. [George Thomson and a committee of taste which surrounded him, had taken Burns's "Wandering Willie" to avizandum, and early in April, a copy amended by Thomson and Erskine was submitted to the poet for his approval, and Currie tells us, "with his usual judgment Burns adopted some of these alterations and rejected others." The reader on comparing the present with the earlier version, will readily judge how far the poet was indebted to the suggestions of his Edinburgh correspondents.] OPEN THE DOOR TO ME, OH. IRISH SONG ALTERED BY BURNS. (GEO. THOMSON'S COLL., 1793.) Он, open the door, some pity to shew, Oh, open the door to me, oh,* Tho' thou hast been false, I'll ever prove true, Cauld is the blast upon my pale cheek, The frost that freezes the life at my heart, *This line was originally, "If love it may na be, oh." But having already used that expression in "Lord Gregory," he changed it thus. The same thought occurs in Mary Morison, "If love for love thou wilt na gie, At least be pity to me shown." The wan Moon is setting behind the white wave, * And Time is setting with me, oh : False friends, false love, farewell! for mair I'll ne'er trouble them, nor thee, oh. She has open'd the door, she has open'd it wide, She sees the pale corse on the plain, oh: "My true love!" she cried, and sank down by his side, Never to rise again, oh. [This was transmitted to Thomson in March 1793; but how much of it is old, and what improvements were made by Burns we are not in a position to say; for none of the poet's editors or annotators have thought it worth while to present the original words. That the genius of Burns has been infused into the lyric is self-evident, and every one who has read Carlyle's Essay on Burns will recall the fine reference to one of its couplets thus :-"We see that in this man there was the gentleness, the trembling pity of a woman, with the deep earnestness, the force and passionate ardor of a hero. Tears lie in him, and consuming fire; as lightning lurks in the drops of the summer cloud. . . . It is needless to multiply examples of his graphic power and clearness of sight. One trait of the finest sort we select from multitudes of such among his songs. It gives, in a single line, to the saddest feeling, the saddest environment and local habitation :— "The wan Moon is setting behind the white wave, And Time is setting with me, O; False friends, false love, farewell! for mair I'll ne'er trouble them nor thee, O."] LOVELY YOUNG JESSIE. (GEO. THOMSON'S COLL., 1798.) TRUE hearted was he, the sad swain o' the Yarrow, And fair are the maids on the banks of the Ayr; But by the sweet side o' the Nith's winding river, Are lovers as faithful, and maidens as fair: Thomson made the unhappy suggestion to alter this word to "Life." To equal young JESSIE seek Scotland all over; Fresh is the rose in the gay, dewy morning, Enthron'd in her een he delivers his law: eyes [Thomson received this contribution in March 1793, with a note from the author, thus:-"I send a song on a celebrated toast in this country to suit the tune Bonie Dundee." The lady was Miss Janet or Jesse Staig, second daughter of the Provost of Dumfries, who afterwards married Major William Miller, one of the sons of the poet's former landlord. About eighteen months after this song was composed, Burns made her the subject of a complimentary Epigram, on her recovery from a fever. After a very brief experience of matrimonial joy, she sunk into a decline, and was laid in Dumfries Church-yard in March 1801, at the untimely age of twenty-six. This lyric has a great deal of artificial beauty in it, reminding one very much of a similar compliment the author paid to another clear-complexioned beauty who passed to an early grave-Miss Charlotte Hamilton, who became the wife of Dr. Adair. "How pleasant the banks of the clear-winding Devon."] MEG O' THE MILL. (DR. CURRIE, 1800.) O ken ye what Meg o' the Mill has gotten, know got An' ken ye what Meg o' the Mill has gotten? She's gotten a coof wi' a claute o' siller, blockhead hoard And broken the heart o' the barley Miller. The Miller was strappin, the Miller was ruddy; stalwart The Miller he hecht her a heart leal and loving, offered O wae on the siller, it is sae prevailin', And wae on the love that is fixed on a mailen! farm A tocher's nae word in a true lover's parl, speech But gie me my love, and a fig for the warl! give world [This excellent song was sent to Thomson early in April 1793, composed to the air, "Jackey Hume's Lament," or "O bonie lass will ye lie in a barrack;" but the reader will in vain look for it in Thomson's collection. In September following, the poet, in reply to some of Thomson's objections, thus wrote:-"My song, 'Ken ye what Meg o' the Mill has gotten?' pleases me so much, that I cannot try my hand at another song to the same air; so I shall not attempt it. I know you will laugh at this; but ilka man wears his belt his ain gate." About the same time Burns forwarded to Johnson a very humorous song bearing the same title, to which we will next introduce the reader.] MEG O' THE MILL. Another Version. (JOHNSON'S MUSEUM, 1803.) O KEN ye what Meg o' the Mill has gotten, nag rat * A twisted, blear-eyed, mis-shapen dwarf.-J. H. +Tocher commonly means the dowry brought by a wife to her husband; here it means simply fortune, or the money settled on the wife by the husband.—J. H. O ken ye what Meg o' the Mill loes dearly, loves liquor O ken ye how Meg o' the Mill was married, O ken ye how Meg o' the Mill was bedded, [George Thomson seems to have reckoned the former of these lyrics rather too vulgar for his select publication; and in a note he affects surprise that the poet thought so highly of it. What then would he have said had Burns offered him the present version? Robert Chambers could so ill-appreciate its humor, that, in a footnote, he styles it "so rude and wretched a production that I cannot suppose many words of it have been supplied by so masterly a pen." We must be excused for being impressed with the belief that it is, as Johnson has labelled it, entirely "written by Robert Burns." It presents as graphic a picture of real life as Teniers ever painted.] THE SOLDIER'S RETURN. Air-"The Mill, mill, O." (GEO. THOMSON'S COLL., 1793.) WHEN wild war's deadly blast was blawn, Wi' mony a sweet babe fatherless, * Was held up by the arm-pits. |
