I was the happiest of a' the Clan, Sair, sair may I repine; Till Charlie Stewart * cam at last, My Donald's arm was wanted then, Their waefu' fate what need I tell, Ochon! O Donald, oh! Ochon, Ochon, Ochrie! Nae woman in the warld wide, finest-looking [This pathetic ballad is altogether the work of Burns. The plaintive Gaelic air to which it is allied was obtained by him from a lady in the North. The battle of Culloden was fought on 16th April 1746, after which the Duke of Cumberland encamped at Fort Augustus, whence he sent off detachments to ravage the whole country round. The castles of Lovat, Glengary, and Lochiel were destroyed; the cottages were demolished or burnt to the ground, the cattle driven away, and the families of the hapless rebels, if spared from fire and sword, had to wander houseless and without food over the desolate heath. Such is the picture retrospectively glanced at in the ballad. We annex the air.] IT WAS A' FOR OUR RIGHTFU' KING. (JOHNSON'S MUSEUM, 1796.) IT was a' for our rightfu' King It was a' for our rightfu' King Now a' is done that men can do, My Love and Native Land fareweel, He turn'd him right and round about, And gae his bridle reins a shake, With adieu for evermore, my dear, The soger frae the wars returns, But I hae parted frae my love, When day is gane, and night is come, I think on him that's far awa, The lee-lang night and weep, my dear, [This admirable ballad, like the two immediately preceding, we believe to be wholly the composition of Burns. We are informed, both by Lockhart and by Kirkpatrick Sharpe, that Sir Walter Scott never tired of hearing it sung from the pages of Johnson, by his daughter at her piano. Mr. Sharpe has pointed to a very poor stall-ballad, called "Molly Stuart," consisting of eleven verses of disconnected doggerel in which occurs, "like a jewel in a swine's snout," the most picturesque stanza in the text-that beginning, "He turned him right and round about "--but we have no doubt that the broadside referred to was printed after 1796. Sir Walter, under the impression that the stanza in question is ancient, has made very free use of it, first in "Rokeby" (1813), and then in Elspeth's Ballad, in "The Antiquary" (1816). In the former, as part of the fine song, "A weary lot is thine, fair maid," he thus introduces the verse : "He turn'd his charger as he spake, Upon the river shore, He gave his bridle reins a shake, Burns's original MS. of this song, as sent to Johnson, is now the property of Mr. Patterson, Publisher, Edinburgh. Had the poet lived to see it published along with the music, he would have been under the necessity of altering the rhythm of the opening line, which, as it stands, cannot be made to fit the melody, while each first line of the other four stanzas fits it exactly. It ought to read thus: "Twas a' for him, our rightfu' King."] CORRESPONDENCE. (2) TO FRANCIS GROSE, ESQ., F.S.A. AMONG the many witch-stories I have heard relating to Alloway Kirk, I distinctly remember only two or three : Upon a stormy night, amid whistling squalls of wind, and bitter blasts of hail-in short, on such a night as the devil would choose to take the air in-a farmer, or farmer's servant, was plodding and plashing homeward with his plough-irons on his shoulder, having been getting some repairs on them at a neighboring smithy. His way lay by the Kirk of Alloway; and being rather on the anxious look-out in approaching a place so well known to be a favorite haunt of the devil, and the devil's friends and emissaries, he was struck aghast by discovering through the horrors of the storm and stormy night, a light, which on his nearer approach plainly showed itself to proceed from the haunted edifice. Whether he had been fortified from above, on his devout supplication, as is customary with people when they suspect the immediate presence of Satan; or whether, according to another custom, he had got courageously drunk at the smithy, I will not This letter was communicated by Mr. Gilchrist of Stamford to Sir Egerton Brydges, who published it in the "Censura Literaria," 1796. 220 ÆT. 32.] "WEEL-LUPPEN, MAGGIE!" 221 pretend to determine: but so it was that he ventured to go up to, nay, into the very kirk. As luck would have it, his temerity came off unpunished. The members of the infernal junto were all out on some midnight business or other, and he saw nothing but a kind of kettle, or cauldron, depending from the roof, over the fire, simmering some heads of unchristened children, limbs of executed malefactors, &c., for the business of the night. It was in for a penny in for a pound, with the honest ploughman; so without ceremony he unhooked the cauldron from off the fire, and pouring out the damnable ingredients, inverted it on his head, and carried it fairly home, where it remained long in the family, a living evidence of the truth of the story. Another story, which I can prove to be equally authentic, was as follows: On a market-day in the town of Ayr, a farmer from Carrick, and consequently whose way lay by the very gate of Alloway kirkyard, in order to cross the river Doon at the old bridge, which is about two or three hundred yards farther on than the said gate, had been detained by his business, till by the time he reached Alloway it was the wizard-hour-between night and morning. Though he was terrified with a blaze streaming from the kirk, yet as it is a well-known fact that to turn back on these occasions is running by far the greatest risk of mischief, he prudently advanced on his road. When he had reached the gate of the kirkyard, he was surprised and entertained, through the ribs and arches of an old Gothic window, which still faces the highway, to see a dance of witches merrily footing it round their old sooty blackguard master, who was keeping them all alive with the power of his bagpipe. The farmer, stopping his horse to observe them a little, could plainly descry the faces of many old women of |
