Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/80

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS she had been many years the wedded wife of Sir Andrew Barnard, and the shadows of death were close at hand, did she write her letter to Sir Walter, avowing the authorship, and narrating at length what I have briefly told. She composed a few other verses, but nothing to compare with the ballad for which we remember her name.

There is pretty good warrant for saying that the soldiers' darling, "Annie Laurie," was the work of Mr. Douglas, of Fingland, who courted Anne, a fair daughter of Sir Robert Laurie, the first baronet of Maxwelton. This was near the commencement of the last century. The song, as it now exists, is generally classed as anonymous in our anthologies; but has been so refined and annealed through various crucibles that the current version is quite different from the two stanzas which Douglas wrote, and certainly more artistic. His are thus given in the Ballad Book, which contains the earliest printed copy:

Maxwelton banks are bonnie

Where early fa's the dew;

Where I and Annie Laurie

Made up the promise true;

Made up the promise true,

And never forget will I,

And for bonnie Annie Laurie

I'd lay me doun and die.

She's backit like a peacock,

She's breistit like a swan,

She's jimp about the middle,

Her waist you weel micht span;

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