Page:Mill o' Tiftie's Annie, or, Andrew Lammie, the trumpeter of Fyvie (2).pdf/2



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The ill-starred loves of Tiftie's bonnie Annie, and the Trunpeter of Fyvie, have already been made familiar to the reader of Ballad Poetry by Mr. Jamieson, who has published in his collection two different sets of this simple but not unpathetic ditty.* Neither of these sets, however, is so complete as the present version, which is a reprint from a stall copy published at Glasgow several years ago, collated with a recited copy, which has furnished one or two verbal improvements. "The beauty, gallantry, and amiable qualities of 'Bonnie Andrew Lammie,' seem," says Mr. Jamieson, "to have been proverbial wherever he went, and the good old cummer in Allan Ramsay, as the best evidence of the power of her own youthful charms, and the best apology for her having cast a leggen girth hersel', says:-

I’se warrant ye have a’ heard tell Of bonnie Andrew Lammie? Stiffly in love wi' me he fell, As soon as e'er he saw me- That was a day!

"In this instance, as in most others in the same piece, it seems most probable that Allan Ramsay forgot that he was writing of the days of the original author of "Christis Kirk on the Green, and copied only the manners and traditions of his own times. If a woman, who could boast of having had an intrigue with the Trumpeter of Fyvie, was hale and hearty at the time when Allan wrote, we may reasonably suppose poor Tiftie's Annie to have died sometime about the year 1670." This conjecture as to the period when

"The fairext Flower was cut down by love,           That e'er sprung up in Fyvie,"

is very near the truth, if the notice contained in the title of the stall copy referred to can be admitted as evidence on the point. It is this:-- "Andrew Lammie: or Mills o’ Tiftie's Annie. This Tragedy was acted in the year 1674." It has been remarked by Mr. Jamie’s on that "this ballad is almost entirely without rhymes, as cadence in the measure is all that seems aimed at; and the few instances of rhyme that occur appear to be rather casual than intentional." Though the present set is not so faulty in this respect as in the copies which came under Mr. Jamieson's observation, it, as well as the others, has another peculiar- ity deserving attention, namely, the studied recurrence of rhyme in the middle of the first and third lines of a grent many of the stanzas. It may be stated that the present set of the ballad agrees with any recited copy which the Editor has hitherto met with in the West Country.

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*Vide Popular Ballads and Songs, Edinburgh, 1806. Vol. I., p. 129. Vol. II., P. 382.