Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/409

 9*8. IX. MAY 24, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

401

LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY %, 1902.

CONTENTS. No. 230.

NOTES: Lady Nairne's Songs, 401 'N.E.D.' Additions, 402 Hollicke, Tottenham, 403 Proverbs xxvi. 4-5, 404 "Babies in the eyes" A "Wild-Cat" Company Coin- cidences Macaulay in German, 405 Boon for Bookworms Italian Bell Breaking Bread Early Shorthand "Metropoli,"406.

QUERIES : English Gladiators England Many Religions "Grey city by the Northern Sea " Archery Royal Colour " Moniales de Clinton " Martigny Priory Bilingual Wills, 407 Knife under Boulder" Publish " Napoleonic Quotation Lethbridge " Cotemporaries " Canterbury Records Whitsunday, 1593 Inquests ' Hosannas to the King' Presentation at Court A. F. Evans Sworn Clerks Herrick's ' Hesperides,' 408 Ains worth the Novelist Arms of Railway Companies, 409.

REPLIES : Parish Registers, 409 S. Taylor English Translations, 410 Dragon Tree" Hog "Black Bottles- Dutch East India Company, 411 " England's darling " Price of Eggs Countess of Denbigh Early Lord Mayors, 412 "Sea ' Cambridge Heath "Machine," 413 King of Torelore Jay Dutch Refugees in London Bruce and Burns Osorio Standsfield Continental Cities Shake- speare v. Bacon London Libraries, 414 ' Mrs. Carnac '

Sheriffs of Staffordshire An Heuskarian Rarity "En- dorsement" Trousers, 415 Old Spoons B. Heath

"Gentle shepherd, tell me where "Cellini and Shake- speare, 416 The Man in the Iron Mask Seasalter

Col. G. Pleetwood Castor Sugar, 417 Harvest Bell " Giglet "Tennis, 418.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Webb's Mystery of Shakespeare ' Swift's 'Prose Works '' Butterflies of Europe' 'Edin- burgh Review ' ' The Playgoer.'

Death of Sir G. F. Duckett. Notices to Correspondents.

LADY NAIRNE'S JACOBITE SONGS. IN the Athenaeum of 22 February, p. 233, a reviewer of Mr. Graham's * Scottish Men of Letters in the Eighteenth Century ' shows a strange lack of familiarity with the writings of Lady Nairne. "That Lady Nairne," he says, " wrote * Will ye no come back again ? ' is news to us ; and if she wrote * Charlie is my Darling,' which form of the words is hers?" To say of any statement that it " is news to us" is indicative of one of two things: it means either that the critic considers the information offered erroneous or that he has at length gained knowledge of which he was not formerly in possession. It is to be feared that readers of the Athenceum, otherwise un- acquainted with the subject, will infer that the critic convicts Mr. Graham of error, and it would have been well if the implied objec- tion had been more explicitly stated. If the reviewer considers that Lady Nairne did not write * Will ye no come back again ? ' it would have been easy for him to say so, and to state his reason for his belief. On the other hand, if he now learns for the first time that the authorship of the song is believed to be

settled as Mr. Graham states, then he admits a curiously limited knowledge of the subject he undertakes to discuss. It is also singular that a critic in a leading literary journal should have to ask which particular version ot Unarhe is my Darling 7 was the work of Lady Nairne. This is a point that has been perfectly clear to readers of Scottish song during something like half a century.

Hogg included in his 'Jacobite Relics, 1 vol. ii. p. 195, a song entitled 4 Will he no ?JJ e back again?' In a note he says: I his old song was never published till of late years. I had it in manuscript ; but a copy, scarcely so perfect, is to be found in a late Paisley publication." With the exception of the chorus appended to the first stanza, which reads "Will you no," <fec M this lyric is narrative throughout, "Will he" and not " Will you " being used in the refrain. This is the opening quatrain with chorus :

Royal Charlie 's now awa, Safely owre the friendly main ;

Mony a heart will break in twa, Should he ne'er come back again.

Will you no come back again ?

Will you no come back again ?

Better lo'ed you'll never be,

And will you no come back again ?

The second stanza suggests disloyalty on the part of the islesmen, many of whom, it is asserted, " sought to wear his life awa "; the third tells of the hills, the birken tree, and the sheltering bush, which "none on earth can claim but he"; and the sixth and con- cluding quatrain rings with genuine pathos : Sweet the lav'rock's note and lang,

Lilting wildly up the glen ; And aye the o'erword o' the sang Is, " Will he no come back again ?'

The song thus given by Hogg is sometimes entitled in reprints ' Will you no come back again?' but its strictly narrative character cannot be altered. '* Will ye no come back again?' is another and different lyric, and will be found in Charles Rogers's 'Life and Songs of the Baroness Nairne,' 1869-86. Lady Nairne's reticence about her work and her persistent anonymity made it somewhat diffi- cult for her editor to complete his task of collecting her lyrics. With the expert help, however, of her relatives including the distinguished scholar Mr. T. L. Kington Oli- phant, of Gask he at length achieved a satis- factory result. In the preface to the revised edition of the ' Life and Songs ' he unhesitat- ingly says that " the public may confidently accept all the songs contained in the present volume as being certainly composed by the gifted Baroness." As this has not been re- futed, the student of Scottish song has come