Page:The Book of Scottish Song.djvu/111

Rh The last Hallowe'en I was waukin'

My drookit sark-sleeve, as ye ken;

His likeness cam' up the house staukin',

And the very gray breeks o' Tam Glen.

Come, counsel, dear tittle, don't tarry;

I'll gi'e you my bonnie black hen,

Gif ye will advise me to marry

The lad I lo'e dearly, Tam Glen.

[ Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany. There is an older version of the same song given in Thomson's Orpheus Caledonius, published in 1725.]

, trembling to the reaper's sang,

Warm glitter'd in the harvest sun,

And murmured down the lanesome glen,

Where a wife of wanton wit did won.

Her tongue wagged wi' unhaly wit,

Unstent by kirk or gospel bann,

An' aye she wished the kirkyard mools

Green growing o'er her auld gudeman.

Her auld gudeman drapped in at e'en,

Wi' harvest heuk—sair toiled was he;

Sma' was his cog and cauld his kail,

Yet anger never raised his e'e;

He blessed the little, and was blithe,

While spak' the dame, wi' clamorous tongue,

O sorrow clap your auld beid pow,

And dance wi' ye to the mools, gudeman!

He hang his bonnet on the pin,

And down he lay, his dool to drie;

While she sat singing in the neuk,

And tasting at the barley bree.

The lark, 'mid morning's siller gray,

That wont to cheer him warkward gaun,

Next morning missed amang the dew

The blithe and dainty auld gudeman.

The third morn's dew on flower and tree

'Gan glorious in the sun to glow,

When sung the wanton wife to mark

His feet gaun foremost o'er the knowe.

The first flight o' the winter's rime

That on the kirkyard sward had faun,

The wanton wife skiffed aff his grave,

A-kirking wi' her new gudeman.

A dainty dame I wat was she,

High brent and burnished was her brow,

'Mang lint-locks curling; and her lips

Twin daisies dawned through honey dew.

And light and loesome in the dance,

When ha' was het, or kirn was won;

Her breasts twa drifts o' purest snaw,

In cauld December's bosom faun.

But lang ere winter's winds blew by,

She skirled in her lonesome bow;

Her new gudeman, wi' hazle rung,

Began to kame her wanton pow.