Page:The Book of Scottish Song.djvu/176

158 While there's leaves on the forest, or foam on the river,

Macgregor, despite them, shall flourish for ever!

Then gather, gather, gather, Grigalach!

[ by for Albyn's Anthology, vol. ii. 1818, and set to music in Mr. Thomson's collection, 1822.]

[ song, though old, was not inserted in any regular collection of Scottish songs till that of David Herd in 1769. "There is another set of the words," says Burns, "much older still, and which I take to be the original one, as follows—a song familiar from the cradle to every Scottish ear:

Though it by no means follows that the silliest verses to an air must, for that reason, be the original song, yet I take this ballad, of which I have quoted part, to be the old verses. The two songs in Ramsay, one of them evidently his own, are never to be met with in the fire-side circle of our peasantry; while that which I take to be the old song is in every shepherd's mouth."]

ye nae my Peggy,

Saw ye nae my Peggy,

Saw ye nae my Peggy,

Coming ower the lea?

Sure a finer creature

Ne'er was formed by Nature,

So complete each feature,

So divine is she!