Page:The Book of Scottish Song.djvu/567

Rh Then O to meet my lassie yet,

Up in yon glen sae grassy yet;

For all I see

Are nought to me,

Save her that's but a lassie yet!

[ heroine of this song was a young girl residing in Kirkoswald, with whom got acquainted while attending a school there, in his eighteenth or nineteenth summer, with the view of learning mensuration, surveying, dialling, &c. His own account of the matter is as follows: "I went on with a high hand with my geometry till the sun entered Virgo, a month which is always a carnival in my bosom, when a charming fillette, who lived next door to the school, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the sphere of my studies. I, however, struggled on with my sines and co-sines for a few days more: but stepping into the garden one charming noon to take the sun's altitude, there I met my angel,

It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining week I staid I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her; and the two last nights of my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless."—It may be thought prosaic to add, after this high-flown description, that the name of the "charming fillette" was Peggy Thomson, and that she afterwards became Mrs. Neilson, and long lived in the town of Ayr, where her children still reside.—The song is one of Burns's very early ones, and appears in the first edition of his poems printed at Kilmarnock in 1786, with the title of "Song composed in August." It is sung to the tune of "I had a horse, I had nae mair," and has also been adapted to an old air called "When the king came o'er the water."]

[, printer, Edinburgh.—Tune, "Gloomy winter's now awa'."]

winter's come again;

Heavy fa's the sleet and rain;

Flaky snaw decks white the plain,

Whare nature bloom'd sae cheerie, O.