Page:The Book of Scottish Song.djvu/66

48 The laverocks, now, and lintwhites sing,

The rocks around with echoes ring;

The mavis and the blackbird vie,

In tuneful strains, to glad the day

The woods now wear their summer suits;

To mirth all nature now invites:

Let us be blythsome, then, and gay,

Among the birks of Invermay.

Behold the hills and vales around,

With lowing herds and flocks abound;

The wanton kids and frisking lambs

Gambol and dance around their dams.

The busy bees, with humming noise,

And all the reptile kind rejoice:

Let us, like them, then, sing and play

About the birks of Invermay.

Hark, how the waters, as they fall,

Loudly my love to gladness call;

The wanton waves sport in the beams,

And fishes play throughout the streams:

The circling sun does now advance,

And all the planets round him dance:

Let us as jovial be as they,

Among the birks of Invermay.

[ fine lyric is given in the first vol. of Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany without any signature, but it is the production of the accomplished poet, of Bangour, (born 1704; died 1754.) It was written to the tune of "Galashiels," and will be found with the music in the second volume of Johnson's Museum.]

[ the author of this old song nothing is known, but it can be traced as far back as the days of Charles II., before whom it was sung by John Abell of the chapel-royal, a celebrated singer of the period. Single sheets of it, with the music, were published in 1680. In the "Pills to Purge Melancholy," published about twenty years later, an inaccurate reprint of it is given, and also another song to the same tune, called "Kath'rine Logie." Ramsay's version of it in the Tea Table Miscellany differs only in a few words from the original, and is the one generally adopted.]

walking forth to view the plain,

Upon a morning early,

While May's sweet scent did cheer my brain,

From flowers which grew so rarely,

I chanc'd to meet a pretty maid,

She shin'd tho' it was foggie:

I ask'd her name: Kind sir, she said,

My name is Kath'rine Ogie.

I stood a while, and did admire,

To see a nymph so stately:

So brisk an air there did appear

In a country maid so neatly:

Such nat'ral sweetness she display'd,

Like a lily in a bogie;

Diana's self was ne'er array'd

Like this same Kath'rine Ogie.

Thou flow'r of females, beauty's queen,

Who sees thee sure must prize thee;

Though thou art drest in robes but mean,

Yet these cannot disguise thee;