Some tak a great delight to place Or should some cankered biting shower, HALLOW-FAIR. There's fouth o' braw Jockies and Jennies And fouth o' fine flour on their hair. That Willie was tied to his bride; The pownie was ne'er better whisket Wi' cudgel that hang frae his side. But Maggie was wondrous jealous, And hugged it, and said, Trouth they're saucie That loes na a guid-father's bairn. There was Wattie, the muirland laddie, That rides on the bonnie gray cout, With sword by his side like a cadie To drive in the sheep and the nowt. His doublet sae weel it did fit him, It scarcely cam' down to mid-thie, With hair pouthered, hat, and a feather, And housing at curpan and tea. But Bruckie played boo to Bassie, And aff scoured the cout like the wind: Puir Wattie he fell on the caussey, And birzed a' the banes in his skin. His pistols fell out o' the hulsters, And were a' bedaubed wi' dirt, The folk they cam' round him in clusters; Some leuch, and cried, Lad, was ye hurt? But cout wad let naebody steer him, He aye was sae wanton and skeigh; For sic is the mettle o' brutes, Now it was late in the e'ening, And boughting-time was drawing near; The lasses had stanched their greening Wi' fouth o' braw apples and beer. There was Lillie, and Tibbie, and Sibbie, And Ceicy on the spindle could spin, Stood glowrin' at signs and glass winnocks, But deil a ane bade them come in. Gude guide us! saw ye e'er the like o't? What's yon that it hauds in its hand? Awa', daft gowk, cries Wattie, They're a' but a ruckle o' sticks; See, there is Bill-Jock, and auld Hawkie, And yonder's Mess John and auld Nick. Quoth Maggie, Come buy us our fairin'; I think thou'rt the flower o' the clachan,- Sae proud was he o' his Maggie, Though she was baith scaulie and squint. LADY ANNE BARNARD. BORN 1750- DIED 1825. LADY ANNE LINDSAY, "the daughter of a hundred carls," whose literary fame, like that of Mrs. Alison Cockburn and Jane Elliot, depends on one poem, was born at Balcarres, in Fife, November 27, 1750. She was the eldest daughter of James, fifth earl of Balcarres, and at an early age displayed both a love of learn- | ing and a taste for literary composition. At the age of twenty-one she wrote "Auld Robin Gray," perhaps the most perfect, tender, and affecting of modern Scottish ballads. Ritson says, "The authoress has, in this beautiful production, to all that tenderness and simplicity for which the Scottish song has been so much celebrated, united a delicacy of expression which it never before attained;" and Sir Walter Scott writes: "Auld Robin Gray' is that real pastoral which is worth all the dialogues which Corydon and Phillis have had together, from the days of Theocritus downwards." In 1793 Lady Lindsay married Andrew Barnard, Esq., son of the Bishop of Limerick, an accomplished but not wealthy gentleman, whom she accompanied to the Cape of Good Hope, on his appointment as colonial secretary under Lord Macartney. Mr. Barnard died at the Cape in 1807, when his widow returned to London, where she continued to reside, enjoying the friendship of Burke, Windham, Dundas, and a host of wise and good men and women of that generation, until the day of her deccase, which occurred at her residence in Berkeley Square, on May 6, 1825. Lady Barnard faithfully kept the secret of the authorship of her exquisite ballad for upwards of half a century. At length, when in her seventy-third year, she wrote a letter to Sir Walter Scott, with whom she was well acquainted, requesting him to inform his personal friend, the author of "Waverley," that she was indeed the authoress of "Auld Robin Gray." It was written with special reference to an old Scottish air, "The bridegroom greits when the sun gaes doun," the words of which were coarse. Lady Anne was passionately fond of this melody, and longed to give to its plaintive tones some little history of virtuous distress in humble life. Hence the beautiful ballad which has touched for a hundred years thousands of hearts with a tender feeling. Robin Gray was the name of a shepherd at Balcarres, who was familiar to the children of the house. He had once arrested them in their flight to an indulgent neighbour's. Lady Anne revenged this arrest by seizing the old man's name, and preventing it from passing into forgetfulness. While she was in the act of heaping misforfortunes on the heroine Jeanie, her younger sister Elizabeth strayed into the little room, and saw Anne at her escritoire. "I have been writing a ballad, my dear," said Anne; "and I am oppressing my heroine with many misfortunes. I have already sent her Jamie to sea, broken her father's arm, made her mother fall sick, and given her auld Robin Gray for a lover; but I wish to load her with a fifth sorrow in the four lines. Help me to one, I pray." "Steal the cow, sister Anne," said the little Elizabeth. The cow was immediately lifted, and the immortal song completed. Lady Barnard wrote the second part of "Auld Robin Gray" in order to gratify the desire of her mother, who wished to know how "the unlucky business of Jeanie and Jamie ended;" but like all such continuations, it is greatly inferior to the first part. We give a comical French version of the original song by Florian, printed in the Lives of the Lindsays. The song "Why tarries my Love?" was written by Lady Anne, and to her has been attributed, but without sufficient evidence, the authorship of the favourite lyric “Logie o' Buchan," now believed to be the production of George Halket, schoolmaster of Rathen in Aberdeenshire, and to have been written before Lady Barnard was born. AULD ROBIN GRAY.1 PART I. To make the crown a pound, my Jamie gacd to sea, When the sheep are in the fauld and the kye's And the crown and the pound, they were baith a' at hame, And a' the warld to rest are gane, The woes o' my heart fa' in showers frae my ee, Unkent by my gudeman, wha sleeps sound by me. Young Jamie lo'ed me weel, and he sought me for his bride, But saving a crown, he had naething else beside; 1 For forty years this song was sung to the original air, when the Rev. William Leeves, pastor of Wrington, who died in 1828, aged eighty, composed the beautiful modern melody to which "Auld Robin Gray" is now universally sung, with the exception of the introductory stanza, which retains the old air.-ED. FRENCH VERSION BY FLORIAN. Quand les moutons sont dans la bergerie, A tant d'amour de joindre un peu de bien. Après un an notre vache est volée Le bras cassé mon père rentre un jour- Et Robin Gray vint me faire la cour. Mais son vaisseau sur mer vint à périr; Sans en parler ma mère l'ordonna; Ah! que de pleurs ensemble nous versâmes! Je ne ris plus, j'écarte de mon âme Je veux tâcher d'être une bonne femme, for me. He hadna been gane a twelvemonth and a day, When my faither brake his arm, and the cow was stown away; My mither she fell sick-my Jamie at the sea; And auld Robin Gray came a-courting me. My faither couldna work, and my mither couldna spin; I toil'd day and night, but their bread I couldna win; Auld Rob maintain'd them baith, and wi' tears in his e'e, Said, "Jeanie, for their sakes, will ye no marry me?" My heart it said na, and I looked for Jamie back; But hard blew the winds, and his ship was a wrack; The ship was a wrack-why didna Jamie dee? Or why am I spared to cry, Wae is me? My faither urged me sair, my mither didna speak, But she look'd in my face till my heart was like to break; They gied him my hand-my heart was in the sea; And so Robin Gray he was gudeman to me. I hadna been his wife a week but only four, When, mournfu' as I sat on the stane at my door, I saw my Jamie's ghaist, for I couldna think it he, Till he said, "I'm come hame, love, to marry thee." Oh! sair, sair did we greet, and mickle say of a'; I gang like a ghaist, and carena to spin; I darena think on Jamie, for that wad be a sin; PART II.2 The winter was come, 'twas summer nae mair, And, trembling, the leaves were fleeing thro' the air; 2 Sir Walter Scott selected the second stanza of the continuation of "Auld Robin Gray" as a motto for one of the chapters of "The Pirate," and remarked in a note, "It is worth while saying that this motto, and the ascription of the beautiful ballad from which it is taken to the Right Hon. Lady Anne Lindsay, occasioned the ingenious authoress's acknowledgment of the ballad, "Oh, winter!" said Jeanie, "we kindly agree, For wae looks the sun when he shines upon me." Nae langer she wept, her tears were a' spent; Despair it was come, and she thought it content; She thought it content, but her check it grew pale, And she droop'd like a lily broke down by the hail. Her father and mother observed her decay; "What ails ye, my bairn?” they ofttimes would say; "Ye turn round your wheel, but you come little speed, For feeble's your hand, and silly's your thread." She smiled when she heard them, to banish their fear, But wae looks the smile that is seen through a tear, And bitter's the tear that is forced by a love Which honour and virtue can never approve. Her father was sad, and her mother was wae, But silent and thoughtfu' was auld Robin Gray; He wander'd his lane, and his face it grew lean, Like the side of a brae where the torrents have been. Nae questions he spiered her concerning her health, He looked at her often, but aye 'twas by stealth; He gaed to his bed, but nae physic would take, "Oh, greet nae mair, Jeanie!" said he wi' a groan; "I've wrang'd her," he said, "but I kent it o'er late; I've wranged her, and sorrow is speeding my date; "I lo'ed and I courted her mony a day, "I cared not for crummie, I thought but o' thee; I thought it was crummie stood 'twixt you and me; of which the editor, on her permission, published a small impression, inscribed to the Bannatyne Club." -ED. WHY TARRIES MY LOVE? Why tarries my love? To find him, swift fly! Secure to thy leg with a string. Fair lady, I beg, Her dove she did deck, She tied to his wing The scroll with a string, Then kiss'd him and sent him away. REV. JOHN LOWE, the author of "Mary's Dream," a song which Allan Cunningham says "few have equalled and none have excelled," was born at Kenmure, in Galloway, in the year 1750. He was the eldest son of the gardener at Kenmure Castle, and at the age of fourteen was apprenticed as a weaver to Robert Heron, father of the unfortunate author of that name. Young Lowe afterwards found means to obtain a regular academical education, and while studying divinity was employed as a tutor in the family of Mr. Macghie, of Airds, on the river Dee. The fate of a young surgeon named Alexander Miller, who was unfortunately lost at sea, and who was attached to Mary, one of Macghie's daughters, was the cause of Lowe's writing his affecting song. Failing to obtain a parish in his native country, Lowe in 1773 embarked for the United States -then British colonies-being offered the position of tutor in the family of an elder brother of General Washington. He afterwards opened an academy at Fredericksburg, Virginia-a spot now rendered for ever famous as the scene of one of the great conflicts of the war of 1861; but this enterprise proved unsuccessful, and was soon abandoned. Some years later he became the minister of the Episcopal church of that place. Before leaving Scotland he had interchanged vows of unalterable constancy with a sister of Mary Macghie of Airds, but these were doomed never to be fulfilled. He fell in love with a Virginian lady, who rejected his suit and married another; but this lady's sister became passionately fond of Lowe, and he married her, as he said himself, "from a sentiment of gratitude." When Burns speaks of Lowe he says he read a poetical letter of his from America to a young lady, which seems to relate to love. A man who retracts his promise and revokes his vow for no better reason than his own inconstancy "must needs be a scoundrel," and yet he becomes still more abject and dastardly when he coolly sits down and clothes a heartless epistle to the deserted one in verse, and gives the wings of poetry to his own infamy, that it may fly over the world and proclaim it east and west. No one, therefore, will feel much sympathy for Lowe when he learns that his marriage proved most unfortunate, and blasted his happiness for ever; that he sought consolation in drink, and ere long was laid in an untimely grave. He died in December, 1798, at Windsor Lodge, Culpepper county, Virginia, from the effect, it is believed, of an overdose of laudanum, and was buried at Little Fork church, in the immediate vicinity of that place. We are informed by an American lady whose parents were married by Lowe that he was a man of many accomplishments, and that she remembers to have often seen a manuscript copy, written by the author, of "Mary's Dream." Although Lowe wrote numerous songs and poems prompted by poetical feeling and the romantic scenery of his native glen, the subjoined ballad is alone worthy of preservation— to that alone he is indebted for a place among the minor poets of Scotland. In the words of Cunningham, "The claim of Logan to the sweet song of the Cuckoo,' the claim of Hamilton to one brilliant speech, and of John Lowe to one exquisite song, have all been disputed; though nothing can be surer than their |