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[Version taken from an old song, Woo'd and married and a'.]

The bride she is winsome and bonny,

Her hair it is snooded sae sleek,
And faithfu' and kind is her Johnny,

Yet fast fa' the tears on her cheek.
New pearlins' are cause of her sorrow,
New pearlins and plenishing too;
The bride that has a' to borrow
Has e'en right mickle ado.

Woo'd and married and a'!
Woo'd and married and a'!
Is na' she very weel aff

To be woo'd and married at a'?

Her mither then hastily spak,
'The lassie is glaikit2 wi' pride;
In my pouch I had never a plack
On the day when I was a bride.
E'en tak to your wheel and be clever,
And draw out your thread in the sun;

The gear that is gifted it never

Will last like the gear that is won.

Woo'd and married and a'!

Wi' havins and tocher3 sae sma'!

I think ye are very weel aff

To be woo'd and married at a'.'

"Toot, toot,' quo' her grey-headed faither,
'She's less o' a bride than a bairn,
She's ta'en like a cout frae the heather,
Wi' sense and discretion to learn.
Half husband, I trow, and half daddy,
As humour inconstantly leans,

The chiel maun be patient and steady
That yokes wi' a mate in her teens.

finery, lace.

VOL. IV.

2

silly.

3

goods and dowry.

♦ colt.

A kerchief sae douce and sae neat

O'er her locks that the wind used to blaw! I'm baith like to laugh and to greet

When I think of her married at a'!'

Then out spak the wily bridegroom,
Weel waled were his wordies, I ween,
'I'm rich, though my coffer be toom',
Wi' the blinks o' your bonny blue e'en.
I'm prouder o' thee by my side

Though thy ruffles or ribbons be few,
Than if Kate o' the Croft were my bride
Wi' purfles and pearlins enow.

Dear and dearest of ony!

Ye're woo'd and buikit and a'!
And do ye think scorn o' your Johnny,
And grieve to be married at a'?'

She turn'd, and she blush'd, and she smiled,
And she looked sae bashfully down;

The pride o' her heart was beguiled,

And she played wi' the sleeves o' her gown. She twirled the tag o' her lace,

And she nipped her boddice sae blue,

Syne blinkit sae sweet in his face,
And aff like a maukin 2 she flew.
Woo'd and married and a'!
Wi' Johnny to roose her and a'!
She thinks hersel very weel aff
To be woo'd and married at a'!

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[THE 'Ettrick Shepherd,' born in 1770 in Selkirkshire, where his forefathers had been sheep-farmers for generations, was discovered' by Sir Walter Scott very much in the same way in which Allan Cunningham was discovered by Cromek. Scott struck across him while engaged in his search for The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. The living minstrel, in this case however, was not under the necessity of passing off his own poems as relics of an older time; Scott at once recognised his talent, and gave him a helping hand. Hogg threw aside the crook for the pen, migrated to Edinburgh, and wrote for the magazines and the booksellers. He was one of the projectors of Blackwood's Magazine in 1817, and became famous as one of the interlocutors in the Noctes Ambrosianae. The Queen's Wake, on which his poetic reputation chiefly rests, was published in 1813. He died in 1835.]

Hogg owed his introduction to letters to the same sort of accident as Cunningham, and there was not a little similarity besides in their careers. Of both it may be said that there was as much of the elements of poetry in their lives as in their books. Hogg was a more boisterous character, with a much less firm grip of reality, and most at home in wild burlesque and the realms of unrestrained fancy. The combination of rough humour with sweetness and purity of sentiment is by no means rare; but Hogg is one of most eminent examples of it; all the more striking that both qualities were in him strongly accentuated by his demonstrative temperament. His humour often degenerates into deliberate loutishness, affected oddity; and his tenderness of fancy sometimes approaches 'childishness,' or, as the Scotch call it, 'bairnliness.' But with all his extravagances, there is a marked individuality in the Shepherd's songs and poems; he was a singer by genuine impulse, and there was an open-air freshness in his note.

W. MINTO.

A Boy's SONG.

Where the pools are bright and deep,
Where the grey trout lies asleep,
Up the river and o'er the lea,
That's the way for Billy and me.

Where the blackbird sings the latest,
Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest,
Where the nestlings chirp and flee,
That's the way for Billy and me.

Where the mowers mow the cleanest, Where the hay lies thick and greenest; There to trace the homeward bee, That's the way for Billy and me.

Where the hazel bank is steepest,
Where the shadow falls the deepest,
Where the clustering nuts fall free,
That's the way for Billy and me.

Why the boys should drive away
Little maidens from their play,
Or love to banter and fight so well,
That's the thing I never could tell.

But this I know, I love to play,
Through the meadow, among the hay:
Up the water and o'er the lea,
That's the way for Billy and me.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

[THOMAS CAMPBELL was born at Glasgow in 1777 of a good Scotch family. He was educated at the Glasgow Grammar School and University, and after one or two tutorships proceeded to Edinburgh to try his fortunes in literature. He published The Pleasures of Hope at the age of twenty-one, and from that date forward his career was one of literary success sufficient, with a pension of £200 from the Crown, to secure him from pecuniary anxiety. He contested successfully the Rectorship of his University with Sir Walter Scott in 1827, and was re-elected the two following years. He removed to London in 1840, but the last years of his life were spent at Boulogne, where he died in 1844. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.]

Campbell's poetry is by no means voluminous, and yet the greater part of it has ceased to be much read.

Two or three admirable ballads are well known to the present generation and will probably continue to be known beyond it, and a few lines out of his other poems have taken the place they so well deserve to hold among current quotations.

His first poem, The Pleasures of Hope, published in 1798, was modelled no doubt upon The Pleasures of Memory, published in 1793, and though Rogers was nearly thirty years of age when he wrote, and Campbell only twenty-one, there are finer passages to be found in the work of the younger poet. But there is the same fault of à prevailing didactic tameness in the one poem as in the other, and Campbell had to learn and to listen for a year or two more before he caught the livelier spirit of song which rang in the new century.

It was at this point of time that our poetry was about to 'breathe a second spring.' Wordsworth said1 that Coleridge 'was in blossom from 1796 to 1800.' Southey wrote 2 in 1837-'Many volumes of

1 In conversation with the writer.

2 In a letter to the writer.

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