Orange (William III), his cause was maintained in Scotland by Viscount Dundee (John Graham of Claverhouse), the Duke of Gordon, and others. The Lords of Convention, or Scottish Parliament, in spite of the threats of Claverhouse (Claver'se), swore allegiance to William and Mary; and the Whig, or Puritan, element of the city of Edinburgh approved their decision. The Viscount galloped away to raise an army of Highland chieftains and their clans, "wild Duniewassals" in the North, for the Lowland lords also had thrown their influence to King William. The Westport, the western gate. The Bow, a famous street whose "bends" had been "sanctified" by the assembling there of the Scottish Church. - The Grass-Market, a central square. The Covenanting Protestants from Kilmarnock are sneeringly called "cowls" because of their austere appearance. - Mons Meg and her marrows (companions) are the cannon in the castle. - Viscount Dundee boasts that not all the power of Scotland is confined within the environment of Edinburgh bounded by the Pentland Hills and the Firth of Forth. - Ravelston and Clermiston are near Edinburgh. — For Montrose, see the preceding poem. A good characterization of Claverhouse may be found in Scott's Old Mortality and in Aytoun's Burial March of Dundee. -- Page 159, LXVI. THE OLD SCOTTISH CAVALIER.- William Edmonstoune Aytoun, the author of the stirring Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, 1849, was a professor in the University of Edinburgh. He says in his preface to this poem that the subject of it is Alexander Forbes, Lord Pitsligo, a nobleman whose conscientious views impelled him to follow the fortunes of the exiled house of Stuart. His castle by the Spey was in Aberdeenshire. Of the cavalier of the lay it is said that his father had died for James II in 1689, at Killiecrankie Pass, with that Graeme of Claverhouse celebrated in The Bonnets of Bonnie Dundee; and that he himself was with Prince Charles Edward in the Jacobite victory at Prestonpans, and fell in the battle that decided the fate of the Jacobite cause, Culloden Moor, 1746.- The White Rose and the White Cockade are, of course, emblems of the Stuarts. Page 162, LXVII. THE LAMENT OF FLORA MACDONALD. — After his flight from Culloden, Charles Edward Stuart was saved from the pursuit of some two thousand men by Flora Macdonald, who took him over the Skye in disguise. After numerous hardships, he reëmbarked for France some five months later. In the Jacobite Relics, James Hogg says that he versified anew the original of this song which he had obtained in a rude translation from the Gaelic. James Page 163; LXVIII. WAE'S ME FOR PRINCE CHARLIE. Hogg attributes this song to William Glen of Glasgow, author of a few other popular songs. The Young Pretender's ill-starred invasion of Great Britain was brought to a close at Culloden, April 16, 1746. Page 165, LXX. THE BLUE BELL OF SCOTLAND. This version is from Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time and Ritson's North Country Chorister. The well-known air was composed by Mrs. Jordan, perhaps as early as 1786; she sang it first in London in 1786, and again in 1800, when it acquired general popularity. Chappell describes it as an "old English Border song," and the version given by him is far older and simpler than others (like that attributed to Mrs. Grant of Laggan, 1799, which has nothing about the Blue Bell, and need not be here retailed). Miss Stirling Graham's still more recent version has "where blooms the sweet blue bell," which may be poetic but is less naïve than the commemoration of the tavern sign which is found in the original. Page 166, LXXI. ANNIE LAURIE. The heroine of this the sweetest of Scottish love songs was born on December 16, 1682,- one of four daughters of Sir Robert Laurie of Maxwelton House, Scotland. We may conjecture that it was about 1700 that she " made up the bargain" with the lover who immortalized her, William Douglas of Finland, or Fingland. But "he didna get her after a'," said his own granddaughter, Clark Douglas, an old lady who was still living in 1854. According to her, the words as sung at that date were not as they first were written. "Oh, I mind them fine," she said, "I have remembered them a' my life. My father often repeated them to me." She then recited: Maxwelton's banks are bonnie, They're a' clad owre wi' dew, I'd lay me doun an' dee, but remembered "nae mair." And probably that was all that Douglas of Fingland had composed. The second stanza of the song, as it was said to have been written by him, might have been put together by anybody; for there is only one line that evinces any effort of composition. The first five were borrowed, says Fitzgerald, from an old ballad of John Anderson, my Jo, and the last two are simply the refrain. The following is the old second stanza, as attributed to Douglas: The first stanza was altered by Lady John Scott to the form given in the text. She substituted the second as there given; and added the third. The third line of her third stanza has been changed by some one, but without advantage, to "Like the winds in summer sighing." Fitzgerald (in whose Famous Songs the poem is discussed) says that the melody now sung was composed by this lady, though it is attributed by some to a Scotchman named R. Findlater. Page 167, LXXII. LOCHABER.-"A lady, in whose father's house at Edinburgh Burns was a frequent and honored guest, one evening played the tune of Lochaber on the harpsichord to Burns. He listened to it attentively, and then exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, 'Oh, that's a fine tune for a broken heart.' It is said that the tune is derived from a seventeenth-century air of Irish composition entitled King James's March to Ireland." Wood's Scottish Songs. Page 168, LXXIII. NAE LUCK ABOUT THE House. This Burns used to call "the finest love-ballad of the kind in the Scottish or perhaps any other language." While it is said to have been written by William Mickle, we know that the fifth and most poetic stanza was added by Dr. James Beattie. Page 171, LXXIV. A RED, RED ROSE.. Burns's contribution to this song would seem to be limited to the exquisite first stanza. The rest constitute a very old ditty, said to have been written by a Lieutenant Hinches as a farewell to his sweetheart. It is one of the songs that Burns picked up from the old wives of the countryside. Page 171, LXXV. FOR A' THAT. Written about January, 1795. "Is there any one that, because of honest poverty, hangs, etc." Page 173, LXXVI. JOHN ANDERSON, my Jo.-Burns took the opening phrase from a very old and worthless song of the sixteenth century. The sentiment and poetry are his own. Page 174, LXXVII. AFTON WATER.-Afton is an Ayrshire stream. It is reported that Burns wrote the verses as a tribute of gratitude to Mrs. Stewart of Afton Lodge, "for the notice she had taken of him the first he had received from one in her rank of life." Page 176, LXXIX. MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS. Burns said that the first half stanza was from an old song, the rest was by himself. Page 176, LXXX. JOCK OF HAZELDEAN. The first stanza comes from an old ballad, the others were added by Scott. Page 178, LXXXI. LOCHINVAR. Lady Heron's song in the fifth canto of Marmion. - The Eske flows into Solway. — Netherby is in Cumberland. Page 185, LXXXVI. AULD LANG SYNE. Burns himself said that this song was old. To his friend Mrs. Dunlop he wrote: "Is not the Scots phrase 'Auld Lang Syne' exceedingly expressive? There is an old song and tune which has often thrilled through my soul. You know I am an enthusiast on old Scot songs. I shall give you the verses." He enclosed the words of the song as we know it, and continued, "Light lie the turf on the breast of the heaven-inspired poet who composed this glorious fragment." To Thomson, his publisher, he wrote: "One song more, and I am done — Auld Lang Syne. The air is but mediocre; but the following song, the old song of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript, until I took it down from an old man's singing, is enough to recommend any air." Fitzgerald (in his Stories of Famous Songs) adds to this information the following, that Sir Robert Ayton (1570-1638), “a friend of Ben Jonson and other Elizabethan writers," wrote a poem in which occurs this stanza: Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never thought upon, The flame of love extinguished And fairly passed and gone? In 1724 the poet Allan Ramsay tried his hand at the song. In an old collection of 1775, called the Caledoniad, this Ayton stanza appears as the first of ten in an Old-Long-Syne-a love song of no particular merit. And it is interesting to note that this poem is preceded in the Caledoniad by one entitled "Auld Kyndness quite forget," the refrain of which would seem to have suggested "We'll tak a cup of kindness yet" in the song as we now have it. Burns reshaped and vastly improved the first stanza and probably added the stanzas which now stand second and third. The old tune has been abandoned since 1795. That now in use was composed by William Shield, an Englishman. of the Ayton song, BOOK FOURTH-POEMS OF IRELAND Page 188, LXXXVIII. THE IRISH WIFE.—“In 1376 the Statute of Kilkenny forbade the English settlers in Ireland to intermarry with the Irish under pain of outlawry. James, Earl of Desmond, was one of the first to violate this law. He was an accomplished poet." He is therefore well represented as the author of these thrilling lines. Thomas D'Arcy McGee, who wrote the poem, was one of the Irish patriots of 1848. Page 190, LXXXIX. DARK ROSALEEN.— The Róisín Dubh (Roseen dhu), or little black rose, symbolizes Ireland. The original of this song is in the Irish tongue and was composed during the reign of Elizabeth, about 1601. "It purports to be an allegorical address from the chieftain, Hugh the Red O'Donnell, to Ireland on the subject of his love and struggles for her, and his resolve to free her from the English yoke." The date of this address would be about 1601, when the Spaniards landed at Kinsale to help the Irish. It has been translated by Thomas Furlong and by Aubrey De Vere. Mangan has given it all the passion of a love song. This poet, the most original song writer of Ireland, lived most of his life in Dublin. He was for a time associated with the staff of Trinity College Library. Page 193, XC. THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE.- With an army of Stuart loyalists and Frenchmen James II of England had landed in Ireland, in 1689, to regain his throne. That year he was defeated in an attempt to take the Protestant town of Derry in the north. During the next year, William of Orange and his marshal, the Duke of Schomberg, drove him down from Dundalk, fifty miles from Dublin, to the southern |