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Oh Helen chaste, thou were modest;
Were I with thee I wad be blest,
Where thou lies low and takes thy rest,
On fair Kirkconnell lee.

I wish I were where Helen lies,
For night and day on me she cries;
I wish I were where Helen lies,
On fair Kirkconnell lee.

TAK' YOUR AULD CLOAK ABOUT YE.

In winter, when the rain rain'd cauld,
And frost and snaw on ilka hill,
And Boreas, wi' his blasts sae bauld,

Was threatnin' a' our kye to kill :
Then Bell, my wife, wha lo'es nae strife,
She said to me richt hastilie,
Get up, gudeman, save Crummie's life,
And tak' your auld cloak about ye.

My Crummie is a usefu' cow,

And she is come of a good kin' ; Aft has she wet the bairns's mou',

And I am laith that she should tyne ; Get up, gudeman, it is fu' time,

The sun shines i' the lift sae hie; Sloth never made a gracious end; Gae tak' your auld cloak about ye.

My cloak was ance a gude gray cloak, When it was fitting for my wear; But now it's scantly worth a groat,

For I have worn't this thretty year; Let's spend the gear that we ha'e won, We little ken the day we'll die ;

Then I'll be proud, since I have sworn To ha'e a new cloak about me.

In days when our King Robert rang,

His trews they cost but half a croun; He said they were a groat ower dear, And ca'd the tailor thief and loon ; He was the king that wore a croun, And thou'rt a man of laigh degree: It's pride puts a' the country doun; Sae tak' your auld cloak about ye. Ilka land has its ain lauch,

Ilk kind o' corn has its ain hool; I think the world is a' gane wrang, When ilka wife her man wad rule; Do ye no see Rob, Jock, and Hab, As they are girded gallantlie, While I sit hurklin i' the ase?—

I'll ha'e a new cloak about me. Gudeman, I wat 'tis thretty year Sin' we did ane anither ken; And we ha'e had atween us twa

Of lads and bonnie lasses ten: Now they are women grown and men, I wish and pray weel may they be ; If you would prove a gude husband, E'en tak' your auld cloak about ye.

Bell, my wife, she lo'es nae strife,

But she would guide me if she can ; And to maintain an easy life,

I aft maun yield, though I'm gudeman: Nought's to be gain'd at woman's hand, Unless ye gi'e her a' the plea; Then I'll leave aff where I began,

And tak' my auld cloak about me.

SCOTTISH POEMS AND POETS.

MODERN SECTION.

1707-1832.

THE first impulse to the revival of Scottish Poetry is due to Watson's Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems, both Ancient and Modern, By Several Hands: Edinburgh, 1706-9-11. Ramsay acknowledges his indebtedness to this collection for having first awakened his ambition to write in his native dialect. Three or four others claim precedence of him on account of priority of birth; but their contributions are so few, and their contemporary effect upon the national literature was so insignificant, that, to begin the Modern Section with the real reviver of the Scottish Muse, we have placed them after him.

ALLAN RAMSAY.

1686-1758.

THE position which Allan Ramsay occupies as the pioneer of the modern era of Scottish poetry, which culminated in Burns, gives his works and character an interest additional to that which his genius and personal history claim upon the attention of the student of Scottish literature. The long interval between the time of Montgomery and that of Ramsay, produced nothing that presented any distinctively Scottish features; for the writings of Alexander Earl of Stirling, Drummond of Hawthornden, and some others that claim to be named in a history of English literature, bear little or no impress of the Scottish character. Scotland, for all this, has as (7)

good a claim to the honours which their works confer as she has to the glory which accrues to her on account of the contributions of Thomson, Hume, Smith, Robertson, Macaulay, Hamilton, and Carlyle, to the noble structure of English literature. This she is proud to own in common with her wealthier sister, albeit cherishing a special fondness for a homelier structure, all the dearer that it is all her own. To this native structure Allan Ramsay has furnished so important and characteristic a contribution as gives an interest to the homely, and apparently commonplace incidents of his uneventful life.

The 15th October 1686 is given as his

2 B

birthday by Chalmers, the author of Caledonia, whose life of him, prefixed to the London edition of his works (1800), is the basis of all subsequent accounts. His father, Robert Ramsay, was manager of Lord Hopetoun's lead mines at Leadhills, an office in which he succeeded his father, of the same name, who was also a writer in Edinburgh. The latter, the poet's grandfather, was himself the grandson of Ramsay of Cockpen,1 a brother of Ramsay of Dal- | housie, the chief of the name, and whose representative Allan, with clannish and pardonable vanity, addresses as

"Dalhousie of an auld descent,

My chief, my stoup, my ornament." He was named after his maternal grandfather, a native of Derbyshire, whom Lord Hopetoun brought to Leadhills, to teach his miners their business, and to superintend the working of the mines. Allan Bower (such was his name) married Janet Douglas, a daughter of Douglas of Muthill, and their daughter Alice Bower was the poet's mother; which links in his pedigree afforded him the satisfaction of recording that

"He was a poet sprung from a Douglas' loin." The writer of the notice of Ramsay in Chambers' Cyclopædia observes, that for the easy smoothness of his disposition he was indebted to his English descent. And certainly the numerous instances, since the days of "King Bruce," in which the coalescing streams of Saxon and Celtic blood have given steadiness

1 The statement by Dr R. Chambers, that the first Ramsay of Cockpen was a brother of

Ramsay of Dalhousie, who was knighted in

1424, makes it probable that some connecting links are wanting in the above genealogy.

and force to those in whose veins they have mingled, justify the conclusion that Ramsay owes as much to his Bower descent, of which he takes no notice, as to the line of Douglas or Dalhousie.

His father died before attaining his 25th year, when Allan was but an infant, and his mother soon afterwards married a Mr Crichton, a small landowner of the district. There is no direct account of his boyhood, the extent of his education, or the nature of his youthful employments; and what these were have to be gathered from such references in his writings as bear on these points, and what a general survey of them leads to be inferred regarding them.

It may safely be assumed that, until the time of his mother's death, which took place when he was but fifteen years of age, he attended the village school of Leadhills. Here he would obtain a fair English education, and some knowledge of Latin. He says himself that his acquaintance with the classics was too slight to admit of his enjoying them in the original; yet his fondness for the use of classic mottoes and quotations shows that he devoted some time to the study of Latin at least. His enjoyment of classic authors, and familiarity with them through translations, he frequently avows, and evinces in his works. His native district, though the most elevated inhabited spot in Scotland, and perhaps the most isolated, has long held a high character for the intelligence, industry, and sobriety of its inhabitants. It is quite in keeping with the custom of the place, and that of many more rural districts in Scotland, that he remained in school

till his fifteenth year; while, after the age of ten or thereabouts, he may have been employed looking after the sheep, or assisting the shepherds, at those seasons that require extra attention on the part of their flocks. That he was intimately familiar with every aspect of shepherd life before he left the scenes of his boyhood is obvious; yet this was quite within the reach of an observant boy in the circumstances assumed.

Allan, at the age of fifteen, was apprenticed to an Edinburgh wigmaker in 1701; and no more is heard of him till, in 1712, he marries Christian Ross, the daughter of "an inferior lawyer in Edinburgh." It is not recorded when he commenced business on his own account, but it may be presumed to have been some time before this. Neither the responsibilities nor the attractions of the change in his domestic state prevent him this same year forming one of "a band of young men of talent and vivacity," who established the "Easy Club" with the object of passing "stated even ings in free conversation and social mirth." He appears, from the minutes, to have been very regular in his attendance at the meetings, and to have made them the arena on which to test the acceptability of his earliest poetical ventures. Their reception may be judged from the fact, that in 1715 he was made Poet-Laureate to the Club, whose career was this year cut short on account of the Earl of Mar's rebellion, and the anti-union leanings of its members.

His earliest known production was written for this club, and its character justifies the conjecture that he 'made no serious attempt at verse writ

ing before 1711; indeed, he implies as much himself in his letter to his friend Smibert, afterwards quoted. We have also his own authority for supposing his poetical emulation to have been first awakened by reading Watson's Choice Collection of Scots Poems, published in three parts, in 1706-9 and 11. His reading in English was principally devoted to the works of Dryden, Addison, Prior, and Pope; and when the translation of the Iliad appeared in 1718, he wrote Pope a congratulatory ode, in which he confesses to having read it three times, and each time with increased relish. Nor did he neglect the study of the literature of his native country, within whose sphere he rightly deemed his muse should chiefly confine her flight. After the suppression of the

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'Easy Club"-the medium through which he tested the effects of his earliest productions-he felt sufficient confidence in their popularity to have them published in separate poems, in which form they became so much read by the people of Edinburgh, that mothers were accustomed to send their children with a penny to buy "Ramsay's last piece."

His confidence grew with his success, and in 1716 he took the bold step of adding a second canto to "Christ's Kirk on the Green," the humorous poem of James I. of Scotland; which ludicrous but vigorous picture of low rural life and manners he issued with his own. His thorough acquaintance with the habits, language, and traditional customs of the class of rustics which the royal poet had sketched, enabled him to present a change of scene, in which the same actors are made to maintain their re

spective characters so well as almost, but for the less antique phraseology, to conceal the difference of authorship. The reception of his first addition, Canto ii., induced him to add another, Canto iii.; and he published the whole as a consecutive poem in 1718, under the old title of "Christ's Kirk on the Green."

His poems, published separately as they were written, now amounted to so considerable a collection, that in 1721 he published them in a quarto volume, and so well were they received in this form that he made four hundred guineas by the venture. It is dedicated to "The Most Beautiful the British Ladies," at whose feet he begs to be allowed to lay it "as a grateful return of every thought happily expressed by me, they being less owing to my natural | genius than to the inspiration of your charms." His purely English pieces show his obligations to the school of Pope for polishing his verse; but his genius was fortunately too natural, and its proper sphere too far removed from the influence of that school, to be injuriously affected by it.

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first volume of the Tea-Table Mis-
cellany, a collection of songs, Scotish
and English,” which he dedicated
"To ilka lovely British lass,

Frae Lady Charlotte, Anne, and Jean,
Down to ilk bonny singing Bess

Wha dances barefoot on the green."

A third volume was issued in 1727, and a fourth several years after, though whether compiled by Ramsay himself is doubtful. It was the first printed collection of Scotch songs, and is still a standard work of reference with students and collectors of that branch of the national literature.

In October 1724, The Evergreen, "being a collection of Scots Poems wrote by the Ingenious before 1600," made its appearance. It is a compilation, chiefly derived from the celebrated Bannatyne MS., lent to him by the Honourable William Carmichael, brother-german to the Earl of Hyndford. Though with patriotic zeal he undertook the labour of editing and bringing within the reach of the public several specimens of that valuable national treasure, yet it is agreed on all hands that the task was much beyond the range of his acquirements as an antiquarian. His ideas, too, as a caterer for the general public, and as a successful poet, unfitted him for the faithful reproduction of a work which could be appreciated only by the learned few who devote years to such studies. Nor can he be acquitted from censure, even though in keeping with the literary canons of his time, for having introduced, under the designation of productions of the ingenious before 1600, In January 1724, he published the poems of considerable length which

In 1722 and 1723 he produced his "Fables and Tales," the Monk and the Miller's Wife of which, says Lord Woodhouselee, "would be of itself his passport to immortality." Of the "Tale of the Three Bonnets," an anti-union satire, he did not acknowledge the authorship, and excluded it afterwards from the collected edition of his works. In 1724, appeared his poem on "Health," his only unexceptionable English composition.

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