Though many a wond'rous tale of elder When in these wilds a jocund, sportive time child, Each flower, self-sown, my heedless hours beguiled: Shall grace the wild traditionary rhyme, Yet, not of warring hosts and faulchion wounds, The wabret leaf, that by the pathway grew,' Again the harp of ancient minstrels The wild-briar rose, of pale and blushful sounds: hue, Be mine to sing the meads, the pensile The thistle's rolling wheel of silken down, groves, The blue-bell, or the daisy's pearly crown, And silver streams, which dear Aurelia The gaudy butterfly, in wanton round, loves. That, like a living pea-flower, skimm'd the ground. From wilds of tawny heath, and mosses dun, Through winding glens, scarce pervious Afraid to glitter in the noon-tide beam, stream: Till, far retiring from her native rills, hills, And, gathering wide her waters on their way, With foamy force emerges into day. Where'er she sparkles o'er her silver The daisied meads in glowing hues expand; Again I view the cairn, and moss-grey stone. Where oft at eve I wont to muse alone, Or think, as playful fancy wandered far, Again I view each rude romantic glade, Where once with tiny steps my childhood stray'd, To watch the foam-bells of the bubbling brook, Or mark the motions of the clamorous rook, Who saw her nest, close thatched with ceaseless toil, But, more remote, the spangled fields At summer eve become the woodman's And windows tinkling shrill with dancing | And oft, when ardent fancy spurned con hail; While, as the drifting tempest darker blew, White showers of blossoms seemed the fields to strew. Again, beside this silver riv'let's shore, With green and yellow moss-flowers mottled o'er, Beneath a shivering canopy reclined, When peers in scattered tuft the yellow Or trace the path, with tangling furze o'errun ; trol, The living image rushed upon my soul, crowd, Bade me forgetful muse, or think aloud; While, as I sighed thy favourite scenes to view, Each lingering hour seemed lengthening As Ovid, banished from his favourite fair, The fur-clad savage loved his aspect mild, When bursting seed-bells crackle in the Kind as a father, gentle as a child, office, too, was congenial, and gave him access to the University library at St Andrew's. Here he added Arabic, Syriac, and Persian to the list of his linguistic acquirements. In 1814, he published a second edition of Anster Fair, on the publication of which Jeffrey reviewed it in The Edinburgh in very flattering terms. In 1816 he was promoted, chiefly through the influence of George Thomson, the friend and correspondent of Burns, to be parish teacher of Lasswade. In 1819, he was elected by the trustees of Dollar Academy, teacher of Classical and Oriental languages in that institution. His last publication, "Hebrew Dramas," founded on incidents of Bible history, was published in 1845. Of this work Lord Jeffrey expressed a high opinion. It served to cover his retreat from the poetic arena with dignity, though it can hardly be said to have increased his fame. His death took place at Dollar, in 1848; and at his own request he was buried at Anstruther, where his friends and admirers have placed a monument over his remains. The works already noticed are all that he published in a collected form; yet, besides a number of small poems Here settled in a highly agreeable and ballads, he contributed prose transand interesting locality, and in a posi- lations from Greek and German to the tion suited to his tastes, it was expected | Edinburgh Literary Journal, in 1830, that the promise of Anster Fair would and in the same periodical, carried on a be redeemed by something worthy of correspondence with the "Ettrick his literary and scholastic reputation. Shepherd," anent a new metrical transAccordingly, much interest was excited lation of the Psalms, which was pubwhen, in 1822, his second poem, The lished separately. In 1836-37, he conThane of Fife," appeared. The public tributed a series of five "Hebrew expectation was disappointed, for the Idylls" to the Scottish Christian Herald, poem was a manifest falling off, and if | which, with a project for an edition of not an entire failure, so much so, that the Scottish poets, for which he wrote its second part never was published. a life of Allan Ramsay, and a Synopsis Of his next three poems it will be of Syriac Grammar, published in 1840, enough to give the names, seeing none form all his literary labours which apof them added to his reputation. They pear to have been published. The fame were issued in the following order: of his linguistic acquirements conveys "Papistry Stormed, or the Dingin' the impression that his power of masterDown o' the Cathedral;" "Cardinal ing languages was something wonderBethune, a Drama in 5 acts;" "John ful. In character he was humble Baliol, an Historical Drama." unassuming, and unaffectedly pious simple in his tastes, and fond of nature and innocent enjoyment, had a quick sense of the ludicrous in all things; and was an acute observer of men and In 1834, a vacancy occurred in the chair of Oriental languages in St Mary's College, St Andrew's, and he was at once appointed to the professorship by his friend Jeffrey, then Lord Advocate. manners. As a poet, he fills a niche in Scottish literature which had not been pre-occupied. He is another of the poets whom the university did not deprive of the use of his native tongue, and his less known poems are a mine of Scottish words, and as such are valued by our antiquarian collectors. Anster Fair, his passport to immortality, he treated as a sort of illegitimate progeny of his Muse in her frolicsome and unbridled youth, and he never lost hope of being able to produce something that would bear his poetic reputation more in keep-| ing with his notions of respectability. His weakness as a poet was the want of passion; and the success of Anster Fair is owing to its being of that rare species of poetry in which passion has no place. It is a poem to be enjoyed-as "Tickler" said; to be taken in the pocket on your trip to Holland, and read in the Zuyder Zee. "It is a fine thing, North! full of life, and glee, and glamour." LEGEND OF ANSTER FAIR. ANSTER FAIR is unique in British literature, and may be defined as a descriptive poem, with two love stories and a fairy tale, the evolution of whose plots depended upon one another. The outline is as follows:-The fairy, Tommy Puck, incensed at Susan Scott, niece of Sir Michael the Wizard, for meanly jilting her lover, Melville of Carnbee, put the latter up to a plan by which he revenged the indignity. sir Michael having discovered the real author of the plot, determined to punish the little elf and his wife, and having got hold of them, by his magic power he crammed the one into a pepper-box, and the other into a mustard-pot, there to remain till the hand of the fairest Scottish maid should be won in public competition by the most accomplished athlete in Scotland, The mustard-pot in the course of ages having come into the possession of Maggie Lauder, by special permission of Oberon, Tommy is liberated from his prison long enough to advise her-the fairest Scottish maidhow she may obtain the fairest man in Scotland as her husband. The manner proposed is to offer her hand as the prize of a competition at next Anster Fair. A public proclamation throughout Scotland is made to this effect, and Rob the Ranter, the cleverest man in Scotland, is successful in carrying off the fair prize. The event on which their imprisonment depended being thus brought about, the two fairies regain their liberty. The chief part of the poem, however, is devoted to a description of the various incidents of the Fair and competition, and the various parties, including the King (James v.), who are attracted to them. ANSTER FAIR. EXTRACTS. [Evening before the Fair.] Nor less is the disport and joy without, In Anster town and loan, through all the throng: 'Tis but one vast tumultuous jovial rout, Tumult of laughing and of gabbling strong; Thousands and tens of thousands reel about, With joyous uproar blustering along ; Elbows push boringly on sides with pain, Wives hustling come on wives, and men dash hard on men. There lacks no sport: tumblers in wondrous pranks, High staged, display their limbs'agility; And now a section of his face appears, And diving, now he ducks clean down o'er head and ears. Anon uprises, with blithe bagpipe's sound, A town of tents, with blankets roofèd And now, they, mountant from the A thousand stakes are rooted in the scaffold's planks, Kick with their whirling heels the clouds on high, And now, shanks ground; A thousand hammers clank and clatter thick; like cat, upon their dexterous A thousand fiddles squeak and squeal it yare ; They light, and of new monsters cheat A thousand stormy drones out-gasp in the sky; Whilst motley Merry-Andrew, with his jokes, Wide through the incorp'rate mob the bursting laugh provokes. Others upon the green, in open air, Enact the best of Davie Lindsay's plays; While ballad-singing women do not spare Their throats to give good utt'rance to their lays ; And many a leather-lung'd co-chanting pair Of wood-legg'd sailors, children's laugh and gaze, Lift to the courts of Jove their voices loud, Y-hymning their mishaps, to please the heedless crowd. groans their air. And such a turbulence of general mirth Looks, wond'ring what may be the He rests his eye on shores of Fortha's And smirks, as knowing well the And bids his gods and goddesses look To mark the rage of joy that maddens From Cellardyke to wind-swept Pitten weem, And from Balhouffie to Kilrennymill, Meanwhile the sun, fatigued (as well he Vaulted with blankets, crofts and meadows may) With shining on a night till seven o'clock, Beams on each chimney-head a farewell ray, Illuming into golden shaft its smoke ; And now in sea, far west from Oronsay, Is dipp'd his chariot-wheel's refulgent spoke, seem, So many tents the grassy spaces fill; Meantime the Moon, yet leaning on the stream, With fluid silver bathes the welkin chill, That now earth's ball, upon the side of night, Swims in an argent sea of beautiful moon light. |