FOR LAKE OF GOLD.
The country girls in Ayrshire, instead of the line—
“She me forsook for a great duke,”
say
“For Athole’s duke she me forsook;”
which I take to be the original reading.
These were composed by the late Dr. Austin, physician at Edinburgh.—He had courted a lady, to whom he was shortly to have been married; but the Duke of Athole having seen her, became so much in love with her, that he made proposals of marriage, which were accepted of, and she jilted the doctor.
HERE’S A HEALTH TO MY TRUE LOVE, &c.
This song is Dr. Blacklock’s. He told me that tradition gives the air to our James IV. of Scotland.