THE MAUCHLINE LADY.
Tune—“I had a horse, I had nae mair.”
[The Mauchline lady who won the poet’s heart was Jean Armour: she loved to relate how the bard made her acquaintance: his dog run across some linen webs which she was bleaching among Mauchline gowans, and he apologized so handsomely that she took another look at him. To this interview the world owes some of our most impassioned strains.]
When first I came to Stewart Kyle,
My mind it was nae steady;
Where’er I gaed, where’er I rade,
A mistress still I had ay:
But when I came roun’ by Mauchline town,
Not dreadin’ any body,
My heart was caught before I thought,
And by a Mauchline lady.