From his earliest years his life was one of constant toil. He was a herd-boy in his seventh, and a ploughman in his sixteenth year. He was then indentured to a mason; and he soon became one of the most skilful workmen in this part of the country, especially in hewing tombstones and engraving epitaphs. There is not a churchyard within ten miles of Cromarty in which there may not be seen some of his inscriptions. His heart was an affectionate one, and open to love and friendship; and when he had served his apprenticeship, and began to be known as a young man of superior worth and a good clear head, his company came to be much courted by the better sort of people. In his twenty-fifth year he became attached to a young girl of Cromarty, named Annie Watson, much celebrated in her day for her charms personal and mental. She was beautiful to admiration, rationally yet fervently pious, and possessed of a mind at once powerful and delicate. It was no wonder that David should love such a one; and, as no disparity of condition formed an obstacle to the union—as she was a woman of sense and he a man of merit—in all probability she would have made him happy. But, alas! in the bloom of youth she was taken from him by that insidious disease, which, while it preys on the vitals of its victims, renders their appearance more interesting, as if to make their loss the more regretted. She died of consumption, and David was left behind to mourn over her grave, and, when his grief had settled into a calm melancholy, to write a simple ballad-like elegy to her memory. I have heard my mother say, that it was left by David at the grave of his mistress, where it was afterwards picked up by a person who gave copies of it to several of his acquaintance; but I do not know that any of these are now to be found. I have failed in recovering more than a few stanzas of it; and these I took down as they were repeated to me by my mother, who had committed them to memory when a child. They may prove interesting, rude and fragmentary as they are, to such of my readers as love to contemplate the poetic faculty wrapt up in the dishabille of an imperfect education. Besides, the writer may be regarded less as an insulated individual than as representative of a class. The unknown authors of some of our simpler old ballads, such as Edom o’ Gordon, Gilmorice, and the Bonny Earl of Moray, were, it is probable, men of similar acquirements, and a resembling cast of intellect.
ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG WOMAN.
She’s slain by death, that spareth none,
An object worthy love;
And for her sake was many a sigh,—
No doubt she’s now above.
***
In dress she lovéd to be neat,
In handsome trim would go;
She lovéd not to be above