LEWIS GORDON.
This air is a proof how one of our Scots tunes comes to be composed out of another. I have one of the earliest copies of the song, and it has prefixed,
“Tune of Tarry Woo.”—
Of which tune a different set has insensibly varied into a different air.—To a Scots critic, the pathos of the line,
“‘Tho’ his back be at the wa’,”
—must be very striking. It needs not a Jacobite prejudice to be affected with this song.
The supposed author of “Lewis Gordon” was a Mr. Geddes, priest, at Shenval, in the Ainzie.
O HONE A RIE.
Dr. Blacklock informed me that this song was composed on the infamous massacre of Glencoe.