Amang the trees, where humming bees
At buds and flowers were hinging, O,
Auld Caledon drew out her drone,
And to her pipe was singing, O;
’Twas pibroch, sang, strathspey, or reels,
She dirl’d them aff fu’ clearly, O,
When there cam a yell o’ foreign squeels,
That dang her tapsalteerie, O.
II.
Their capon craws and queer ha ha’s,
They made our lugs grow eerie, O;
The hungry bike did scrape and pike,
’Till we were wae and weary, O;
But a royal ghaist wha ance was cas’d
A prisoner aughteen year awa,
He fir’d a fiddler in the north
That dang them tapsalteerie, O.
CLXXVII.
THE GOWDEN LOCKS OF ANNA.
Tune—“Banks of Banna.”
[“Anne with the golden locks,” one of the attendant maidens in Burns’s Howff, in Dumfries, was very fair and very tractable, and, as may be surmised from the song, had other pretty ways to render herself agreeable to the customers than the serving of wine. Burns recommended this song to Thomson; and one of his editors makes him say, “I think this is one of the best love-songs I ever composed,” but these are not the words of Burns; this contradiction is made openly, lest it should be thought that the bard had the bad taste to prefer this strain to dozens of others more simple, more impassioned, and more natural.]
I.