The lamb likes the gowan wi’ dew when it’s droukit;
The hare likes the brake and the braird on the lea;
But Lucy likes Jamie;—she turn’d, and she lookit;
She thought the dear place she wad never mair see!’
In publishing the ballad, Hogg added the following verse, in order, as he said, to complete the story; but it will be felt, we think, that he has marred the pathetic simplicity of the original, which was complete enough as a picture of the flittin’:
‘Ah, weel may young Jamie gang dowie and cheerless,
And weel may he greet on the bank o’ the burn!
His bonnie sweet Lucy, sae gentle and peerless,
Lies cauld in her grave, and will never return.’
Lockhart has truly characterised Laidlaw’s ballad as ‘a simple and pathetic picture of a poor Ettrick maiden’s feelings in leaving a service where she had been happy,’ and he adds that it has ‘long been and must ever be a favourite with all who understand the delicacies of the Scottish dialect, and the manners of the district in which the scene is laid.’ A no less flattering or discriminating notice had been previously given by a critic in the Edinburgh Review, who, in quoting one song from the four volumes of Allan Cunningham’s Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern, selected Laidlaw’s ‘simple ditty’ as a ‘fair example of the lowly pathetic’ which would ‘go to the heart of many a village-bred Scotchman in remote regions and all conditions of society.’