[1208] Though all perish.
[1209] Till.
[1210] So brittle and slippery.
[1211] withstand.
[1212] if.
[1213] fault.
[1214] strive.
[1215] lawful.
[1216] As already stated, the preservation of all the extant compositions attributed to Scot is owed to Bannatyne’s MS. From this several pieces were printed by Ramsay, Hailes, Pinkerton, and Sibbald, in their several collections. The poems were first gathered into one volume by Laing, who printed an octavo edition of one hundred copies for private circulation at Edinburgh in 1821. Another edition, of seventy copies, by Alexander Smith, was printed at Glasgow in 1882. And in 1887 a modernised version of considerable merit by William M’Kean, “based mainly on Laing’s collection,” and not containing all the author’s work, was printed at Paisley.
[1217] Memorials of George Bannatyne, Edin. 1829, p. 47.