It shall be seven year and day
Or ye return to your countrie.
‘Wherever ye gang, or wherever ye be,
Ye’se bear the tongue that can never lie.
‘Gin ere ye want to see me again,
Gang to the bonny banks o Farnalie.’
‘Thomas the Rhymer,’ “Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 97, Abbotsford; communicated to Sir Walter Scott by Mrs Christiana Greenwood, London, May 27, 1806 (Letters, I, 189), from the recitation of her mother and of her aunt, both then above sixty, who learned it in their childhood from Kirstan Scot, a very old woman, at Longnewton, near Jedburgh.
1
Thomas lay on the Huntlie bank,
A spying ferlies wi his eee,