"Alas! that I came o'er the moor,
And left my love behind me."
Only one verse has floated down of an old song, which breathes the very soul of a lover's restless longings:—
"Aye wakin', O!
Wakin' aye an' eerie;
Sleep I canna get
For thinkin' on my dearie;
Aye wakin', O!"
Does it not at once pique and disappoint the fancy, that these two graceful verses are all that remain of a song, where, doubtless, they were once but two fair blossoms in a large and variegated posy:—
"Within my garden gay
The rose and lily grew;
But the pride of my garden is wither'd away,
And it 's a' grown o'er wi' rue.
"Farewell, ye fading flowers!
And farewell, bonnie Jean!
But the flower that is now trodden under foot,
In time it may bloom again."
Nay—passing from the tender to the grotesque—would it not have been agreeable to hear something more than two lines from the lips of a lover so stout-hearted, yet so ardent, in his own rough, blunt way, as he who has thus commenced his song:—
"I wish my love were in a mire,
That I might pull her out again;"
or to know something more of the details of that extraordinary parish, of which one surviving verse draws the following sombre picture:—
"Oh! what a parish!—eh! what a parish!
Oh! what a parish is that o' Dunkel':
They 've hang'd the minister, droon'd the precentor;
They 've pu'd doon the steeple, and drunk the kirk-bell."