FOOTNOTES:
[1] This song was composed when Wilkes, Horne, and others, were exciting a commotion about liberty.
[2] This tune requires O to be added at the end of each of the long lines, but in reading the song the O is better omitted.
[3] Forbes's "Life of Beattie," vol. i. p. 375.
[4] Of the "Flowers of the Forest," two other versions appear in the Collections. That version beginning, "I've heard the lilting at our yow-milking," is the composition of Miss Jane Elliot, the daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto, Lord Justice-Clerk, who died in 1766. She composed the song about the middle of the century, in imitation of an old version to the same tune. The other version, which is the most popular of the three, with the opening line, "I 've seen the smiling of fortune beguiling," was also the composition of a lady, Miss Alison Rutherford; by marriage, Mrs Cockburn, wife of Mr Patrick Cockburn, advocate. Mrs Cockburn was a person of highly superior accomplishments. She associated with her learned contemporaries, by whom she was much esteemed, and died at Edinburgh in 1794, at an advanced age. "The forest" mentioned in the song comprehended the county of Selkirk, with portions of Peeblesshire and Lanarkshire. This was a hunting-forest of the Scottish kings.
[5] These lines were addressed by Mrs Hunter to her daughter, on the occasion of her marriage.
[6] These verses form a modernised version of the old and popular song, "Will ye gae to the ewe-bughts, Marion?" The air is extremely beautiful.
[7] The name of this old melody is, "The Bridegroom greets when the Sun gangs down."—See Stenhouse's Notes to Johnson's "Musical Museum," vol. iv. p. 280; the "Lives of the Lindsays," by Lord Lindsay, vol. ii., pp. 314, 332, 392. Lond. 1849, 3 vols., 8vo.
[8] "She was entertaining a large party of distinguished guests at dinner, when a hitch occurred in the kitchen. The old servant came up behind her and whispered, 'My lady, you must tell another story—the second course won't be ready for five minutes!'"—Letter of General Lindsay to Lord Lindsay, "Lives of the Lindsays," vol. ii. p. 387.
[9] The Rev. William Leeves, of Wrington, to whose tune the ballad is now sung.—See an account of Mr Leeves' claims to the authorship of the tune, &c., in Johnson's "Musical Museum;" Stenhouse's Notes, vol. iv. p. 231.