I've heard them lilting at the ewes milking,
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The flowers of the forest are a' wede away.
Some years after the song was composed, a lady, who is now dead, repeated to the author another imperfect line of the original ballad, which presents a simple and affecting image to the mind:
"I ride single on my saddle,
"For the flowers of the forest are a' wede away."
The first of these trifling fragments, joined to the remembrance of the fatal battle of Flodden (in the calamities accompanying which, the inhabitants of Ettrick Forest suffered a distinguished share), and to the present solitary and desolate appearance of the country, excited, in the mind of the author, the ideas, which she has expressed in a strain of elegiac simplicity and tenderness, which has seldom been equalled.
THE FLOWERS OF THE FOREST.
PART FIRST.
I've heard them lilting, at the ewe milking,
Lasses a' lilting, before dawn of day;
But now they are moaning, on ilka green loaning;
The flowers of the forest are a' wede awae.
At bughts, in the morning, nae blithe lads are scorning;
Lasses are lonely, and dowie, and wae;
Nae daffing, nae gabbing, but sighing and sabbing;
Ilk ane lifts her leglin, and hies her awae.
In har'st, at the shearing, nae youths now are jearing;
Bandsters are runkled, and lyart or gray;
At fair, or at preaching, nae wooing, nae fleeching;
The flowers of the forest are a' wede awae.