Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
The foregoing are all placed in the mouths of girls, and it is difficult to deny that they ring as true as the songs that are known to have sprung from the poet's direct experience. Scarcely less notable than their sincerity is their variety. Pathos of desertion, gay defiance of opposition, yearning in absence, confession of coquetry, joyous confession of affection returned—these are only a few of the phases of woman's love rendered here with a felicity that leaves nothing to be desired. What woman has so interpreted the feelings of her sex?
The next two express a girl's repugnance at the thought of marriage with an old man; and the two following form a pair treating the same theme, one from the girl's point of view, the other from the lover's. The later verses of [My Love She's but a Lassie Yet], however, though full of vivacity, have so little to do with the first or with one another that the song seems to be a collection of scraps held together by a common melody.
WHAT CAN A YOUNG LASSIE
What can a young lassie, what shall a young lassie,
What can a young lassie do wi' an auld man?
Bad luck on the penny that tempted my minnie mother
To sell her poor Jenny for siller an' lan'! money