Note:
The following is from Dorothy Wordsworth's Recollections of the Tour: 13th Sept. 1803.
"As we descended, the scene became more fertile, our way being pleasantly varied—through coppices or open fields, and passing farm-houses, though always with an intermixture of cultivated ground. It was harvest-time, and the fields were quietly—might I be allowed to say pensively?—enlivened by small companies of reapers. It is not uncommon in the more lonely parts of the Highlands to see a single person so employed. The following poem was suggested to William by a beautiful sentence in Thomas Wilkinson's Tour in Scotland."
In a note appended to the editions 1807 to 1820, Wordsworth wrote:
"This Poem was suggested by a beautiful sentence in a MS. 'Tour in Scotland,' written by a Friend, the last line being taken from it verbatim."
The first part of Wilkinson's Tours to the British Mountains, which was published in 1824, narrates his journey in Scotland (it took place in 1787); and the following sentence occurs in the record of his travels near Loch Lomond (p. 12),
"Passed a female who was reaping alone: she sung in Erse, as she bended over her sickle; the sweetest human voice I ever heard: her strains were tenderly melancholy, and felt delicious, long after they were heard no more."