Thou wast fair, thou wast bonnie, my Marion,
And lovesome thy rising breast-bane;
The dew sat in gems ower thy ringlets,
By the thorn when we were alane.

There we loved, there thou promised, my Marion,
Thy soul--a' thy beauties were mine;
Crouse we skipt to the ha' i' the gloamin',
But few were my slumbers and thine.

Fell war tore me lang frae thee, Marion,
Lang wat'ry and red was my e'e;
The pride o' the field but inflamed me
To return mair worthy o' thee.

Oh, aye art thou lovely, my Marion,
Thy heart bounds in kindness to me;
And here, oh, here is my bosom,
That languish'd, my Marion, for thee.

[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.

LADY ANNE BARNARD.

Lady Anne Lindsay was the eldest of a family of eight sons and three
daughters, born to James, Earl of Balcarres, by his spouse, Anne
Dalrymple, a daughter of Sir Robert Dalrymple, of Castleton, Bart. She
was born at Balcarres, in Fife, on the 8th of December 1750. Inheriting
a large portion of the shrewdness long possessed by the old family of
Lindsay, and a share of talent from her mother, who was a person of
singular energy, though somewhat capricious in temper, Lady Anne
evinced, at an early age, an uncommon amount of sagacity. Fortunate in
having her talents well directed, and naturally inclined towards the
acquisition of learning, she soon began to devote herself to useful
reading, and even to literary composition. The highly popular ballad of
"Auld Robin Gray" was written when she had only attained her
twenty-first year. According to her own narrative, communicated to Sir
Walter Scott, she had experienced loneliness on the marriage of her
younger sister, who accompanied her husband to London, and had sought
relief from a state of solitude by attempting the composition of song.
An old Scottish melody,[7] sung by an eccentric female, an attendant on
Lady Balcarres, was connected with words unsuitable to the plaintive
nature of the air; and, with the design of supplying the defect, she
formed the idea of writing "Auld Robin Gray." The hero of the ballad was
the old herdsman at Balcarres. To the members of her own family Lady
Anne only communicated her new ballad--scrupulously concealing the fact
of her authorship from others, "perceiving the shyness it creat