Its half-o'erspreading heather,
And how we lo'ed the least the best
That made us creep thegither.

I couldna bide, when you are gane,
My ain, my winsome dearie,
I couldna stay to pine my lane--
I live but when I 'm near ye.

Then say na you maun gang awa',
Oh! say na you maun leave me;
For ah! the hour that parts us twa
Of life itself will reave me.

JOHN BETHUNE.

The younger of two remarkable brothers, whose names are justly entitled
to remembrance, John Bethune, was born at the Mount, in the parish of
Monimail, Fifeshire, during the summer of 1810. The poverty of his
parents did not permit his attendance at a public school; he was taught
reading by his mother, and writing and arithmetic by his brother
Alexander,[26] who was considerably his senior. After some years'
employment as a cow-herd, he was necessitated, in his twelfth year, to
break stones on the turnpike-road. At the recommendation of a comrade,
he apprenticed himself, early in 1824, to a weaver in a neighbouring
village. In his new profession he rapidly acquired dexterity, so that,
at the end of one year, he could earn the respectable weekly wages of
fifteen shillings. Desirous of assisting his aged parents, he now
purchased a loom and settled as a weaver on his own account, with his
elder brother as his apprentice. A period of mercantile embarrassments
which followed, severely affecting the manufacturing classes, pressed
heavily on the subject of this notice; his earnings became reduced to
six shillings weekly, and he was obliged to exchange the labours of the
shuttle for those of the implements of husbandry. During the period of
his apprenticeship, his thoughts had been turned to poetical
composition, but it was subsequent to the commercial disasters of 1825
that he began earnestly to direct his attention towards the concerns of
literature. Successive periods of bad health unfitting him for continued
labour in the fields, were improved by extensive reading and
composition. Before he had completed his nineteenth year he had produced
upwards of twenty poetical compositions, each of considerable length,
and the whole replete with power, both of sentiment and expression. Till
considerably afterwards, however, his literary productions were only
known to his brother Alexander, or at furthest to his parents. "Up to
the latter part of 1835," writes his brother in a biographical sketch,
"the whole