in
it, shape themselves into a song, and are not shaped by any notes
whatsoever. So with many, most indeed, of Burns's; and a few of
Allan Cunningham's; the "Wet sheet and a flowing sail," for instance.
But the great majority of these later songs seem, if the truth is to
be spoken, inspirations at second hand, of people writing about
things which they would like to feel, and which they ought to feel,
because others used to feel them in old times; but which they do not
feel as their forefathers felt--a sort of poetical Tractarianism, in
short. Their metre betrays them, as well as their words; in both
they are continually wandering, unconsciously to themselves, into the
elegiac--except when on one subject, whereon the muse of Scotia still
warbles at first hand, and from the depths of her heart--namely,
alas! the barley bree: and yet never, even on this beloved theme,
has she risen again to the height of Burns's bacchanalian songs.

But when sober, there is a sadness about the Scottish muse nowadays--
as perhaps there ought to be--and the utterances of hers which ring
the truest are laments. We question whether in all Mr. Whitelaw's
collection there is a single modern poem (placing Burns as the
transition point between the old and new) which rises so high, or
pierces so deep, with all its pastoral simplicity, as Smibert's
"Widow's Lament."

Afore the Lammas tide
Had dwin'd the birken tree,
In a' our water-side,
Nae wife was blest like me:
A kind gudeman, and twa
Sweet bairns were round me here;
But they're a' ta'en awa',
Sin' the fa' o' the year.

Sair trouble cam' our gate,
And made me, when it cam',
A bird without a mate,
A ewe without a lamb.
Our hay was yet to maw,
And our corn was yet to shear;
When they a' dwined awa',
In the fa' o' the year.

I daurna look a-field,
For aye I trow to see,
The form that was a bield
To my wee bairns and me.
But wind, and weet, and snaw,
They never mair can fear,
Sin' they a' got the ca',
In the fa' o' the year.

Aft on the hill at e'ens,
I see him 'mang the ferns,
The lover o' my teens,
The father o' my bairns:
For there his plaid I saw,
As gloamin' aye drew near--
But my a's now awa',
Sin' the fa' o' the year.

Our bonnie rigs theirsel',
Reca' my waes to mind,
Our puir dumb beasties tell
O' a' that I ha'e tyned;
For whae our wheat will saw,
And whae our sheep will shear,
Sin' my a' gaed awa',