duly, e'en an' morn,
Wi' teats o' hay, an' ripps o' corn.

"An' may they never learn the gaets
Of ither vile, wanrestfu' pets!
To sink thro' slaps, an' reave an' steal
At stacks o' pease, or stocks o' kail.
So may they, like their great forbears,
For monie a year come thro' the sheers;
So wives will gie them bits o' bread,
An' bairns greet for them when they're dead.

"My poor toop-lamb, my son an' heir,
O, bid him breed him up wi' care;
An' if he live to be a beast,
To pit some havins in his breast!
An' warn him what I winna name,
To stay content wi' yowes at hame
An' no to rin an' wear his cloots,
Like ither menseless, graceless brutes.

"An' niest my yowie, silly thing,
Gude keep thee frae a tether string!
O, may thou ne'er forgather up
Wi' ony blastit, moorland toop,
But ay keep mind to moop an' mell
Wi' sheep o' credit like thysel!

"And now, my bairns, wi' my last breath
I lea'e my blessin wi' you baith:
An' when you think upo' your mither,
Mind to be kind to ane anither.

"Now, honest Hughoc, dinna fail
To tell my master a' my tale;
An' bid him burn this cursed tether,
An', for thy pains, thou'se get my blather."

This said, poor Mailie turn'd her head,
And clos'd her een amang the dead.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: A neibor herd-callan.]

* * * * *

III.

POOR MAILIE'S ELEGY.

[Burns, when he calls on the bards of Ayr and Doon to join in the
lament for Mailie, intimates that he regards himself as a poet. Hogg
calls it a very elegant morsel: but says that it resembles too closely
"The Ewie and the Crooked Horn," to be admired as original: the
shepherd might have remembered that they both resemble Sempill's "Life
and death of the Piper of Kilbarchan."]

Lament in rhyme, lament in prose,
Wi' saut tears trickling down your nose;
Our bardie's fate is at a close,
Past a' remead;
The last sad cape-stane of his woes;
Poor Mailie's dead.

It's no the loss o' warl's gear,
That could sae bitter draw the tear,
Or mak our bardie, dowie, wear
The mourning weed;
He's lost a friend and neebor dear,
In Mailie dead.

Thro' a' the toun she trotted by him;
A long half-mile she could d