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Nash's _Life of Lord Westbury_; "Reminiscences of Lord Chief Justice
Coleridge," by Lord Russell of Killowen, in the _North American
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_Correspondence and Diaries_; Justin M'Carthy's _History of Our Own
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_Peerage_, 1880.

COCKBURN, ALICIA, or ALISON (1713-1794), Scottish poet, authoress of one
of the most exquisite of Scottish ballads, the "Flowers of the Forest,"
was the daughter of Robert Rutherfurd of Fairnalee, Selkirkshire, and
was born on the 8th of October 1713. There are two versions of this
song,--the one by Mrs Cockburn, the other by Jean Elliot (1727-1805) of
Minto. Both were founded on the remains of an ancient Border ballad. Mrs
Cockburn's--that beginning "I've seen the smiling of Fortune
beguiling"--is said to have been written before her marriage in 1731,
though not published till 1765. Anyhow, it was composed many years
before Jean Elliot's sister verses, written in 1756, beginning, "I've
heard them liltin' at our ewe-milkin'." Robert Chambers states that the
ballad was written on the occasion of a great commercial disaster which
ruined the fortunes of some Selkirkshire lairds. Later biographers,
however, think it probable that it was written on the departure to
London of a certain John Aikman, between whom and Alison there appears
to have been an early attachment. In 1731 Alison Rutherfurd was married
to Patrick Cockburn of Ormiston. After her marriage she knew all the
intellectual and aristocratic celebrities of her day. In the memorable
year 1745 she vented her Whiggism in a squib upon Prince Charlie, and
narrowly escaped being taken by the Highland guard as she was driving
through Edinburgh in the family coach of the Keiths of Ravelston, with
the parody in her pocket. Mrs Cockburn was an indefatigable
letter-writer and a composer of parodies, squibs, toasts and
"character-sketches"--then a favourite form of composition--like other
wits of her day; but the "Flowers of the Forest" is the only thing she
wrote that possesses great literary merit. At her house o