umbers that have unfortunately been lost. Who has not
in his ears the hum of many lyrics heard by him in his childhood--from
mother, or nurse, or some old crooning dame at the fireside--which are
to be found in no collection, and which are now to himself but like a
distant, unformed sound? All our collectors, whilst smiling in triumph
over the pearls which they have brought up and borne to the shore,
lament the multitude of precious things irrecoverably buried in the
depths of oblivion. Where, for instance, amid the similar wreck which
has befallen so many others, are now the ancient words pouring forth the
dirge over the "Flowers of the Forest," or those describing the tragic
horrors on the "Braes of Yarrow," or those celebrating the wondrous
attractions of the "Braw Lads o' Gala Water"? We have but the two first
lines--the touching key-note of a lover's grief, in an old song, which
has been most tamely rendered in Ramsay's version--these two lines
being--

"Alas! that I came o'er the moor,
And left my love behind me."

Only one verse has floated down of an old song, which breathes the very
soul of a lover's restless longings:--

"Aye wakin', O!
Wakin' aye an' eerie;
Sleep I canna get
For thinkin' on my dearie;
Aye wakin', O!"

Does it not at once pique and disappoint the fancy, that these two
graceful verses are all that remain of a song, where, doubtless, they
were once but two fair blossoms in a large and variegated posy:--

"Within my garden gay
The rose and lily grew;
But the pride of my garden is wither'd away,
And it 's a' grown o'er wi' rue.

"Farewell, ye fading flowers!
And farewell, bonnie Jean!
But the flower that is now trodden under foot,
In time it may bloom again."

Nay--passing from the tender to the grotesque--would it not have been
agreeable to hear something more than two lines from the lips of a lover
so stout-hearted, yet so ardent, in his own rough, blunt way, as he who
has thus commenced his song:--

"I wish my love were in a mire,
That I might pull her out again;"

or to know something more of the details of that extraordinary parish,
of which one surviving verse draws the following sombre picture:--

"Oh! what a parish!--eh! what a parish!
Oh! what a parish is that o' Dunkel':
They 've hang'd the minister, droon'd the precentor;
They 've pu'd doon the steeple, and drunk th