Scotish Ballads and Songs (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Who is it that has done this turn ? Or who hath done this deed ? A minister it's, father, she says, Lives at the Red Burn bridge. A minister, daughter, he says, A minister for mister. 0 hold your tongue, my father dear, He marry'd first my sister. ( So, fare you well, my daughter dear, So dearly as I love thee; Since thou wilt go with Duncan Graham, Thou 'It get no gear from me. v 0 fare you well, my father dear, Also my sister Betty; 0 fare you well, my mother dear, I leave you all completely. THE CALD KAIL OF ABERDEEN. The oldest song to this tune, says Stenhouse, that I have met with, is the following. The author is anonymous, but the song was collected by Herd, and printed in his second volume, in 1770; but he told me it was much older. In the Library of the Faculty of Advocates, there is a collection of fugitive pieces of poetry?some of which are printed, but the greater portion of which are in verse?bound together in one volume folio. These were found amongst the papers of James Anderson, the ill-used editor of the Diplomata Scotite, who died in 1728. Amongst these occurs the under-mentioned song, which proves that it must have been composed at least before Anderson's demise, and, indeed, the handwriting affords tolerable proof that it was written at the commencement of last century. From the language, the authorship may be safely assigned to an Aberdonian, and we suspect the song refers to the first Earl of Aberdeen, who died 20th April 1720, in the eighty-third year of his age. That the object of the song was to ridicule an old man for wooing a young lass, is evident, and probably the ancient nobleman, whose wife, a daughter of George Lockhart of Tor- breck, predeceased him, had been flirting with some of the youthful...