[A composite volume : containing The ballads and songs of Ayrshire ...

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SATS I, QUO I,
But the watchmen rude, in jesting mood.
But mocked her misery.
At length came on the hour of death,
To her an hour of dread
And then, alas ! she saw her lord
^J
To bloody scaffold led.
She saw him kneel beside the block,
In deep and fervent prayer
She tried to rush into his arms,
But vain her efforts were.
" Oh, God ! " she cried, " arrest the hand
Upraised his blood to shed !"
But ere her feeble voice was heard,
He slumbered with the dead.
This ballad, the composition of Archibald M'Kay, Kilmarnock, is founded
on a dream which the lady of Lord Kilmarnock is said to have had, a night
or two after he was taken prisoner, by the king's troops, at the fatal battle
of Culloden. " Kilmarnock," says the historian Smollett, " was a nobleman
of fine personal accomplishments ; he had been educated in Revolution
principles, and engaged in the Rebellion, partly from the desperate
situation of his fortune, and partly from resentment to the Government,
on being deprived of a pension which he had for some time enjoyed." According
to other accounts, he had been persuaded to join the rebels by his
lady, who was strongly attached to the cause of the Stuarts. Dean Castle,
in the neighbourhood of Kilmarnock, though partly destroyed by fire some
years previous, is supposed to have been the residence of the lady during
the absence of the Earl with the rebel army.
SafiS E, quo* 1,
Says I, quo' I, ae Friday at e'en.
Sax owks afore I was married to Jean-
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