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

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REMARKS.
of Patie's Mill " is one of the finest songs that Ramsay ever wrote.
The bare-headed beauty who inspired the poet with such a strain,
must have been " worth gaun a mile to see." See Stenhouse's Illusstrations,
Musical Mvseunn, vol. i. p. 20.
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My ain Fireside. Editors are often led astray by following, implicitly,
in the footsteps of their predecessors. This song was written
by Mrs Ehzabeth Hamilton, author of " The Cottagers of Glenburnie,"
and first published in Cromek's " Remains of Nithsdale and
Galloway Song," London, 1810. We have seen it in other Collections,
ascribed to John Hamilton, music seller, Edinburgh ; and the
present Editor has evidently been led astray in attributing it to William
Hamilton of Gilbertfield, by a musical work entitled " The Garland
of Scotia," published in Glasgow, 1841, where the mistake seems
to have originated. To this song the Editor has appended a scanty
notice of the rhyming Lieutenant, and his family, which is not without
interest. He observes that, " from the few pieces known to have
emanated from his pen, it cannot be denied that he possessed a considerable
vein of poesy." We never understood, however, that any
thing lyrical proceeded from his pen. Although we are inclined,
with the Editor, to estimate the epistolaiy correspondence of Hamilton
and Ramsay at a higher I'ate than some of the rhymsters of the
present day, with whom we have conversed on the subject, are disposed
to do ; we are by no means prepared to admit that, in the " familiar
epistle " which passed between them, " the superiority may justly
be awarded to the Ayrshire poet." Ramsay was a man of genius,
although not of the highest order. Hamilton was only an occasional
versifier, but not without merit. It is highly creditable to the Lieutenant's
powers as a writer of Scottish poetry, that a local efiVision of
his, entitled " The last words of Bonny Heck," — printed in Watson's
Collection, 1706—^should have roused the emulation of Ramsay, and
imped the wing of his unfledged muse. This we have under Ramsay's
own hand
" When I begoud first to ciin verse,
And coud your Ardry Whins '* rehearse.
'
Where Bonny Pleck ran fast and fierce,
It warmed my breast
Then emulation did me pierce,
Whilk since ne'er ceast."
Nearly the whole of the sixth epistle is written in Ramsay's finest
vein. For flow of versification, and beauty of expression, it may vie
with any familiar verses in the language, if we except some of
Burns's epistles written in the same difficult, but efiective stanza.
^Vhat can compare with the following joyous verses, written at Edinon
the 2d of September, 1719
" Yet sometimes leave the rigs and bog.
Your ho-wms and braes, and shady scrog,
* An estate in the east part of Fifeshire, lately possessed by Methven, the
last Earl of Kellie.
vn