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

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And helm-a-lee the claret cog,
To clear your wit
Be blyth, and let the world e'en shog
As it thinks fit.
When northern blasts the ocean snurl,
And gar the heights and hows look jurl,
Then left about the bumper whirl,
And toom the horn
Grip fast the hours which hasty hurl,
The morn's the morn !"
It may be said by some caviller that these verses are an imitation of /
Horace ; true—but who, we may ask, ever imitated the Roman bard
like Allan Ramsay
The auld Flechit Cotv. There is " a bit of Nature," as Bewick of
Newcastle hath it, in Andrew Aitken of Beith. Unfortunately, bards
of his description, when set a-singing, never know when to stop. Instead
of condensing their thoughts into a couple of stanzas, they
spread them over two pages of octavo, totally forgetting that we have
not the patience which our forefathers had in listening to a long story.
It is quality, not quantity, that is wanted in the " rhyniing ware" of
the present day. Eight double verses, in long metre, in praise of an
aidd fiecldt cow, is a great deal too much. Not having room for quotation,
we would point to the penultimate stanza as the best in the
ballad.
The Bloody Raid, shows that Mr J. D. Brown has a turn for ballad
poetry, which he ought to cultivate.
My Doggie. This is a good illustration of the old adage, " Love
me, love my dog," by the veteran bard and antiquary, Joseph Train.
In our opinion, he has rather strained " the moral of the thing,"
which makes it less pleasing than it otherwise would have been.
/ am a jolly farming onan. Unless the first verse of this song is
intended as a chorus, it should commence with the second, " I am a
jolly farming man." Mr Lennox has some of the raw material of
lyi'ic poetry in him, but we fear that he lacks the skill to bring it out
in an effective manner. We shall be better able to judge, however,
when we see a few more specimens from his pen.
The auld man's croon. There are some touches of pathos in this
song by Mr Stevenson of Beith, but he falls into the same error of
his townsman, Mr Andrew Aitken ; he draws the staple of his dulefu'
croon to such a length that it gets attenuated, and finally dies of
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inanition.
Says I, quo' I, by J. Moore, is a clever song. We wonder
" How he, or onie breathing,
Could mak' sae muckle out o' naething!"
It is a pity that he should have taken the vulgar phrase of " Says I,
quo' I," as the subject of his song, which detracts much fi'om its merit.
We hope he will try his hand, in the next series, on a theme less exceptionable,
and worthy of the power and originality which he has
displayed in this ballad.
We shall return to the " Ballads and Songs of Ayrshire," in our
next number.