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

; ; —
And all the spring, to please "
STREPHON AND LYDIA.
Far distant from the mournful scene
Thy parents sit at ease
Thy Lydia rifles all the plain.
And all the spring, to please.
Ill-fated youth ! by fault of friend, i
Not force of foe depressed
Thou fixll'st, alas ! thyself, thy kind, I
Thy country, unredressed.
These affecting lines— printed for the first time in Johnson's " Musical |
Museum"—were, as stated in Burns's MS. notes to that work, the " com-
position of William Wallace, Esq. of CairnhilL"* This gentleman, ac-
\
cording to Robertson's " Ayrshire Families," was the eldest son of Thomas
Wallace, a direct descendant of the Wallaces of Ellerslie, who ac- ;
quired the property of Cairnhill about the beginning of last century from |
another branch of the Craigie family, in whose possession it had continued
for upwards of two hundred years.
William, who died in 1763, in the
52d year of his age, was a member of the Faculty of Advocates, having
been admitted in 1734. He succeeded to the property on the death of
his father in 1748 ; and married a daughter of Archibald Campbell of
Succoth, in 1750. By this marriage he had three sons—all of whom
died without issue—and a daughter, Lilias, who inherited the estate, and
died at an advanced age, on the 9th of April, 1840.
The father of Robert
Wallace, Esq., the late proprietor of Kelly, was a younger brother of
William. We are not aware that the author of " Strephon and Lydia"
is known as the writer of any other lyric.
Judging from the single specimen
afforded, he seems to have possessed no ordinary talent for poetical
composition.
The couplet
—
" Thy Lydia rifles all the plain,
I
i
j
|
is finely conceived, and was at the time highly characteristic of the lady
referred to.
As Dr Blacklock informed Burns, the real Lydia—one of
* Cairnhill is situated on a deligMful bend of the Cessnock, about four miles
from Kilmarnock.