Send a horse to the water, ye 'll no mak' him drink

Send a fule to the college, ye 'll no mak' him think;

Send a craw to the surgin, an' still he will craw;

An' the wee laird had nae rummelgumpshion ava;

Yet he is the pride o' his fond mother's e'e;

In body or mind nae faut can she see;

"He's a fell clever lad an' a bonnie wee man,"

Is aye the beginnin' an' end o' her sang.

An' oh, she's a haverin' Lucky, I trow,

An' oh, she's a haverin' Lucky, I trow.

"He's a fell clever lad, an' a bonnie wee man," Is aye the beginnin' an' end o' her sang.

His legs they are bow'd, his e'es they do glee,

His wig, whiles its off, an' when on, its ajee.

He's braird as he's long—an' ill-faur'd is he,

A dafter like body I never did see.

An' yet for this cretur she says I am deein';

When that I deny—she's fear'd at my leein'.

Obliged to pit up wi' the sair defamation,

I'm liken to dee wi' shame and vexation.

An' oh, she's a haverin' Lucky, etc.

An' her clish-ma-clavers gang a' thro' the town,

An' the wee lairdie trows I 'll hang or I 'll drown;

Wi' his gawkie like face yestreen he did say,

"I 'll maybe tak' you, for Bess I 'll no hae,

Nor Mollie, nor Effie, nor long-legged Jeanie,

Nor Nellie, nor Katie, nor skirlin' wee Beenie."

I stoppet my ears, ran off in a fury—

I'm thinkin' to bring them before Judge and Jury.

For oh, what a randy old Lucky is she, etc.

Frien's, gie yere advice—I 'll follow yere counsel.

Maun I speak to the Provost or honest Town Council?

Or the writers, or lawyers, or doctors? now say,

For the law o' the Lucky I shall and will hae.

The hale town at me are jibbin' an' jeerin',

For a leddy like me it's really past hearin';

The Lucky now maun hae done wi' her claverin',

For I 'll no pit up wi' her an' her haverin'.

For oh, she 's a randy, I trow, I trow,

For oh, she's a randy, I trow, I trow.

"He's a fell clever lad an' a bonnie wee man,"

Is aye the beginuin' an' end o' her sang.

The finest efflorescence of Scotch lyric poetry, which is the richest and finest in the English language, if not in the world, was that of the Jacobite era, and the influence which followed it and inspired the renaissance of Scotch song is the genius of Burns, Hogg, Cunningham, Lady Nairne, and many more of less distinction, who made a galaxy of singers hardly less remarkable in their way, as marking an era in literature, than the dramatists of the Elizabethan age. The genius of folk-song and ballad poetry had always been remarkably developed in Scotland, in comparison, at least, with England, and, in spite of many characteristics among the Lowlanders, worldly thrift, bitter and barren bigotry, and a sort of dourness and hardheadedness, not calculated to encourage sentiment and emotion; and the student of racial distinctions may be inclined to attribute it to the influence of Celtic blood and tradition, creating a vein of sensitiveness, tenderness, and susceptibility to the magic of song and music in the strong and hard fabric of the Saxon character. But from whatever cause the tendency of the native genius was created, its existence was obvious, and from the very earliest time, since song began to be preserved in written words, the quality and quantity of Scotch folk-poetry and folk-music have been remarkable. The native faculty and the inherited tendency were all present when the spark of an inspiration, involving all the elements of patriotism, daring adventure, personal devotion, despair, and lamentation, gave fire to the genius of national poetry. All the incidents and events of the Rebellion of Forty-five, the landing of the young Prince Charles at Moidart with only seven followers, the blaze of fiery loyalty that swept through the Highlands at his call, the extraordinary victories won by the sheer impetus and hand-to-hand onslaughts of the Highland clans, the picturesque entry into Edinburgh and the gallant court of Holyrood, the swift march into England, which seemed at one time to promise to carry the Chevalier into St. James's Palace by its rush, the retreat and disorganization, and finally the woeful slaughter of Culloden, followed by the attainders and executions and the romantic adventures of the Prince in hiding from his hunters among the mountains and islands, all contrived to create themes for song and poetry which have never been surpassed in modern history. The enterprise was as foolish as it was daring, an episode of knight-errantry after the age when success was possible, but it had all the elements of chivalry in its impulse and conduct, and no modern war has been less selfish and sordid, not even the insurrections of Poland or the uprising of the Spanish and German people against Napoleon. The young Chevalier himself, only twenty-four years of age, tall, handsome, and martial, with his flowing yellow hair and Tartan dress, and with the fascination of his race in his manner, his courage, clemency, and misfortune, gave it the personal element so necessary to the highest poetry, and altogether the circumstances and the conditions combined to create an effervescence of popular poetry which has never been surpassed. Its quantity was as remarkable as its quality. The two large volumes of Hogg's Jacobite Relics by no means exhausted the collection of songs in the Lowland dialect, and to this day those in Gaelic are still being discovered by the labors of Professor Blackie and others, as they are yet preserved in the bothies of the Highlands and the islands. The inspiration of the later poets, Burns, Hogg, Cunningham, and

Lady Nairne, was hardly less strong, fed as it was upon the vivid traditions and by the stories and histories of the men living about them, or of their own families, full of all the elements of poetry, and their purpose to vivify and recreate the native song of Scotland must have had its most fertile impulse and material in the Jacobite songs, of which the country is full. In Lady Nairne the ancestral and personal impulse must have been especially strong. Her father and mother had been married in exile; her grandfather had been distinguished for his services as well as for his misfortunes, and upon both sides her family had been notable for more than one generation for its loyalty and its importance in the Scotch struggle for the restoration of the Stuarts. An old ballad says:—

Gask and Strowan were nae slack,

and letters of thanks and tokens of gratitude from the royal hands were heirlooms of the houses. It was a keen pleasure to the grandfather in his old age to hear the songs and the music which had illumined the unhappy cause, and it is no wonder that the earliest inspiration of the young poetess was from such themes, and her keenest reward to see the blood warming more freely the old man's worn cheeks as she sang the new and stirring words to the old airs, and found the token of her success in his appreciation. The greater portion of her Jacobite songs were composed under this inspiration, and so long as she wrote at all they were her favorite themes. They are among the finest in what may be termed the modern Jacobite songs, unsurpassed by anything of the kind by Burns, Hogg, or Cunningham, and only so by that consummate flower of all Scotch Jacobite poetry by William Glen:—

A wee bird cam' to our ha' door,

while in the pure singing quality, the lilt and the verse, there is nothing to exceed the power of—

The news from Moidart cam' yestreen.

The story of The Hundred Pipers an' A' is historically correct in that there were so many musicians of the class attached to the little army of the Prince, and that the Highland lads did dance themselves dry to the pibroch's sound after fording the Esk, but it was not on the advance to Carlisle, but on the retreat from England, and the scene had doubtless been often described by the old laird of Strowan.