Air—“Invercauld's Reel.” 1806.
MY Mary is a bonnie lass,
Sweet as the dewy morn,
When fancy tunes her rural reed
Beside the upland thorn. [1]
She lives ahint yon sunny knowe,
Whar flow'rs in wild profusion grow,
Whar spreading birds and hazels [2] throw
Their shadows o'er the burn.
Tis not the streamlet-skirted wood,
Wi a its leafy bow'rs,
That gars me wade in solitude
Amang the wild sprung flow'rs ;
But aft I cast a langin e'e,
Doun frae the bank, out owre the lea,
There, haply, I my lass may see,
As through the brume she scours.
Yestreen I met my bonnie lass,
Coming frae the toun,
We raptur'd sank in ither's arms,
An prest the breckans doun.
The pairtrick sung his e'ening note,
The ryecraik rispt his clam'rous throat,
Whilk there the heavenly vow I got, [3]
That erl'd her my own.
This song appeared both in the Nightingale and the Caledonian Musical Repository,—both of 1806. As to the former, see No. 13; and the latter, No. 113.—Ed.
[1] Blackthorn or Sloe,—Prunus Spinosa. Abundant on Gleniffer Braes. April and May. Branches thorny. A well-known bush. One of the most powerful acerb fruits, and an excellent astringent. Its dried leaves are frequently mixed with tea, and the juice of them enters largely into the British manufacture of port wine.—Ed.[return]
[2] Hazel,—Cerylus Avellana. Common in woods and on Gleniffer Braes. March and April. It flowers the first of our trees. Hazel nuts are well known, and much better on the night of 31st October—Halloween.—Ed.[return]
[3] In both publications of 1806, this line was printed:—
“While mony a soul-warm kiss I got.”—Ed, [return]
Note by Ramsay.—“We suspect that Tannahill wrote ‘rye-craik’ for ‘corn-craik,’ and thereby misled Dr. Jamieson, who, in his supplement, gives the former as ‘a provincial designation for the land-rail, Renfrewshire;’ and quotes the above passage, and it alone, as the authority. We cannot discover that the name ‘rye-craik’ is known either in Renfrewshire or elsewhere in Scotland. James Grahame, who was a native of the neighbouring city of Glasgow, and a contemporary of Tannahill, and who spent part of his childhood on the banks of the Cart, calls it the ‘corn-craik’ in ‘The Birds of Scotland,’ p. 68:—
‘Poor bird, though harsh thy note, I love it well ;
It tells of Summer eves.’ ”
Rye is a coarse cereal grown in olden times in Scotland. The Poet's mother was brought up in the Parish of Lochwinnoch, where old names, old manners, the old style, and old everything, were long retained, and the names “ryecraik” may have been the ancient name of corncraik or land rail. He may have heard his mother call the bird, with the harsh note, the “ryecraik.” “Coming through the Rye” was an old tune to which Burns adapted a song of the same name ; and Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, another to the same tune of “Coming through the Rye.”—Ed.
[Semple 117]