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124 LADT ANNE BOTHWELL's LAMENT. |
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" Peace, wayward barne! Oh cease thy moan! Thyfarre more wayward daddy's gone, And never will recalled be, By cryes of either thee or me:
For should wee cry
Until we dye, Wee could not scant his cruelty.
Balhw, hallow, &c.
" He needs might in himselfe foresee What thou successively might'st be; And could hee then (though me foregoe) His infant leave, ere hee did know
How like the dad
Would be the lad, In time to make fond maydens glad ? BaUoio, hallow, &c." |
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The first professed edition of this piece is in the Third Part of Watson's Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems, p. 79; the next in the Tea-Table Miscellany, i. 161. Both of these copies have been modernized, but Eamsay's is the better of the two, and equally authentic. We therefore select Ramsay's, and add to it Percy's, which contains three stanzas not found in the others, and preserves somewhat more of the air of antiquity. There is a version extending to fifteen stanzas, arranged in a very different order, in Evans's Old Ballads, i. 259. Herd, Ritson, &c, have followed Ramsay. |
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Balow, my boy, ly still and sleep, It grieves me sore to hear thee weep : |
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