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LADY NAIRNE AND HER SONGS. 119
Frien's, gie yere advice — I '11 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 '11 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 beginnin' 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 dis- |
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