BALCARRES 



Nae langer she wept ; her tears were a' spent ; 



Despair it was come, and she thought it content ; 



She thought it content, but her cheek it grew pale, 



And she drooped like a snowdrop broke down by the hail. 



For more than fifty years the secret had been kept, 

 and when at last it was thus laid bare in 1823, 

 Lady Anne disdained to disown the offspring of her 

 Muse. Less than two years before her death, she 

 wrote a full confession to Sir Walter, explaining 

 how she had composed the verses to suit an old 

 Scottish air of which she was "passionately fond/' 

 and had borrowed from the old herdsman of Bal- 

 carres the name of Robin Gray. Her letter, and 

 Sir Walter's reply (both of which well repay perusal) 

 are too long to print here. They are given in full 

 in Lord Lindsay's delightful work, The Lives of the 

 Lindsays (vol. ii. pp. 391-399). 



" I have sometimes wondered," wrote Sir Walter in a later 

 letter, " how many of our best songs have been written by 

 Scotchwomen of rank and condition. The Hon. Mrs. Murray 

 (Miss Baillie Jerviswood born) wrote the very pretty Scots song 



* An't were not my heart's light I wad die,' 

 Miss Elliot of Minto, the verses of the Flowers o' the Forest 



which begin 



' I've heard a lilting/ etc. 



Mrs. Cockburn composed other verses to the same tune, 



' I have seen the smiling of fortune's beguiling,' etc. 

 Lady Wardlaw wTOte the glorious old ballad of Hardyknute. 

 Place Auld Robin at the head of this list, and I question if 

 we masculine wretches can claim five or six songs equal in 

 elegance and pathos out of the long list of Scottish minstrelsy." 



155 



