312 REVIEWS — THE BALLABS OF SCOTLAND. 



Eobert Chambers tell us in his " Notes," on tlie authority of one 

 who was admitted, in youth, to the privileges of Miss Jane's con- 

 versation, " that she was a remarkably agreeable old maiden lady, 

 with a prodigious fund of Scottish anecdote, but did not appear to 

 have ever been handsome." "We have talked of her with the late 

 Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, who had known her in his earlier days ; 

 and on our expressing to him our belief in the antiquity of the song, 

 be remarked, in his dry, sarcastic way : " I don't believe Miss Jane 

 would tell a lie, and she said she wrote it ; but if so, it was all she 

 wrote, and she never seemed capable of anything half so good !" 

 Neither of these recollections of the reputed poetess can be re- 

 garded as worth very much in their bearing on the actual question 

 of authorship. But it does not appear to be known to such later 

 editors of Scottish Songs and Ballads as we have access to, that this 

 song — for which Sir Walter Scott confesses himself indebted to Dr. 

 Somerville, — was in print nearly thirty years before. It is to be 

 found in the appendix to a volume entitled " An exact and circum- 

 stantial History of the Battle of Ploddon, in verse, written about 

 the time of Queen Elizabeth : published from a curious M.S. in the 

 possession of John Askew, of Palins-burn, in Northumberland, Esq. 

 "With Notes, by Eobert Lambe, Vicar of Norham-upon-Tweed." 

 This curious volume, printed and sold by E-. Taylor, Berwick-upon- 

 Tweed, 1774, includes pieces relating to Eloddon, from Eulwell, 

 Skelton, and other early poets ; and among these, " The Elowers of 

 the Eorest," under the title of " An Old Scotch Song on the Battle 

 of Eloddon, fought A. .1.513." As it differs in various points from 

 the current version, and seems to have escaped the notice of modern 

 editors, we give it here entire. The editor adds in his notes : " The 

 tune to this song, called The Floioers of the Forrest, is a pretty, 

 melancholy one:" 



I have heard of a lilting, at our ewes milking, 



Lasses a lilting, before the break of clay ; 

 But now there's a moaning, on ilka green loaning, 



That oui" braw forresters are a' wede. 



At boughts, in the morning, nae blyth lads are saorning ; 



The lasses are lonely, dowie, and wae ; 

 S^ae daflSn, nae gabbin, but sighing, and sabbing ; 



Ilka ane lifts hae leglea, aud hies her away. 



