because it is printed here entire for the first time in any book, and because, further, in the note accompanying the song, the author is named for the first time, and interesting particulars are furnished regarding the hero of the verses which have not previously appeared. Each and every song, indeed, which is common to the standard collections, and included here, has been admitted for some good reason which will be found stated. What I would esteem to have acknowledged to be a characteristic and distinguishing feature of the collection, and what I claim as its raison d'ètre, is the fact that it embraces not less than nearly a hundred favourite blads of lyric verse which till now have escaped the vigilance of the song-collector. Among these latter -and by far the larger number in the volume"Dumb, Dumb, Dumb," may be cited as a song which the late Professor Aytoun knew to be much in favour with country people, and regretted his inability to recover. "The Tinklers' Waddin'," "The Bonnie Wee Window," "Bundle and Go," "Jinkin' you, Jockie Lad," "The Plains o' Waterloo," "My Rolling Eye," "The Bonnet o' Blue," and "The Jolly Ploughboy," too, may be named

PREFACE

vii.

as songs which, though widely popular for many years, have existed chiefly in the rural memory. For a good long time I have practised the conceit of noting down these vagabond songs and ballads when and wherever I was favoured with the opportunity of hearing them. Some I secured through correspondence. Some from obscure publications. On the invitation of the proprietors of The People's Journal, a selection of them recently appeared in the columns of that widely circulating periodical, with the result that I obtained fresh and interesting particulars about some, and additional verses to others. What was most surprising and gratifying at the same time, as a result of the "sifting" of the pieces through the columns of that paper, was to discover that in all parts of the country, despite the fact of their enjoying an almost exclusively oral existence, the versions in use, north, east, south, and west, were nearly always identical. This, if necessary, might be taken as an eloquent proof of the excellent memory of the Scottish people; or perhaps as an evidence of their common taste in matters literary and poetical. Anyway, here are the songs. It is chiefly to the older members of the living

generation that I am indebted for them. The rapid
and general railway service that now obtains, not to
speak of the ubiquitous bicycle, has brought the
village so close to the town, the hill so near to the
street recently, that the rising generations in the
country are catching up the howling rhapsodies of
the music halls only a day later than the people of
the city. It may be vain to expect, then-and I
have myself no such hope or expectation—that the
time-worn lilts and characteristic pieces forming the
present budget will, by virtue of their collected
publication, immediately re-engage the popular
favour. All I dare hope for them is that they will
be cherished by many—not for their literary quality,
perhaps, as some of them deserve to be-but as a
species of folk-lore, and as songs and ballads that
have been the familiar entertainment of the country
people of Scotland during three-quarters of the
nineteenth century. As a species of folk-lore alone,
even the crudest of them are eminently deserving of
Some are dear to us as 66
Sangs our Mithers

rescue.

sung. All for one reason or another—but chiefly

for the joy they have given to Scottish rural life— are particularly interesting.

4

PREFACE

ix.

The collection could easily have been made larger, but a line had to be drawn with respect to quality and consistency as well as quantity.

Some once-popular ditties, like "The Miller o' Drone," and "The Young Laird o' Kelty," were not admissible by reason of their high-kilted aspect and over-luxuriant character. A hundred years ago, when they were freely sung in mixed companies, they might have been printed without hesitation, and without the risk of giving offence; but the advance in public taste as well as in editorial scrupulousness, renders them now-a-days, happily, an impossible entertainment, either one way or another.

For the old and familiar melodies which appear in the work, and many of them in print now for the first time-melodies, forsooth, which are as characteristically vagabond and national as the ballads they are wedded to, and whose names they bear— my special and grateful thanks are due, and freely acknowledged, to Mr. D. Kippen, of Crieff, from whom, as will be seen in the notes to the songs, textual help has also been occasionally received.

Thanks further are gratefully accorded to Bailie

George Taggart, Glasgow, and to Mr. Alan Reid, Edinburgh, and other musical experts, for the supply of tunes, and no less for their painstaking and capable revision of many of the melodies. Very specially I acknowledge my indebtedness to the late Mr. Craibe Angus, so well known in art circles in Glasgow and the West of Scotland, and to Mr. George Gray, the respected town-clerk of Rutherglen, who freely submitted for perusal, to aid in the work, each his very extensive and valuable collection of Scottish Song Chapbooks. These, though they yielded little, proved valuable often by offering examples for comparison.

R. F.

287 ONSLOW DRIVE, GLASGOW, 1904.