STRICTURES, &c.

The Highland Queen.

The Highland Queen, music and poetry, was composed by Mr. M'Vicar, purser of the Solbay man of war.--This I had from Dr. Blacklock.

Bess the Gawkie.

This song shows that the Seottish muses did not all leave us when we lost Ramsay and Oswald*, as I have good reason to believe that the verses and music are both posterior to the days of these two gentlemen. It is a beautiful song, and is in the genuine Scots taste. We have few pastoral compositions, I mean the pastoral of nature, that are equal to this.

Oh, open the Door, Lord Gregory.

It is somewhat singular, that in Lanark, Ren frew, Ayr, Wigton, Kirkcudbright, and Dumfries

* Oswald was a music-seller in London, about the year 1750. He published a large collection of Scottish tunes, which he called the Caledonian Pocket Companion. Mr. Tytler observes, that his genius in composition, joined to his taste in the performance of Scottish music, was natural and pathetic. Ritson.

shires, there is scarcely an old song or tune which, from the title, &c. can be guessed to belong to, or be the production of these counties. This, I conjecture, is one of these few; as the ballad, which is a long one, is called, both by tradition and printed collections, "The Lass o' Lochroyan," which I take to be Lochroyan, in Galloway.

The Banks of the Tweed.

This song is one of the many attempts that English composers have made to imitate the Scottish manner, and which I shall, in these strictures, beg leave to distinguish by the appellation of Anglo-Scottish productions. The music is pretty good, but the verses are just above contempt.

The Beds of sweet Roses.

This song, as far as I know, for the first time appears here in print. When I was a boy, it was a very popular song in Ayrshire I remember to have heard those fanatics, the Buchanites*, sing some of their nonsensical rhymes, which they dig. nify with the name of hymas, to this airt.

A set of itinerant fanatics in the west of Scot fand, so denominated from their leader, Mrs. Buchan.

+ Shakspeare, in his Winter's Tale, speaks of a puritan, who "sings pealms to hornpipes."

Roslin Castle.

These beautiful verses were the production of a Richard Hewit", a young man that Dr. Blacklock, to whom I am indebted for the anecdote, kept for some years as an amanuensis. I do not know who is the author of the second song to the tune. Tytler, in his amusing history of Scots music, gives the air to Oswald; but in Oswald's own collection of Scots tunes, where he affixes an asterisk to those he himself composed, he does not make the least claim to the tune.

Saw ye Johnnie commin? quo' she.

This song, for genuine humour in the verses, and lively originality in the air, is unparalleled. I take it to be very old.

Richard Hewit, Ritson observes, was taken when a boy, during the residence of Dr. Black. lock in Cumberland, to lead him. He addressed a copy of verses to the doctor on quitting his ser vice.--Among the verses are the following lines:

"How oft these plains I've thoughtless prest; Whistled or sung some fair distrest,

When fate would steal a tear."

"Alluding," as it is said in a note, " to a sort of narrative songs, which make no inconsiderable part of the innocent amusements with which the country people pass the wintry nights, and of which the author of the present piece was a faithful re hearser."--Blacklock's Poems, 1756, 8vo. p. 5.

Clout the Caldron.

A tradition is mentioned in the Bee, that the second bishop Chisholm, of Dunblane, used to say, that if he were going to be hanged, nothing would soothe his mind so much by the way, as to hear Clout the Caldron played.

I have met with another tradition, that the old song to this tune

"Hae ye ony pots or pans,

Or onie broken chanlers,"

was composed on one of the Kenmure family, in the cavalier times; and alluded to an amour he had, while under hiding, in the disguise of an itinerant tinker. The air is also known by the name of

"The blacksmith and his apron,"

which, from the rhythm, seems to have been a line of some old song to the tune.

Saw ye my Peggy.

This charming song is much older, and indeed superior to Ramsay's verses, "The Toast," as he calls them. There is another set of the words, much older still, and which I take to be the original one. But though it has a very great deal of merit, it is not quite ladies' reading.

The original words, for they can scarcely be called verses, seem to be as follows; a song familiar from the cradle to every Scottish ear.

Saw ye my Maggie,

Saw ye my Maggie,

Saw ye my Maggie

Linkin o'er the lea?