_Friday Night._
_Saturday Morning._
As I find I have still an hour to spare this morning before my
conveyance goes away, I will give you "Nannie, O!" at length.
Your remarks on "Ewe-bughts, Marion," are just; still it has obtained
a place among our more classical Scottish songs; and what with many
beauties in its composition, and more prejudices in its favour, you
will not find it easy to supplant it.
In my very early years, when I was thinking of going to the West
Indies, I took the following farewell of a dear girl. It is quite
trifling, and has nothing of the merits of "Ewe-bughts;" but it will
fill up this page. You must know that all my earlier love-songs were
the breathings of ardent passion, and though it might have been easy
in aftertimes to have given them a polish, yet that polish, to me,
whose they were, and who perhaps alone cared for them, would have
defaced the legend of my heart, which was so faithfully inscribed on
them. Their uncouth simplicity was, as they say of wines, their race.
Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary? &c.[202]
"Gala Water" and "Auld Rob Morris" I think, will most probably be the
next subject of my musings. However, even on my verses, speak out your
criticisms with equal frankness.
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