Out ower the head o' yon hill.

There cam' a troop o' gentlemen,
Merrily riding by,
And ane o' them rade out o' the way
To the bucht to the bonnie may.'

Nowhere has the ballad inspiration and the ballad touch lingered longer
than by Eden and Leader and Whitadder. Lady Grizel Baillie (who also
wonned in Mellerstain) had them--

'There once was a may and she lo'ed nae men,
And she biggit her bonnie bower doun in yon glen'--

and it still lives in Lady John Scott, who has sung of _The Bonnie
Bounds of Cheviot_ as if the mantle of the Border minstrels had fallen
upon her.

After all, the ballads of Yarrow and Ettrick, of the Merse and
Teviotdale, owe their superior fame as much as anything to the happy
chance that the Wizard of Abbotsford dwelt in the midst of them, and
seizing upon them before they were forgotten, made them and the
localities classical. Other districts have in this way been despoiled to
some extent of their proper meed of honour. Fortune as well as merit has
favoured the Border Minstrelsy in the race for survival and for
precedence in the popular memory. But Galloway, a land pervaded with
romance, claims at least one ballad that can rank with the best. _Lord
Gregory_ has aliases and duplicates without number. But the scene is
always Loch Ryan and some castled island within sight of that arm of the
sea, whither the love-lorn Annie fares in her boat 'wi' sails o' the
light green silk and tows o' taffetie,' in quest of her missing lord:

'"O row the boat, my mariners,
And bring me to the land!
For yonder I see my love's castle
Close by the salt sea strand."'

Alas! cold is her welcome as she stands with her young son in her arms,
and knocks and calls on her love, while 'the wind blaws through her
yellow hair, and the rain draps o'er her chin.' A voice, that seems that
of Lord Gregory, bids her go hence as 'a witch or a wil' warlock, or a
mermaid o' the flood'; and with a woful heart she turns back to the sea
and the storm. And when he wakes up from boding dreams to find his true
love and his child have been turned from his door, it is too late. His
cry to the waves is as vain as Annie's cry to that 'ill woman,' his
mother, who has betrayed them:

'"And hey, Annie, and how, Annie!
O Annie, winna ye bide?"
But aye the mair that he cried Annie,
The braider grew the tide.

"And hey, Annie, and how, Annie!
Dear Annie,