was away;
She clapt her hands, cry'd, "Dulefu' day!
For some of our gear will be gane."

Some ran to coffer and some to kist,
But nought was stown that could be mist,
She danced her lane, cry'd, "Praise be blest,
I 've lodg'd a leal poor man.
Since naething awa, as we can learn,
The kirn 's to kirn, and milk to yearn,
Gae but the house, lass, and waken my bairn,
And bid her come quickly ben."

The servant gaed where the dochter lay--
The sheets were cauld, she was away;
And fast to the goodwife did say
"She 's aff wi' the gaberlunzie man."
"O fy gar ride, and fy gar rin,
And haste ye, find these traitors again;
For she 's be burnt, and he 's be slain,
The wearifu' gaberlunzie man."'

_The Jolly Beggar_ is a variation of the same tale from the book of the
moonlight rovings of the 'Guidman o' Ballengeich,' with the same vigour
and lively humour, and with the bloom of the old ballad minstrelsy upon
it besides:

'He took his horn from his side,
And blew baith loud and shrill,
And four-and-twenty belted knights
Came skipping o'er the hill.

And he took out his little knife,
Loot a' his duddies fa';
And he stood the brawest gentleman
That was amang them a'.'

Other excellent specimens of old Scottish humour have come down to us in
ballad form, some of them made more familiar to our ears in modernised
versions or paraphrases in which, along with the roughnesses, much of
the force and quaint drollery of the originals has been smoothed away.
Of such is _The Wyf of Auchtermuchty_, a Fife ballad, full of local
colour and character, the production of 'Sir John Moffat,' a sixteenth
century priest, who loved a merry jest, and of whom we know barely more
than the name. With so many other precious fragments of our national
poetry, it is preserved in the collection of George Bannatyne, the
namefather of the Bannatyne Club, who beguiled the tedium of his
retirement in time of plague by copying down the popular verse of his
day. It is the progenitor of _John Grumlie_, and gives us a lively
series of pictures of the housewifery and the husbandry, as well as the
average human nature of the time, class, and locality to which it
belongs. The proverb, 'The more the haste the less the speed,' has never
been more humorously illustrated than in the troubles of the lazy
guidman who 'weel could tipple oot a can,