that this air was
Robert Bruce's march at the battle of Bannockburn.

* * * * *

RAVING WINDS AROUND HER BLOWING.

I Composed these verses on Miss Isabella M'Leod, of Raza, alluding to
her feelings on the death of her sister, and the still more melancholy
death of her sister's husband, the late Earl of Loudon; who shot
himself out of sheer heart-break at some mortifications he suffered,
owing to the deranged state of his finances.

* * * * *

TAK YOUR AULD CLOAK ABOUT YE.

A part of this old song, according to the English set of it, is quoted
in Shakspeare.

* * * * *

YE GODS, WAS STREPHON'S PICTURE BLEST?

Tune--"Fourteenth of October."

The title of this air shows that it alludes to the famous king
Crispian, the patron of the honourable corporation of shoemakers.--St.
Crispian's day falls on the fourteenth of October old style, as the
old proverb tells:

"On the fourteenth of October
Was ne'er a sutor sober."

* * * * *

SINCE ROBB'D OF ALL THAT CHARM'D MY VIEWS.

The old name of this air is, "the Blossom o' the Raspberry." The song
is Dr. Blacklock's.

* * * * *

YOUNG DAMON.

This air is by Oswald.

* * * * *

KIRK WAD LET ME BE.

Tradition in the western parts of Scotland tells that this old song,
of which there are still three stanzas extant, once saved a
covenanting clergyman out of a scrape. It was a little prior to the
revolution, a period when being a Scots covenanter was being a felon,
that one of their clergy, who was at that very time hunted by the
merciless soldiery, fell in, by accident, with a party of the
military. The soldiers were not exactly acquainted with the person of
the reverend gentleman of whom they were in search; but from
suspicious circumstances, they fancied that they had got one of that
cloth and opprobrious persuasion among them in the person of this
stranger. "Mass John" to extricate himself, assumed a freedom of
manners, very unlike the gloomy strictness of his sect; and among
other convivial exhibitions, sung (and some traditions say, composed
on the spur of the occasion) "Kirk wad let me be," with such effect,
that the soldiers swore he was a d----d honest fellow, and that it
was impossible _he_ could belong to those hellish conventicles; and so
gave