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THE CHOUGH AND CROW.

The chough and crow to roost are gone, The owl sits on the tree,

The hush'd wind wails with feeble moan,
Like infant charity.

The wild fire dances on the fen,
The red star sheds its ray,
Uprouse ye, then, my merry men!
It is our opening day.

Both child and nurse are fast asleep,
And closed is every flower,
The winking tapers faintly peep

High from my lady's bower;
Bewildered hinds with shortened ken

Shrink in their murky way.

Uprouse ye, then, my merry men!
It is our opening day.

Nor board nor garner own we now,
Nor roof nor latched door,

Nor kind mate bound by holy vow
To bless a good man's store;
Noon lulls us in a gloomy den,
And night is grown our day;
Uprouse ye, then, my merry men!
It is our opening day.

FISHERMAN'S SONG.

No fish stir in our heaving net,

And the sky is dark and the night is wets

And we must ply the lusty oar,

For the tide is ebbing from the shore;
And sad are they whose faggots burn,

So kindly stored for our return.

Our boat is small, and the tempest raves,
And nought is heard but the lashing waves
And the sullen roar of the angry sea
And the wild winds piping drearily;
Yet sea and tempest rise in vain,
We'll bless our blazing hearths again.

Push bravely, mates! Our guiding sar
Now from its towerlet streameth far,
And now along the nearing strand,
See, swiftly moves yon flaming brand.
Before the midnight watch be past
We'll quaff our bowl and mock the blast

SONG.

They who may tell love's wistful tale
Of half its cares are lightened;
Their bark is tacking to the gale,
The severed cloud is brightened.

Love like the silent stream is found
Beneath the willows lurking,
The deeper that it hath no sound
To tell its ceaseless working.

Submit, my heart; thy lot is cast
I feel its inward token;
I feel this misery will not last,
Yet last till thou art broken.

SONG.

[Version taken from an old song, Woo'd and married and a'.]

The bride she is winsome and bonny,
Her hair it is snooded sae sleek,
And faithfu' and kind is her Johnny,

Yet fast fa' the tears on her cheek.
New pearlins are cause of her sorrow,
New pearlins and plenishing too;
The bride that has a' to borrow

Has e'en right mickle ado.

Woo'd and married and a'!
Woo'd and married and a'!

Is na' she very weel aff

To be woo'd and married at a'?

Her mither then hastily spak,
'The lassie is glaikit2 wi' pride;
In my pouch I had never a plack
On the day when I was a bride.
E'en tak to your wheel and be clever,
And draw out your thread in the sun;

The gear that is gifted it never

Will last like the gear that is won.

Woo'd and married and a'!

3

Wi' havins and tocher sae sma'!

I think ye are very weel aff

To be woo'd and married at a'.'

'Toot, toot,' quo' her grey-headed faither,
'She's less o' a bride than a bairn,
She's ta'en like a cout' frae the heather,
Wi' sense and discretion to learn.
Half husband, I trow, and half daddy,
As humour inconstantly leans,

The chiel maun be patient and steady
That yokes wi' a mate in her teens.

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A kerchief sae douce and sae neat

O'er her locks that the wind used to blaw! I'm baith like to laugh and to greet

When I think of her married at a'!

Then out spak the wily bridegroom,
Weel waled were his wordies, I ween,
'I'm rich, though my coffer be toom',
Wi' the blinks o' your bonny blue e'en.
I'm prouder o' thee by my side

Though thy ruffles or ribbons be few,
Than if Kate o' the Croft were my bride
Wi' purfles and pearlins enow.

Dear and dearest of ony!

Ye're woo'd and buikit and a'!
And do ye think scorn o' your Johnny,
And grieve to be married at a'?'

She turn'd, and she blush'd, and she smiled,
And she looked sae bashfully down;

The pride o' her heart was beguiled,

And she played wi' the sleeves o' her gown

She twirled the tag o' her lace,

And she nipped her boddice sae blue,
Syne blinkit sae sweet in his face,
And aff like a maukin she flew.
Woo'd and married and a'!
Wi' Johnny to roose her and a'!
She thinks hersel very weel aff

To be woo'd and married at a'l

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JAMES HOGG.

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[THE 'Ettrick Shepherd,' born in 1770 in Selkirkshire, where his fore fathers had been sheep-farmers for generations, was discovered' by Sir Walter Scott very much in the same way in which Allan Cunningham was discovered by Cromek. Scott struck across him while engaged in his search for The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. The living minstrel, in this case however, was not under the necessity of passing off his own poems as relics of an older time; Scott at once recognised his talent, and gave him a helping hand. Hogg threw aside the crook for the pen, migrated to Edinburgh, and wrote for the magazines and the booksellers. He was one of the projectors of Blackwood's Magazine in 1817, and became famous as one of the interlocutors in the Noctes Ambrosianae. The Queen's Wake, on which his poetic reputation chiefly rests, was published in 1813. He died in 1835-1

Hogg owed his introduction to letters to the same sort of accident as Cunningham, and there was not a little similarity besides in their careers. Of both it may be said that there was as much of the elements of poetry in their lives as in their books. Hogg was a more boisterous character, with a much less firm grip of reality, and most at home in wild burlesque and the realms of unrestrained fancy. The combination of rough humour with sweetness and purity of sentiment is by no means rare; but Hogg is one of most eminent examples of it; all the more striking that both qualities were in him strongly accentuated by his demonstrative temperament. His humour often degenerates into deliberate loutishness, affected oddity; and his tenderness of fancy sometimes approaches 'childishness,' or, as the Scotch call it, 'bairnliness.' But with all his extravagances, there is a marked individuality in the Shepherd's songs and poems; he was a singer by genuine impulse, and there was an open-air freshness in his note.

W. MINTO.

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