Glen Collection of printed music > Printed music > Scots musical museum > Volume 5

420 CCCCLXXV.— BANNOCKS O* BEARMEAL.
quire the tune to be sung twice over* Nay more, they would
have discovered that there was plenty of room on the plate,
had Burns chosen to write a verse or two more. It is there-
fore to be hoped, for the credit of our bard, that his verses
will never be united to the trash that Cromek has endeavour-
ed to palm upon the country as the remnant of what he calls
a heart-rousing old song.
It is a curious fact, that Oswald has inadvertently copied
the air twice in his Caledonian Pocket Companion. In the
third volume of that work, it is printed under the title of
*' Bannocks of Bear-meal ;" and, in the sixth volume, it
again appears under the name of " There was a Lad and a
Lass in a Killogie," from the first line of the old indelicate
words alluded to.
CCCCLXXVI.
WAE IS MY HEART.
This simple old air of one strain was recovered by Burns,
and transmitted to the Editor of the Museum, alongst with
the three beautiful stanzas written by himself, to which the
tune is adapted. The original manuscripts of the melody,
and Burns' verses to it, are in the possession of the Editor.
CCCCLXXVII.
THERE WAS A SILLY SHEPHERD SWAIN.
This old ballad was taken from Herd's Ancient and Mo-
dern Songs, vol. ii, Edinburgh, 1776. In the third volume
of Play ford's Wit and Mirth, first edition, in 1702, there is a
ballad, beginning " There was a knight, and he was young,"
in which, though the hero is of higher degree than the silly
shepherd swain in the Scottish ballad, yet the leading inci-
dents, and even some of the stanzas, are so similar, that the
one must have been borrowed from the other. For instance.
There was a knight, and he was young,
A riding along the way. Sir,
And there he met a lady fair
Among the cocks of hay. Sir.