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

450 * WALY, WALY.
CCCCXLVI.
WALY, WALY.
In his previous note on this pathetic song-, at page 147,
Mr Stenhouse has quoted some lines from Wood's MS.;
but that portion of the MS. was written long subsequent
to 1566. See Note ccccxi. at page * 439.
" In the West country (says Burns), I have heard a
different edition of the second stanza. Instead of the four
lines beginning, ' When Cockle-shells,' &c., the other way
ran thus :
« O wherefore need I busk my head.
Or wherefore need I kame my hair.
Sin' my fause love has me forsook.
And says, he'll never luve me mair !' "
Reliques, p. 245.
CCCCLI.
HALLOW FAIR.
Robert Fergusson, the eminent but unfortunate pre-
cursor of Burns, was born at Edinburgh on the 17th of
October 1750. He received part of his elementary edu-
cation at Dundee, and, with the view of coming out for the
Church, he was sent to pursue his studies at St Andrew's.
Circumstances having occurred to make him change his
views, he came to Edinburgh, and was chiefly employed in
copying law-papers in the office of the Commissary-clerk.
At the same time, he became a stated contributor of verses
to Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine, while his convivial talents
led him to indulge too much in idle society. He died on the
16th of October 1774, aged twenty-four, at the time of life
when it might have been expected that the brilliant pro-
mises of his youthful genius would have been realized ^ It
is a beautiful and an affecting incident in Burns's life, that
one of his first acts, after he himself had acquired any de-
gree of public fame, was to raise a humble monument to
Fergusson's memory, by erecting at his own expense a
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