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

458 * SIR PATRICK SPENCE.
polated, or that its composition is of a comparatively modern
date." Bishop Percy also remarks (vol. i. p. 81, note), that
" an ingenious friend thinks the author of Hardyknute has
borrowed several expressions and sentiments from the fore-
going and other old Scottish songs in this collection." It
vpas this resemblance, with the localities Dunfermline and
Aberdour, in the neighbourhood of Sir Henry Wardlaw's
seat, that led me to throw out the conjecture, whether this
much admired ballad might not have been written by Lady
Wardlaw herself, to whom the ballad of " Hardyknute" is
now universally attributed.
The ballad, accompanied with two different sets of the
air, will also be found in the second volume of Campbell's
Albyn's Anthology.
Coleridge, at the commencement of one of his Odes,
thus alludes to " Sir Patrick Spence," after quoting as a
motto, the lines " Late^ late, yestreen"
Well ! if the Bard was weather-wise, who made
The gkand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence ;
This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
Unroused by winds, &c.
CCCCLXXXIV.
GDDE WALLACE.
This is another ballad of an alleged antiquity, the cor-
rectness of which may reasonably be doubted. I am per-
suaded it is merely an altered or abridged copy of one
that appeared in a common chap form, along with some
Jacobite ballads, printed about the year 1750. The follow-
ing is a copy of the ballad in question, which seems, in
fact, to be only a passage in Blind Harry the Minstrel's
poem modernized, (Book V.)
ON AN HONOURABLE ACHIEVEMENT OF SIR WILLIAM
WALLACE, NEAR FALKIRK.
" Had we a king," said Wallace then,
" That our kind Scots might live by their own.