Scotland/Scots > Mill o' Tiftie's Annie, or, Andrew Lammie, the trumpeter of Fyvie

UJill o’ fifth's fiimre.
The ill-starred loves of Tiftie's bonnie Annie, and the
Trumpeter of Fyme. have already been made familiar
to the reader of Ballad poetry by Mr. Jamieson, who
has published in his collection two different sets of
this simple but not unpathetic ditty.* Neither of
these sets, however, is so complete as the present ver¬
sion, which is a reprint from a stall copy published at
Glasgow several years ago collated with a recited copy,
which has furnished one or two verbal improvements.
“ The beauty, gallantry, and aimiable qualities of
‘ Bonny Andrew Lammie,’ seem,” says Mr. Jamieson,
‘‘ to have been proverbial wherever he went, and the
good old cummer in Allan Ramsay, as the best evi¬
dence of the power of her own youthful charms, and
the best apology for her having cast a leggen girth
hersel, says,
11'se warrant ye have a’ heard tell
Of bonny Andrew Lammie ?
Stiffly in love wi’ me he fell,
As soon as e’er he saw me—
That was a day!’
“ In this instance, as in most others in the same
piece, it seems most probable that Allan Ramsay
forgot that he was writing of the days of the original
author of ‘ Ghristis kirk on the Green,’ and copied
only the manners and traditions of his own times. If
a woman, who could boast of having had an intrigue
with the Trumpeter c/f Fyvie, was hale and hearty at
the time when Allan wrote, we may reasonably sup¬
pose poor Tiftie's Nanny, to have died sometime about
the year 1670.” This conjacture, as to the period when
“ The fairest Flower was cut down by love,
That e’er sprung up in Fyvie,”
is very near the truth, if the notice contained in the
title of the stall copy referred to can be admitted as
evidence on the point. It is this:—“ Andrew Lammie :
or Mill o’ Tiftie’s Annie. This Tragedy was acted in
the year 1674.”
* Vide Popular Ballads and Songs. Edinburgh, 1806.
Vol. I, p. 129, and vol. II. p. 382.