Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Scottish songs > Volume 2

331
ANNIE LAURIE.*
Maxwelton banks are bonnie;
Where early fa's the dew ;
Where me and Annie Laurie
Made up tlie promise true ;
Made up the promise true,
And never forget will I ;
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
111 lay me doun and die.
She's backit like tlie peacock ;
She's breistit like the swan ;
She's jimp about the middle ;
Her waist ye weel micht span
Her waist ye weel micht span,
And she has a rolling- eye ;
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'll lay me doun and die.
particularly delighted with it. " Oh, nothing," answered the man of learn-
ing; " only the whole of it is stolen from Horace." — " Houts, man," re-
plied Mr Boog, " Horace has rather stown from the auld sang." — This lu-
dicrous observation was met with absolute shouts of laughter, the whole of
which was at the expense of the discomfited critic ; and Burns was pleased
to express his hearty thanks to the citizen for having set the matter to
rights. He seems, from a passage in Cromek's Reliques, to have afterwards
made use of the observation as his own.
* These two verses, which are in a style wonderfully tender and chaste
for their age, were written by a Mr Douglas of Fingland, upon Anne, one
of the four daughters of Sir Robert Laurie, first baronet of Maxwelton, by
his second wife, who was a daughter of Riddell of Minto. As Sir Rol)ert
was created a baronet in the year 1685, it is probable that the verses were
composed aboiit the end of the seventeenth or the beginning of the eigh-
teenth century. It is painful to record, that, notwithstanding the ardent
and chivalrous affection displayed by Mr Douglas in his poem, he did not
obtain the heroine for a wife : She was married to Mr Ferguson of Craig-
darroch.— See " A Ballad Book," {printed at Edinburgh in 1824,) p. 107-