Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Songs of Scotland prior to Burns

150 SONGS OF SCOTLAND.
Scottish Poems, 1709, and from thence was transferred into the
Tea-table Miscellany and Thomson's Orpheus Caledonius, as it has
been into nearly every collection of Scotch songs published since.
The authorship is to be considered as doubtful. The song used
to be co mm only ascribed to Francis Sempill of Beltrees, Renfrew-
shire, who is believed to have written several other popular songs,
and who flourished during the reign of Charles II., dying not long
before the year 1685. Sempill was a man of lively talents, a
keen cavalier or loyalist, even to the persecution of conventiclers, 1
and in his latter days was reduced by suretyship to a poverty
befitting his poetical character. "We are to regard him as one of
a section of society by whom the spirit of mirth and song was
maintained during those days of seriousness verging upon gloom
— a protestantism of human nature against the asceticism and
self-mortification of the puritanic system. It is remarkable that
his father and grandfather were both poets. His grandson,
Robert Sempill of Beltrees, who died at Kilbarchan in 1789, at
the great age of a hundred and two, seems to have been the
authority for attributing to him the authorship of The Blythsome
Bridal?
Of late years a claim for this honour has been put forward by
Mr Mark Napier 3 on behalf of Sir William Scott of Thirlstain,
direct male ancestor of the present line of the Lords Napier. It
rests on a communication from the late Lord Napier to Mr Mark
Napier, of date 15th December 1831, in the following terms:
' Sir William Scott was the author of that well-known Scots song,
Fy, let us d to the bridal, for there HI be liltings there — a better
thing than Horace ever wrote. My authority was my father, who
told me he had it from his, and that he had it from his, who was
Sir William's son.'
1 In the Privy Council Record, 13th January 1681, is a petition from
Francis Sempill of Beltrees for reward for his services in putting down
conventicles.
2 The Poems of the Sempills of Beltrees, edited by James Paterson,
Edinburgh, 1 849.
3 Partition of the Lennox, Edinburgh, 1835, p. 237.