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

FIENT A CRUM OF THEE SHE FAWS.
Our sentimental series opens with an elegy of unreturned
affection by Alexander Scott, a poet who flourished in the time
of Queen Mary, and wrote so elegantly and so copiously on
amatory subjects that he has been called the Scottish Anacreon.
Of the personal life of Scott we know literally nothing. We
find, however, that he addressed a New-year's congratulation to
his fair young sovereign, on the first occurrence of the festival
after her return to Scotland, wherein it appears that he did not
sympathise strongly with the puritanic spirit which was then
recently introduced into Scotland.
This specimen of Alexander Scott's poetry was recovered by
Allan Ramsay, and printed by him, with some inexcusable
corruptions, in the Tea-table Miscellany, 1 724 ; likewise in the
collection which he called the Evergreen. The verses here given
are those which Lord Hailes extracted from the Bannatyne
Manuscript. The air is one assigned to the song in Johnson's
Scots Musical Museum. '