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

428 SONGS OF SCOTLAND.
This fine modern air is the genuine tune of the ballad. Some
years ago it was arranged as a glee, for three voices, by Mr
William Knyvett of London, and has deservedly become very
popular.
AULD ROBIN GRAY.
This king of all the Scotch ballads had a curious and interest-
ing history. There was an old song of popular extraction,
known by its refrain, 'The bridegroom grat [that is, wept]
when the sun gaed down ; ' very foolish, but furnished with
a pleasing air. An eccentric masculine lady, of great note
in Scottish society, named Sophy Johnstone, sang this song
to the youthful family of the Earl of Balcarres at Balcarres
House, in Fife, and impressed Lady Anne in particular with
a deep sense of the beauty of the melody. Soon after the
close of the year 1771, Lady Anne, finding herself much alone
in the paternal mansion, and rather melancholy, bethought
herself of attempting, with such power of verse as she possessed,
to compose, to the plaintive tones which had pleased her so
much, some little history of virtuous distress in humble life
such as might suit them. Taking the name of the old cow-herd
of her father's home-farm — Robin Gray — she represented a
young maiden as obliged by family misfortunes to accept him for
a lover, and as being soon after overwhelmed with grief on the
discovery that a youthful sweetheart, supposed to be dead, was
still alive. It would appear from a recital of her own, that the
ballad did not at first take fully the shape it afterwards bore,
for she said one day to her little sister (subsequently Countess
of Hardwicke), ' My dear, I have been writing a ballad — I am
oppressing my heroine with many misfortunes — I have already
sent her Jamie to sea, and broken her father's arm, and made her
mother fall sick, and given her auld Robin Gray for a lover ;
but I wish to load her with a fifth sorrow in the four lines, poor