Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Ballads and songs of Ayrshire > Volume 2

APPENDIX.
The bay an' the yellow,
They skimmed like a swallow,
But Paterson's mare she came foremost ;
The white an' the blue
They funkit an' flew,
But Paterson's mare she came foremost.
Fy whip her in, &c.
We gave the tradition alluded to in the First Series, on the author-
ity of a descendant of the Patersons of Ballaird, and see nothing in
Hogg's note to disprove it. The " part of the old song" he adduces is
" not the original one," the tune, as he tells us, having been played
under a different name at vpeddings, " long previous to the battle of
Sheriffmuir." The Ballaird tradition assigns the origin of " Pater-
son's Mare" to the rising at Both well Brig, in 1679, and being com-
posed to the same tune, may, -with, verbal alterations and additions,
have superseded the old words, " She's yours," &c. It is to be re-
gretted that Hogg did not give the whole of the song. Probably it
was not in his power.
" SCOFFING BALLAD."
In putting our remarks upon this ballad (p. 54) to press, we over-
looked one or two facts of some interest. The lines — ■
" And Orangefield, Dalrymple call'd,
Frae Finlayson, or some sic fauld" —
were evidently in allusion to the fact, that the Earl of Glencaim and
Hew Dalrymple of Orangefield were married to two sisters, daughters
of Hew M'Quyre of Drumdow, in Stair or Ochiltree parish.* They
were of humble birth — their grandfather, and probably their father
also, in his earlier years, having been violin players in Ayr. They owe
their rise in the world to the gratitude of one James Macrae, who,
when a poor orphan, was taken notice of by the elder M'Quyre, and
I kept for some time at the school. Macrae went to sea, and gradu-
j ally rose in the world, till he attained the high position of Governor
; of Madras. On his return to Scotland, with immense wealth, he sought
out the family of his benefactor, and, not being married himself, left
them the whole of his fortune. Finlaystoun, in Renfrewshire, was the
seat of the Earl of Glencairn.
* There is a property in each of these parishes called Drumdow.
PRINTED BY ANDREW MURRAY, MILNE SQUARE, EDINBURGH.
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