Glen Collection of printed music > Printed music > Songs of Scotland > Volume 2

THE FADED BOWER.
g^!^
E^iS
Efc^
-? •^
«=
W — /— g-
said it would fade not till his re - turn, If still 1 proved faith -fu'
^
&
^
i?=st
-J- — I 1-
^
d5:
F7'."i
My heart still is true, and it sliares my sigh,
When the breeze has ceased frae blawing,
And it drinks oft a drop frae this lanely eye,
When nae dews frae heaven are fa'ing.
But his heart may be here, though his step be far
On the wilds o' the glens and moorlands,
While he thinks on the times when he wove for my hair,
0' the boughs and the blossoms the garlands :
And the bonnie, bonnie blue forget-me-not,
Shall spread not its leaves to lose them,
Till twined wi' my locks, on this blessed spot.
It fade on his beating bosom.
" The jaded eowek." Air, " Sour plums in Galashiels." The old title, says Burns, was probably the beginning
of a song to this air, which is now lost. The tune of Galashiels was composed about the beginning of last century,
1700, by the Laird of Galashiels' piper: and INIr. Cromek adds, that the piper of Galashiels was the subject of an
unpublished mock-heroic poem by Hamilton of Bangour. — Rdiques. In the Additional Illustrations to the Museum,
Mr. Laing of the Signet Library gives a portion of a Journal kept by Alexander Campbell, the editor of Albyn's
Anthology, when on a Border tour in 181G, for the purpose of collecting local tunes. This contains notices of the
best Border pipers of the eighteenili century, taken down from the conversation of Mr. Thomas Scott, (the uncle
of Sir Walter Scott.) who was himself a skilful performer on the Lowland or bellows pipe. One of these was
Donald Maclean of Galashiels, " a capital piper, and the only one who could play on the pipe the old popular tune
of ' Sour plums of Galashiels,' it requiring a peculiar art of pinching the back-note of the chanter with the thumb,
to produce the higher notes of the melody in question." Sir Walter Scott records, that his uncle, Thomas Scott,
died in 1823, aged 90. He, "being a great musician on the Scotch pipes, had, when on his death-bed, a favourite
tune played over to him by his son James, that he might be sui-e he left him in full possession of it. After hearing
it, he hummed it over himself, and corrected it in several of the notes. The air was that called, Suur plums in
Galashiels." — Lockhart's Life of Scott, vol. i. This old tune first appears in the Orpheus Caledouius, 1725.
The old words, beginning, " Ah, the poor shepherd's mournful fate," were written by Hamilton of Bangour, and
published by Ramsay in his Tea-Table Miscellany in 1725. The verses which we have adopted for this work, were
written by the Rev. Henry Scott Riddell, and are here published by his espress permission.