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

THE BIRKS OP ABERFELDIE.
129
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The following verses begin at the sign '.^:
Wliile o'er iheir head the hazels hing,
The little burdies blythely sing,
Or lightly flit on wanton wing,
In the birks of Aberfeldie.
Bonnie lassie, &c.
The braes ascend like lofty wa's.
The foamin' stream deep-roaring fa's,
O'erhung wi' fi'agrant sprcadin' shaws.
The birks of Aberfeldie.
Bonnie lassie, &c.
The hoary cliffs are crown'd wi' flow'ra,
White o'er the linn the bnrnie pours,
And, risin', weets wi' misty show'rs
The birks of Aberfeldie.
Bonnie lassie, &c.
Let fortune's gifts at random flee.
They ne'er shall draw a wish fi'ae me.
Supremely bless'd wi' love and thee.
In the birks of Aberfeldie.
Bonnie lassie, &c.
" The birks op Abekpeldie." " This old sprightly air," says Mr. Stenhouse, " appears in Playford's ' Dancing-
master,' first printed in 1657, under the title of 'A Scotch Ayre.'" The words here given, except the chorus,
which is old, were written by Burns for Johnson's Musical Museum, in September 1787, while standing under the
Falls of Moness, near Aberfeldie, in Perthshire. Burns, at that time, was travelling in the Highlands of Scotland
with his intimate ti-iend William Nicol, one of the masters of the Edinburgh High-School. Mr. Lockhart, in his
Life of Robert Burns, chap, vi., records a remarkable trait of the pride and passion of William Nicol when Bm-ns
and he were together at Fochabers ; and of Burns' kind self-denial and breach of etiquette with a Duke, in order
to soothe his irritated friend. " Burns, who had been much noticed by this noble family when in Edinburgh,
happened to present himself at Gordon Castle, just at the dinner hour, and being invited to take a place at the
table, did so, without for a moment adverting to the circumstance that his travelling companion had been left alone
at the inn in the adjacent village. On remembering this soon after dinner, he begged to be allowed to rejoin his
friend ; and the Duke of Gordon, who now for the first time learned that he was not journeying alone, immediately
proposed to send an invitation to Mr. Nicol to come to the Castle. His Grace's messenger found the haughty
schoolmaster striding up and down before the inn-door, in a state of high wrath and indignation, at what he
considered Burns' neglect ; and no apologies could soften his mood. He had already ordered horses; and the poet
finding that he must choose between the ducal circle and his irritable associate, at once left Gordon Castle and
repaired to the inn; whence Nicol and he, in silence and mutual displeasure, pui'sued their journey along the
coast of the Jloray Frith." — Lockhart's Life of Burns. Regarding the air, we have to observe, that in the earlier
copies, the melody seems to have been disfigured by a misprint of the sixth note of the first measure, where three
D 8 occur consecutively, instead of U, E, D. In the present edition that wrong note has been altered.
No. XIX. T