Glen Collection of printed music > Printed music > Wood's edition of the songs of Scotland

THE SONGS OF SCOTLAND.
181
76
ON ETTRICK BANKS.
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braw and tieht, While wand - 'ring through the mist her lane. 1 My
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lieart grew lieht, I want - ed lang To tell my las - sie a' my mind, And
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ne - ver till this hap - py hour, A can - nie 2 meet - ing could 1 find.
Said I, my lassie, will ye gae
To the Highland hills and be my bride?
I'll bigg 3 thy bower beneath the brae,
By sweet Loch Gary's silver tide.
And aft as o'er the moorlands wide,
Kind gloamin' comes our faulds to steek, 4
I'll hasten down the green hill side,
Where curls our cozy cottage reek.
All day when we ha'e wrought eneuch,
When winter frosts and snaws begin,
Sune as the sun gaes west the loch,
At nicht when ye sit down to spin,
I'll screw my pipes, and play a spring,
And thus the weary nicht we'll end,
Till the tender kid and lamb-time bring
Our pleasant simmer back again.
Syne when the trees are in their bloom,
And gowans glent 6 o'er ilka field,
I'll meet my lass amang the broom,
And lead her to my simmer shield ;
There, far frae a' their scornfu' din,
That make the kindly hearts their sport,
We'll laugh, and kiss, and dance, and sing,
And gar the langest day seem short !
2 Quiet ; favourable.
a Build.
4 Close ; shut up.
5 Peep out : or Bhine.
" On Ettrick Banks." Mr. Stenhouse's Note upon this song and air is as follows : — " This is another of those
delightful old pastoral melodies which has been a favourite during many generations. It is inserted in the Orpheus
Caledonius in 1725, with the same elegant stanzas that appear in the Museum, beginning, ' On Ettrick banks, ae
summer's night.' Kamsay has left no key to discover the author of the song : it does not appear, however, to be his ;
and indeed it is not claimed by his biographer as his composition. In the Museum, the fourth line of stanza first, in
place of ' Came wading barefoot a' her lane,' was changed into ' While wand'ring through the mist her lane ;' but I
do not consider it any improvement on the elegant simplicity of the original. . . . The Ettrick, of such poetical
celebrity, is a river in Selkirkshire; it rises in the parish of the same name, and after a winding course of thirty
miles in a north-east direction, during which it receives the Yarrow near Philiphaugh, falls into the Tweed three miles
above Melrose." See Museum Illustrations, vol. i. pp. 85, 86. The version of the words here given is from J. M.
Miiller's " Vocal Gems of Scotland."