Inglis Collection of printed music > Printed music > Songs of Scotland prior to Burns

TWEEDSIDE. 341
object of Crawford's poetic affections in the person of Mary Scott,
second daughter of John Scott of Harden. She was a woman
of uncommon personal attractions, as is amply proved by a
portrait of her by Allan Ramsay, junior, in Hamilton Palace —
the subject of an almost raving admiration to Pennant, in his
Tour of Scotland. It was about 1725 that Mary Scott was in the
zenith of her charms, and Crawford was not the only bard who
celebrated them. There was an old and now lost ditty, with a
simple air of one strain, commemorating Maiy Scott, ' the Flower
of Yarrow,' as she was called — namely, a daughter of Scott of
Dryhope in Yarrow, who married the famous Walter Scott of
Harden in the time of Queen Mary, and who consequently was
an ancestress of the now reigning beauty. On this strain, which
was probably unfit for ears polite, Allan Ramsay built up a
short song in his usual manner, designed as a compliment to
the contemporary beauty, and repeating in her favour the title
of ' the Flower of Yarrow,' in spite of its inappropriateness as
regarded her nativity and residence. It begins thus :
Happy the love which meets return,
But mine meets only slight and scorn ;
Oh, that I ne'er had seen yon tower,
That shelters Yarrow's fairest flower !
'Mang circling hills that guard her hame,
The bonnie loch's clear waters gleam,
And there lives she whom nane can marrow,
Mary Scott, the Flower of Yarrow. 1
I had the advantage, many years ago, of hearing Sir Walter
Scott speak of this poetic heroine, whom he called the Second
Flower of Yarrow, as one whom he had himself known, although
1 'L. M. M. R.,' in Notes and Queries, March 18, 1854, gives a verse of
the old song of Mary Scott, the Flower of Yarroiv, as the only one he
remembers :
Mary 's black, and Mary 's white,
Mary is the king's delight,
The king's delight, the prince's marrow,
Mary Scott, the Flower of Yarrow !