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

AN THOU WERT MY AIN THING. 373
Then I would clasp thee in my arms,
Then I 'd secure thee from all harms ;
For above mortal thou hast charms :
How dearly do I love thee !
Of race divine thou needs must he,
Since nothing earthly equals thee,
So I must still presumptuous he,
To shew how much I love thee.
The gods one thing peculiar have,
To ruin none whom they can save ;
O, for their sake, support a slave,
Who only lives to love thee !
To merit I no claim can make,
But that I love, and, for your sake,
What man can more, I '11 undertake,
So dearly do I love thee.
My passion, constant as the sun,
Flames stronger still, will ne'er have done,
Till fates my thread of life have spun,
Which breathing out, I '11 love thee.
This beautiful song, with its fine air, appeared in Ramsay's
Tea-table Miscellany, excepting the second verse, which was added
in a repetition of the song in Thomson's Orpheus Caledonius. It
was regarded by these editors as a song of unknown authorship,
and so it remains to this day.
An Thou wer Myn Own Tiling is the name of a tune in the
manuscript Lute-book, written by Gordon of Straloch in the
year 1627.