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

378
SONGS OF SCOTLAND.
For soon the winter of the year,
And age, life's winter, will appear ;
At this thy living bloom will fade,
As that will strip the verdant shade.
Our taste of pleasure then is o'er,
The feathered songsters are no more ;
And when they drop, and we decay,
Adieu the birks of Invermay ! x
EOSLIN CASTLE.
The beautiful air of this song was long thought to be a
production of James Oswald ; but Mr Stenhouse states, that it
appears in the prior collection of M'Gibbon, under the name of
TJie House of Glams. It is certainly of no great age.
The song, which may be considered as an imitation of the
dulcet strains of Mallet and Thomson, was composed by Eichard
Hewitt, a young man, a native of Cumberland, who served Dr
Blacklock, the blind poet, for some years as an amanuensis, and
died in 1764, in the capacity of secretary to the Lord Justice-
Clerk Milton, sous-ministre for Scotland, under Archibald, Duke
of Argyle.
The song first appeared in Herd's Collection.
fj^^ ^ pfef ^^ g^l
'Tvvas in that sea
of the year, When
feHL-JUfflgf I J 1
all things gay and
sweet
ap - pear, That
1 Invermay is a small woody glen, on the northern skirts of the Ochil
range, rendered attractive by a cascade of its rivulet, the May.