Inglis Collection of printed music > Printed music > Songs of Scotland adapted to their appropriate melodies > Volume 1

OF A THE AIKTS THE WIND CAN BLAW.
87
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love-Iy, sweet, an' fair; I hear her voice in il - ka bird, Wi' mu - sic charm the air: There's
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not a bon-nie flow'rthatspringSjBy fountain, shaw, or green, Nor yet a bon-nie bird that sings, But
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my Jean.
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blaw, ye westlin winds, blaw saft
Amang the leafy trees ;
Wi' gentle gale, frae rnuir and dale,
Bring hame the laden bees ;
An' bring the lassie back to me
" Wi' her twa witchin' een ;"
Ae blink o' her wad banish care,
Sae lovely is my Jean !
What sighs an' vows amang the knowes,
Ha'e past atween us twa !
How fain to meet, how wae to part,
That day she gaed awa' !
The powers aboon can only ken,
To whom the heart is seen,
That nane can be sae dear to me,
As my sweet lovely Jean !
" Op a' the airts the wind can blaw." As to this air, see Note, page 13, and also Note, page 85. The song
is certainly one of Burns' best, so far as he wrote it. Captain Charles Gray, R.M., in his " Cursory Remarks on
Scottish Song," says, that he believes " Burns did not write more than the first sixteen lines of this beautiful
song." He also observes that the third and fourth stanzas were not found among Burns' MSS. after his death ;
and that none of his editors or commentators, except Allan Cunningham and Motherwell, have claimed them
for Burns. Farther, that Dr. Currie in his edition of Burns, Mr. Stenhouse in " Johnson's Musical Museum," and
Mr. David Laing in his additional notes to that work, do not mention these stanzas as of Burns' composition ; and
that Mr. George Thomson, in his "Melodies of Scotland," (edition of 1838,) has rejected them as spurious. By
some they have been ascribed to William Reid, Bookseller, Glasgow; but Captain Gray is rather inclined to
believe they were written by John Hamilton, Musicseller, Edinburgh.