The Scottish songs - National Library of Scotland

469
BONNY CHIRSTY.*
RAMSAY.
How sweetly smells the simmer green
Sweet taste the peacb and cherry
Painting and order please our een,
And claret makes us merry
But finest colours, fruits, and flowers,
And wine, though I be thirsty,
Lose a' their charms and weaker powers.
Compared with those of Chirsty.
When wandering o'er the flowery park,
No natural beauty wanting,
How lightsome is't to hear the lark,
And birds in concert chanting I
But if my Chirsty tunes her voice,
I'm rapt in admiration ;
My thoughts with ecstasies rejoice,
And drap the haill creation.
Whene'er she smiles a kindly glance,
I take the happy omen.
And aften mint to make advance.
Hoping she'll prove a woman :
« Spelled Christy in the original, but here altered to suit the ordinary
pronunciation and the rhyme. The heroine of the song was Miss Christian
Dundas, daughter of Sir James Dundas of Arniston, and married to Sir
Charles Areskine of Alva, (who was born in 1643, and knighted in 1666.)
She was the mother of Sir Charles Areskine of Alva, Lord Justice-Clerk of
Scotland for some years previous to his death in 1763. As her son was
born in 1680, we may conjecture that this lady flovirished as " Bonny
Chirsty" a good while before Ramsay's time ; but the poet, who might
have written the song in ccnlpiiment to charms which, though then faded,
were still celebrated, is known, from the " Orpheus Caledonius," to have
only substituted it for an older song, now lost. A portrait of Lady Areskine,
exhibiting such a degree of beauty and grace as fully to justify her
common title of Bonny Chirsty, is stiU in the posstlssion of her descendants.
From the circumstance of Ramsay having commenced his collection with
this song, it would appeir that it was, out of all his compositions in this department
of poetry, his own favourite.
2 R 14
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