The Scottish songs - National Library of Scotland

331
ANNIE LAURIE.*
Maxwelton banks are bonnie;
Where early fa's the dew
Where me and Annie Laurie
Made up tlie promise true
Made up the promise true,
And never forget will I
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
111 lay me doun and die.
She's backit like tlie peacock ;
She's breistit like the swan ;
She's jimp about the middle ;
Her waist ye weel micht span
Her waist ye weel micht span,
And she has a rolling- eye
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'll lay me doun and die.
" Oh, nothing," answered the man of learn-
particularly delighted with it.
ing; " only the whole of it is stolen from Horace."— " Houts, man," replied
Mr Boog, " Horace has rather stown from the auld sang."—This ludicrous
observation was met with absolute shouts of laughter, the whole of
which was at the expense of the discomfited critic ; and Burns was pleased
to express his hearty thanks to the citizen for having set the matter to
rights. He seems, from a passage in Cromek's Reliques, to have afterwards
made use of the observation as his own.
* These two verses, which are in a style wonderfully tender and chaste
for their age, were written by a Mr Douglas of Fingland, upon Anne, one
of the four daughters of Sir Robert Laurie, first baronet of Maxwelton, by
his second wife, who was a daughter of Riddell of Minto. As Sir Rol)ert
was created a baronet in the year 1685, it is probable that the verses were
composed aboiit the end of the seventeenth or the beginning of the eighteenth
century. It is painful to record, that, notwithstanding the ardent
and chivalrous affection displayed by Mr Douglas in his poem, he did not
obtain the heroine for a wife : She was married to Mr Ferguson of Craigdarroch.—See
" A Ballad Book," {printed at Edinburgh in 1824,) p. 107-