Bothwell Bank.
[This was first published in John Pinkerton's "Select Scottish Ballads, London, 1773," where it is given as an old production, but it was in reality the composition of Pinkerton himself. Pinkerton, though a very unscrupulous writer, distinguished himself by his antiquarian researches into the history of his country. He was born at Edinburgh in 1758, and died at Paris in 1825.—"In proof of the antiquity of at least the air to which this song is sung" says Mr. Robert Chambers, "and of its beautiful owerword, or burden, a story has been quoted from a work entitled 'Verstegan's Restitution of Decayed Intelligence,' which was printed at Amsterdam in the year 1605. In journeying through Palestine, at some period even then remote, a Scotsman saw a female at the door of a house lulling her child to the air of Bothwell Bank. Surprise and rapture took simultaneous possession of his breast, and he immediately accosted the fair singer. She turned out to be a native of Scotland, who, having wandered thither, was married to a Turk of rank, and who still, though far removed from her native land, frequently reverted to it in thought, and occasionally called up its image by chanting the ditties in which its banks and braes, its woods and streams, were so freshly and so endearingly delineated. She introduced the traveller to her husband, whose influence in the country was eventually of much service to him; an advantage which he could never have enjoyed, had not Bothwell Bank bloomed fair to a poet's eye, and been the scene of some passion not less tender than unfortunate. The bank itself, which has thus attracted so much honourable notice, is a beautifully wooded piece of ground, descending in a steep semicircular sweep from the foundations of Bothwell Castle (Lanarkshire) to the brink of the Clyde, which is there a river of noble breadth. Being situated at the distance of about eight or nine miles above Glasgow, it is a frequent summer Sunday resort for the lads and lasses of that city, the most cotton-spinning of whom cannot help enjoying the loveliness of the scene, set off as it is, in so peculiar a manner, by poetical association. It is the property of Lord Douglas; forming, indeed, part of the finely wooded park which surrounds his lordship's seat of Bothwell."]
On the blythe Beltane, as I went
By mysel' attour the green bent,
Whereby the glancin' waves of Clyde,
Throch sauchs and hangin' hazels glide:
There, sadly sittin' on a brae,
I heard a damsel speak her wae.
"Oh, Bothwell Bank, thou blumest fair,
But, oh, thou mak's my heart fu' sair!
For a' beneth thy holts sae green
My luve and I wad sit at e'en;
While primroses and daisies, mixt
Wi' blue bells, in my locks he fixt.
"But he left me ae dreary day,
And haply now lies in the clay,
Without ae sich his death to roun',
Without ae flowir his grave to croun!
Oh, Bothwell Bank, thou blumest fair,
But, oh, thou mak's my heart fu' sair."
How sweet this lone vale.
[The first stanza of this song was written by the Hon. Andrew Erskine, a younger brother of "the musical Earl of Kellie." The other verses are by an unknown hand. Mr. Erskine held a lieutenant's commission in the 71st regiment, but most of his life was spent in Edinburgh, where he figured as a retired bachelor of somewhat eccentric habits. He carried on a literary correspondence with James Boswell, in prose and verse, which was published at London in 1763. He was also author of "Town Eclogues," and other pieces. Burns was acquainted with him. In a letter to George Thomson, 7th June, 1793, the poet says, "Mr. Erskine's songs are all pretty, but his 'Lone Vale' is divine." In September of the same year, Mr. Erskine was found drowned in the Forth. An unlucky run at play is said to have led to this melancholy end.]
How sweet this lone vale, and how sacred to feeling
Yon nightingale's notes in sweet melody melt;
Oblivion of woe o'er the mind gently stealing,
A pause from keen anguish a moment is felt.
The moon's yellow light o'er the still lake is sleeping,
Ah! near the sad spot Mary sleeps in her tomb,
Again the heart swells, the eye flows with weeping,
And the sweets of the vale are o'ershadow'd with gloom.
