The Book of Scottish Song/John Hay's Bonnie Lassie

John Hay's Bonnie Lassie.

[Both the air and the words of this song are older than Ramsay's day, although the latter appear for the first time in the Tea-Table Miscellany. "I have found it asserted," says Mr. Robert Chambers, "by a credible tradition in Roxburghshire, that this song was written by a working joiner, in honour of a daughter of John, first Marquis of Tweeddale, who is here familiarly called by his simple name, John Hay. She was a sister of the second marquis, who under his junior title of Lord Yester, is usually given as the author of the first version of 'Tweedside.' The Marquis of Tweeddale had two daughters, Lady Margaret and Lady Jean; but, Burns having somewhere mentioned, that the song was written in honour of one who was afterwards Countess of Roxburghe, we are enabled to set forward the eldest, Lady Margaret, as the heroine. We are further enabled, by Mr. Wood's Peerage, to state the probable era of the song. Lady Margaret Hay, wife of the third Earl of Roxburghe, was a widow, at the age of twenty-five, in the year 1682. Allowing from thirteen to five-and-twenty as the utmost range of age during which she could be celebrated as 'John Hay's bonnie lassie,' the song must have been written between the years 1670 and 1682, probably nearer the first era than the last. It may be mentioned as a remarkable circumstance regarding this interesting lady, that she survived her husband, in uninterrupted widowhood, the amazingly long period of seventy-one years. She died at Broomlands, near Kelso, on the 23d of January, 1753, at the age of ninety-six, after having seen out several generations of her short-lived descendants; the third person in descent being then in possession of the honours of Roxburghe. Her husband was one of the unfortunate persons who were drowned at Yarmouth-roads, on the occasion of the shipwreck of the Glocester frigate, which was bringing the Duke of York down to Scotland, May, 1682."]

By smooth-winding Tay a swain was reclining,
Aft cried he, Oh, hey! maun I still live pining
Mysel' thus away, and daurna discover
To my bonnie Hay, that I am her lover.

Nae mair it will hide; the flame waxes stranger;
If she"s not my bride, my days are nae langer:
Then I'll take a heart, and try at a venture;
May be, ere we part, my vows may content her.

She's fresh as the spring, and sweet as Aurora,
When birds mount and sing, bidding day a good morrow:
The sward of the mead, enamell'd with daisies,
Looks wither'd and dead, when twined of her graces.

But if she appear where verdure invite her,
The fountains run clear, and the flowers smell the sweeter,
'Tis heaven to be by, when her wit is a-flowing:
Her smiles and bright eyes set my spirits a-glowing.

The mair that I gaze, the deeper I'm wounded:
Struck dumb with amaze, my mind is confounded:
I'm all in a fire, dear maid, to caress ye;
For a' my desire is John Hay's bonnie lassie.

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