The Book of Scottish Song/The old Scotch air

The old Scotch air.

My mother sang a plaintive song,
Which winter nights beguiled;
And as its echo died along,
She wept, and yet she smiled.
I clasped my infant hands, and crept
Close to her parent knee,
And then I'd weep because she wept,
Yet wondered why 't might be.

My child, she said, I hear her yet,
Her kind eye bent on mine;
Thou'rt young, and dost perchance forget
That native land of thine,
That lies beneath the polar ray,
Far on the dark blue sea—
A land of heath and mountain grey,
But far from you and me.

I was a little child, like you,
When first I heard that strain,
And oft I dream of fountains blue,
And it comes back again;
And with it comes a broken font
Of tears, I deemed was dry;
Old faces, voices, come as wont,
And will not pass me by.

Your father, boy, loved that sweet trill—
He said I sung it well;
And why I weep to hear it still,
Fond memory can tell.
You were an infant when he left
His home for hostile shore—
The sword your father's life bereft—
I never saw him more.

I heard my mother sing that song,
And then I left our hall;
Ere I returned again, 'twas long,
But death had reft me all.
The wallflower hung on turret strong,
The moss on ruin grey,
And all who sung or heard that song
Were gone—were wede away.

I heard a stranger sing that air—
A little fair-haired child,
With sunny brow that knew no care,
With joyous eye and mild;
She warbled snatches of that strain,
And laughed right joyously;
In after years she may retain
Its memory, like me.

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