When come is the hour o' gloamin' gray, When winter is driving his cloud on the gale, Then I tove awa' by the ingle side, When the nichts were lang and the sea ran high, And the moon hid her face in the depths of the sky, And the mast was strained, and the canvas rent, She lang has been her mammie's pct, A fairer face I may ha'e seen, My blessings on that bonnie face- Oh, love has wiles at his command! I hear the throbbing o' my heart THE MINSTREL.1 Keen blaws the wind o'er Donocht-head. And dinna let your minstrel fa', And piped whare gorcocks whirring flew, Was short when he began his din." My Eppie's voice, O wow! it's sweet! 1 This song, with the exception of the concluding twelve lines added by Gray, has by some authorities been attributed to George Pickering of Newcastle. It appeared first in the Edinburgh Herald in 1794. "Donocht-head is not mine," said Burns; "I would give ten pounds it were."-ED. WILLIAM NICHOLSON, the Galloway poet, lonely town-end, when Willie the packman was born at Tanimaus, parish of Borgue, Gal- and the piper made his appearance, with his loway, August 15, 1782. In his youth weak stories, and jokes, and ballads, his songs, and eyesight prevented his progress at school, and reels, and 'wanton wiles.' There is one story afterwards unfitted him for the occupations of about him which has always appeared to me shepherd life as a or quite perfect. A farmer in a remote part of Galloway, one June morning before sunrise, was awakened by music; he had been dream ploughman. He therefore began and down his native district for thirty years pedlar or packman, and wandered up singing his own verses, which soon became ing of heaven, and when he found himself popular. In 1814 he issued a small 12mo awake he still heard the strains. He looked volume entitled, "Tales in Verse and Miscel-out, and saw no one, but at the corner of a laneous Poems descriptive of Rural Life and grass field he saw his cattle, and young colts Manners," by which he cleared £100. In 1828 and fillies, huddled together, and looking ina second edition of his poems appeared, with a tently down into what he knew was an old memoir of Nicholson by Mr. Macdiarmid of quarry. Dumfries. Latterly the poet fell into sadly He put on his clothes and walked across the field, everything but that strange dissipated habits, playing at fairs and markets wild melody still and silent in this 'the sweet with his bagpipes aged sixty-s -seven. as a gaberlunzie or beggar hour of prime.' As he got nearer the 'beasts,' necks forward entranced. There, in the old and resting on his pack, which had been his man; and at last the grave closed in gloom the sound was louder; the colts with their long er the ruins of a man of true genius. He manes, and the nowt with their wondering died at Kildarroch in Borgue, May 16, 1849, stare, took no notice of him, straining their Dr. John Brown says of Nicholson and his quarry, the young sun 'glintin' on his face, poems They are worth the knowing; none of them have the concentration and nerve of pillow, was our Wandering Willie, playing and the Brownie,' but they are from the same singing like an angel-'an Orpheus; an Orbrain and heart. The Country Lass,' a long pheus.' What a picture! When reproved for poem, is excellent; with much of Crabbe's wasting his health and time by the prosaic power and compression . . . Poor Nicholson, farmer, the poor fellow said: 'Me and this besides his turn for verse, was an exquisite quarry are lang acquant, and I've mair pleesure musician, and sang with a powerful and sweet in pipin' to thae daft cowts, than if the best One may imagine the delight of a voice. leddies in the land were figurin' away afore me." THE BROWNIE OF BLEDNOCH.1 There cam' a strange wight to our town-en', Wi' a weary, dreary hum. His face did glow like the glow o' the west, I trow the bauldest stood aback, Wi' a gape an' a glower till their lugs did crack, O! had ye seen the bairns' fright, As they stared at this wild and unyirthly wight; As they skulkit in 'tween the dark and the light, And graned out Aiken-drum! "Sauf us!" quoth Jock, "d'ye see sic een?" Cries Kate, "There's a hole where a nose should ha' been; An' the mouth's like a gash that a horn had ri'en: The black dog growling cowered his tail, His matted head on his breast did rest, A lang blue beard wan'ered down like a vest; But the glare o' his e'e hath nae bard exprest, Nor the skimes o' Aiken-drum. Roun' his hairy form there was naething seen An' his knotted knees played aye knoit between— On his wauchie arms three claws did meet, But he drew a score, himsel' did sain, The auld wife tried, but her tongue was gane; While the young ane closer clasped her wean, And turned frae Aiken-drum. 1"We would rather have written these lines than any amount of Aurora Leighs, Festuses, or such like, with all their mighty somethingness,' as Mr. Bailey would say. For they, are they not the native wood-notes wild' of one of nature's darlings? Here is the indescribable, inestimable, unmistakable impress of genius. Chaucer, had he been a Galloway man, might have written it, only he would have been more garrulous, But the cantie auld wife cam till her breath, "His presence protect us!" quoth the aud gudeman; "What wad ye, whare won ye, by sea or by lan'? I conjure ye--speak-by the beuk in my han'!" What a grane ga'e Aiken-drum! "I lived in a lan' whare we saw nae sky, "I'll shiel a' your sheep i' the mornin' sune, An' guidly folks hae gotten a fright, And unchancie to light o' a maiden's e'e, Is the glower o' Aiken-drum." "Puir clipmalabors! ye hae little wit; Is'tna Hallowmas now, , an' the crap out yet?" Sae she silenced them a' wi' a stamp o' her fit"Sit yer wa's down, Aiken-drum!" Roun' a' that side what wark was dune moon; A word, or a wish, an' the brownie cam sune, But he slade aye awa' or the sun was up, sup, On Blednoch banks, an' on crystal Cree, For mony a And the bairns they played harmless roun' his day a toiled wight was he; knee. Sae social was Aiken-drum. But a new-made wife, fu' o' frippish freaks, Fond o' a' things feat for the five first weeks, Laid a mouldy pair o' her ain man's breeks By the brose o' Aiken-drum. Let the learned decide when they convene, What spell was him an' the breeks between; For frae that day forth he was nae mair seen, An' sair-missed was Aiken-drum. When the moon was set, an' the stars gied nae light; At the roaring linn, in the howe o' the night, He was heard by a herd gaun by the Thrieve, Crying, "Lang, lang now may I greet an' grieve; | For alas! I ha'e gotten baith fee an' leave O! luckless Aiken-drum!" Awa', ye wrangling sceptic tribe, W your pro's an' your con's wad ye decide 'Gain the sponsible voice o' a hale country side, On the facts 'bout Aiken-drum? Though the "Brownie o' Blednoch" lang be gane, Een now, light loons that jibe an' sneer lan, founder of a sect of Covenanters known by his A communion cup belonging to the Rev. Mr. M'Mil name. The cup was parish of Kirkcowan, and used as a test by which to ascertain the orthodoxy of suspected persons.-ED. long preserved by a disciple in the THE BRAES OF GALLOWAY. O lassie, wilt thou gang wi' me, O Gallowa' braes they wave wi' broom, There's stately woods on mony a brae, O Gallowa' braes, &c. The simmer shiel I'll build for thee O Gallowa' braes, &c. When autumn waves her flowin' horn, O Gallowa' braes, &c. At e'en, whan darkness shrouds the sight, Should fickle fortune on us frown, Come while the blossom's on the broom, MY AIN BONNIE MAY. O will ye go to yon burn side, The sun blinks blithe on yon burn side, The wild bird whistles to his mate, My ain bonnie May. The waving woods, wi' mantle green, My father maws ayont the burn, To spin my mammy's gane; And should they see thee here wi' me, The lightsome lammie little kens The sun wi' clouds may be o'ercast, Ilk thing is in its season sweet; O, come then while the summer shines, For thee I'll tend the fleecy flocks, JOHN FINLAY. BORN 1782- DIED 1810. JOHN FINLAY, a man of fine genius and extensive scholarship, cut off prematurely, was born of parents in humble circumstances at Glasgow, December, 1782. After receiving a good education at one of the schools in his native city, he entered the university at the age of fourteen, and had for a classmate John Wilson, afterwards the renowned "Christopher North." At college young Finlay was highly distinguished for proficiency in his classes, for the elegance of his essays on the subjects prescribed to the students, as well as the talent shown in the poetical odes which he wrote on classical subjects. In 1802, while only about nineteen and still at college, he published "Wallace, or the Vale of Ellerslie, with other Poems," of which a second edition with some additions appeared two years later, and a third was issued in 1817. Of the chief poem in this volume Professor Wilson says: It is doubtless an imperfect composition, but it displays a wonderful power of versification, and contains many splendid descriptions of external nature. It possesses both the merits and defects which we look for in the early compositions of true | Blackwood's Magazine for November, 1817. genius." In 1807 Finlay went to London in search of employment, and whilst there he contributed to the magazines many articles on antiquarian subjects. He returned to Glasgow in 1803, and in that year published a short collection of "Scottish Historical and Romantic Ballads," which secured the favourable notice of Sir Walter Scott. "The beauty of some imitations of the old Scottish ballad," he writes, "with the good sense, learning, and modesty of the preliminary dissertations, must make all admirers of ancient lore regret the early loss of this accomplished young man." Mr. Finlay again left Glasgow in 1810 on a visit to his friend Wilson at Elleray, in Cumberland, but on the way he was seized with illness at Moffat, where he died December 8, 1810, aged only twenty-eight. Besides the works above-mentioned, he edited an edition of Blair's "Grave," with excellent notes, wrote a Life of Cervantes, and superintended a new edition of Smith's Wealth of Nations. An affectionate and elegant tribute to Finlay's memory, written by Prof. Wilson, appeared in |