'Mongst these could I love thee, and that love enjoy,
But, ah! in the wilderness fond love would cloy;
To the homes of our kindred our spirits must cling,
And away from their bosoms at last take their wing!

THE MERMAID'S SONG

CONSISTS here only of the singing verses of a long ballad which I wrote many years ago, in the house of Mr Aitken, then living at Dunbar. The original ballad is to be found printed in some work, but where I know not. The air is my own, but I cannot boast much of it: it is rather humdrum. It was first arranged by young Gow, and latterly by Dewar, in Mr Purdie's edition of the Border Garland.

LIE still, my love, lie still and sleep,

Long is thy night of sorrow;

Thy maiden of the mountain deep

Shall meet thee on the morrow.

But O, when shall that morrow be,

When my true love shall waken,
When shall we meet, refined and free,
Amid the moorland braken ?

Full low and lonely is thy bed,

The worm even flies thy pillow; Where now the lips, so comely red,

That kiss'd me 'neath the willow?
O, I must smile, and weep the while,
Amid my song of mourning,

At freaks of man in life's short span,
To which there's no returning.

Lie still, my love, lie still and sleep,
Hope lingers o'er thy slumber;

What though thy years beneath the steep
Should all its flowers outnumber;
Though moons steal o'er, and seasons fly
On time-swift wing unstaying,

Yet there's a spirit in the sky,

That lives o'er thy decaying.

In domes beneath the water-springs
No end hath my sojourning;

And to this land of fading things

Far hence be my returning.

For all the spirits of the deep

Their long last leave are taking.Lie still, my love, lie still and sleep

Till the last morn is breaking.

DONALD M'GILLAVRY

WAS originally published in the Jacobite Relics, without any notice of its being an original composition; an omission which entrapped the Edinburgh Review into a high but unintentional compliment to the author. After reviewing the Relics in a style of most determined animosity, and protesting over and over again that I was devoid of all taste and discrimination, the tirade concluded in these terms: "That we may not close this article without a specimen of the good songs which the book contains, we shall select the one which, for sly, characteristic Scotch humour, seems to us the best, though we doubt if any of our English readers will relish it." The opportunity of retaliating upon the reviewer's want of sagacity was too tempting to be lost; and the authorship of the song was immediately avowed in a letter to the Editor of Blackwood's Magazine. "After all," said this avowal, "between ourselves, Donald M'Gillavry, which he has selected as the best specimen of the true old Jacobite song, and as remarkably above its fellows for sly, characteristic Scotch humour,' is no other than a trifle of my own, which I put in to fill up a page!"

I cannot help remarking here, that the Edinburgh Review seems to be at fault in a melancholy manner whenever it