Familiar Songs - Their Authors & Histories

300 traditional songs, inc sheet music with full piano accompaniment & lyrics.

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256
OUR FAMILIAR SONGS.
early days were passed. It consists of a statue that represents the poet sitting on a gnarled oak root, in deep contemplation. The figure is on a lofty pedestal, which bears appropriate inscriptions,—among them, this from one of his own poems:
Flow, my Ettrick ! it was thee
Into life that first did drop me; . Thee I'll sing, and when I dee,
Thou wilt lend a sod to hap me. Passing swains will say, and weep,
" Here our Shepherd lies asleep."
To his pastoral song, which was first published in his novel entitled "The Three Perils of Man," Hogg gave the name " When the kye comes hame," and he says: " I choose rather to violate a rule in grammar, in the title and chorus, than a Scottish phrase so com­mon that when it is altered into the proper way, every shepherd and shepherd's sweet­heart account it nonsense. I was once singing at a wedding in great glee,l When the kye come hame/ when a tailor, scratching his head, said it was a ' terrible affectit way that.' I stood corrected, and have never sung it so again."
The air is an old one, with a very Scotchy-sounding name of " Shame fa' the gear and the blathrie tit."