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FAMOUS SONGS
"Songs and Ballads of Cumberland," edited by Sidney Gilpin, 1866 ("Sidney Gilpin," en passant, is believed to have been the pseudonym of a noted Carlisle bookseller): " Nearly forty years have nowwasted away," says Mr. Graves, " since John Peel and I sat in a snug parlour at Caldreck, among the Cumbrian mountains. We were then both in the heyday of manhood, and hunters of the olden fashion; meeting the night before to arrange earth stopping, and up in the morning to take the best part of the hunt—the drag over the mountains in the mist—while fashionable hunters still lay in the blankets. Large flakes of snow fell in the evening. We sat by the fireside, hunting over again many a good run, and recalling the feats of each par-ticular hound, or narrow neck-break 'scapes, when a flaxen-haired daughter of mine came running in, saying, ' Father, what do they say to what Granny sings ?' Granny was singing to sleep my eldest son—now a leading barrister in Hobart Town—with a very old rant called 'Bonnie (or Cannie) Annie/ The pen and ink for hunting appointments being on the table, the idea of writing a song to this old air forced itself upon me, and thus was produced, im-promptu, ' D'ye ken John Peel, with his coat so gray?' Immediately after I sang it to poor
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