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Indeed, I doubt if many people have ever heard of the ancient lyric. Scott, who with Lord Byron, Dr. Johnson, and some other poets shared the affliction of not being able to ap-preciate music, wrote his verses, if he wrote them to a melody at all, not to the old Scottish air, but to that questionable song the " Jockey's Deliverance," which they fit exactly. Observe the difference of the metre. Here is Scott's " Bonnie Dundee":
" To the Lords of Convention 'twas Claverhouse spoke: Ere the king's crown go down there are crowns to be broke; Then each cavalier who loves honour and me, Let him follow the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee. Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can, Come saddle my horses, and call out my men; Unhook the west-port, and let us gae free, For its up wi' the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee."
And here is the proper "Bonnie Dundee" of far-off times—one of the stanzas which Burns supplied from oral tradition to Johnson's " Mu-sical Museum."
" O, whar did ye get that hanver meal bannock, O, silly blind body, O, dinna ye see ? I gat it frae a young brisk Sodger Laddie, Between Saint Johnston and bonie Dundee."
There is not much to commend in the original song except the air, which is in the plaintive
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