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STORIES OF
William Miller, who gave us " Wee Willie Winkie" and many other children's songs, was a wood-turner by trade, and earned the soubri-quet of the 6t Laureate of the Nursery," and, says Robert Buchanan, "Wherever Scottish foot has trod, wherever Scottish child has been born, the songs of William Miller have been sung." He was bora in 1810, and died in 1872. It will be remembered that Rudyard Kipling has written a delightful story of a delightful child called "Wee Willie Winkie."
There are two songs called " The Flowers of the Forest/' one by Miss Rutherford, afterwards Mrs. Cockburn, 1765, which is comparatively modern in style, and one by Jane Elliot, written about 1750. The " Flowers of the Forest" are the young men of the districts of Selkirkshire and Peebleshire, anciently known as "The Forest" The song is founded by the authoress, Jane Elliot, upon an older composition of the same name deploring the loss of the Scottish at Flodden Field and of which all has been lost but two or three lines. The first and fourth lines of the opening stanza are the foundation of Miss Elliott's poem:
"I've heard them lilting at our ewe-milking— Lasses a' lilting before dawn o' day ; But now they are moaning on ilka green loaming, The Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away."
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