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FAMOUS SONGS
The melody dates from about 1620. Mrs. Cockbum's lyric is an imitation, and not a good one, of Miss Elliott's.
Lady Grisell Baillie (bom Hume), a charming heroine in real life, was the daughter of Patrick, Earl of Marchmont. She was born in 1665, and the song by which she is remembered " Were na my heart licht I would dee," first appeared in the " Orpheus Caledonius" in 1725. Owing to political troubles her father had to lie in hiding for some time in the family vault (which may still be seen) beneath the ivy-clad church of Polwarth on the Green. His daughter used to visit him secretly every night, carrying food for his sustenance and cheering him up as best she could. "The proscribed man's next hiding place was a pit which had been hollowed out by Grisell with her own hands, with the sole assistance of one faithful servant in a room on the ground floor of their house, beneath a bed which drew out." In due time Sir Patrick escaped to the continent, where his family joined him later. But while they yet remained in Scotland, Grisell was the prop and mainstay of her mother and many brothers and sisters, and when they lived in Holland she was the true household fairy and the life and soul of them all during their long days of exile and
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