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FAMOUS SONGS
posed about the end of the seventeenth century." Annie Laurie did not marry her ardent lover (whether he was killed in Flanders as related by Grant, it is difficult to decide: in all likelihood that death was a fiction of the novelist's) but was wedded to Mr. Alexander Fergusson of Craigdarroch in 1709.
By the way, on the authority of Sir Emilius Laurie, a descendant of Sir Walter, third baronet and brother of Annie, the fact that Douglas of Finland or Fingland wrote the song has been proved beyond doubt. In 1854 there lived an old lady who, hearing " Annie Laurie" sung, declared the words were not the ones her grandfather had written. She stated afterwards that her grandfather, Douglas of Fingland, was desperately in love with Annie Laurie when he wrote the song, "but," she added, "he did na get her after all" Asked as to the authenticity of the lines she said: "Oh, 1 mind them fine. I have remembered them a' my life. My father often repeated them to me." And here is the stanza signed with her name:
" ' Maxwelton's banks are bonnie, They're a' clad owre wP dew, Where I an Annie Laurie Made up the bargain true, IL-8 • 113 |
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