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FAMOUS SONGS
* Champion of the Whistle." In Scotland the Dane was defeated by Sir Robert Laurie, who after three days3 and three nights'hard drinking, left the Dane under the table and " blew on the whistle his requiem shrill." The whistle re-mained in the family several years, when it was won by Sir Walter Laurie, son of Sir Robert, and then by Walter Riddel of Glenriddel,' brother-in-law of Sir Walter Laurie, and finally it fell to Alexander Fergusson of Craigdarroch, son of « Annie Laurie." This final drinking bout took place at Friars Carse, October 16th, 1790. The first four lines of the second verse of the lyric quoted above, it should be noted, are taken from the vulgar ballad of "John Anderson, my Jo," which, before it was clarified by Burns^ appeared in a scarce volume of English songs with music, entitled " The Convivial Songster," of 1782. "Annie Laurie" was "modernized from the foregoing by an unknown hand/' in the present century. Was the " unknown hand" one R. Findlater ? I am at a loss to understand the meaning of the following brief extract which I take from " Chambers' Journal," July 4th, 1857. Speaking of street minstrels and musicians (p. 12) the writer says: "That very melody they play was composed by a plaided stranger of higher grade and of more noble itinerancy;
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