ruins of religious houses. The vulgar also tell the following story, which, from its universality, seems to have some truth at bottom. In a time of long-enduring famine in a past age, when all people looked attenuated and pale from low diet, it was observed with surprise of two poor old women, that they continued to be fat and fair. They were suspected of witchcraft, as the only conceivable means of their keeping up the system at such a time-were seized, and subjected to examination. With much reluctance, and only to escape a threatened death of torment, they confessed that, in the previous autumn, when the state of the harvest gave token of coming dearth, they had busied themselves in collecting snails, which they salted as provisions; and by dieting on these creatures, which furnished a wholesome, if not an agreeable food, they had lived in comparative comfort all winter. The discovery in their house of two barrels, still containing a large amount of this molluscous provision, confirmed the tale, and they were set at liberty, not without some approbation of their foresight, and the pious wisdom they had shown in not rejecting any healthful fare which Providence had placed at their command. A Forfarshire rhyme— ON BEES. The todler tyke has a very guid byke, And sae has the gairy bee; But leese me on the little red-doup, TREES AND HERBS. The rhymes respecting the vegetable kingdom are comparatively few. Reference is supposed to be made to some old law in the following: The aik, the ash, the elm-tree, They are hanging a' three. That is, it was a capital crime to mutilate these trees. Variation The aik, the ash, the elm-tree, Hang a man for a' three, And ae branch will set him free. Another variation— The oak, the ash, and the ivy-tree, Flourish best at hame, in the north countrie. In Fife, children thus address a little plant usually called in Scotland the curly-doddy Curly-doddy, do my biddin', Soop my house, and shool my middin. Those of Galloway play at hide-and-seek with a little black-topped flower which they call the davie-drap, saying— Within the bounds of this I hap, My black and bonnie davie-drap: Wha is here, the cunning ane, To me my davie-drap will fin'. Red brackens Bring milk and butter. In October, the bracken or fern on hill pastures becomes red with the first frosty nights, and about that time the autumnal herbage is very rich, and productive of the good things in question. Bourtree, bourtree, crookit rung, Since our Lord was nailed t' ye. Alluding to a tradition that the cross on which Christ was crucified was made of the elder or bourtree, and that ever since, it has borne the curse of a crooked and gnarled bush, unfit for timber. Bour, or bower-tree, is so called in Scotland from its forming the garden-bowers of our forefathers. Like March gowans― The following is a riddle on the nettle : Heg-beg adist the dike, and Heg-beg ahint the dike, Another riddle Riddle me, riddle me, rot, tot, tot, A little wee man in a red, red coat; A staff in his hand, and a stane in his throat; Explanation-a cherry. *On this side of. + Make you very uneasy. RHYMES OF THE NURSERY. NOTHING has of late been revolutionised so much as the nursery. The young mind was formerly cradled amidst the simplicities of the uninstructed intellect; and she was held to be the best nurse who had the most copious supply of song, and tale, and drollery at all times ready to soothe and amuse her young charges. There were, it is true, some disadvantages in the system; for sometimes superstitious terrors were implanted, and little pains was taken to distinguish between what tended to foster the evil, and what tended to elicit the better feelings of infantine nature. Yet the ideas which presided over the scene, and rung through it all day in light gabble and jocund song, were really simple ideas, often even beautiful, and were unquestionably suitable to the capacities of children. In the realism and right-down earnest which is now demanded in the superiors of the nursery, and which mothers seek to cultivate in their own intercourse with the young, there are certain advantages; yet it is questionable if the system be so well adapted to the early state of the faculties, while there can be little doubt that it is too exclusively addressed to the intellect, and almost entirely overlooks that there is such a thing as imagination, or a sense of fun in the human mind. Ĭ must own that I cannot help looking back with the greatest satisfaction to the numberless merry lays and capriccios of all kinds, which the simple honest women of our native country used to sing and enact with such untiring patience, and so much success, beside the evening fire in old times, ere yet Mrs Trimmer or Mr Wilderspin had been heard of. There was no philosophy about these gentle dames; but there was generally endless kindness, and a wonderful power of keeping their little flock in good-humour. It never occurred to them that children were anything but children: 'bairns are just bairns,' they would say; and they never once thought of beginning to make them men and women while still little more than able to speak. Committed as we were in those days to such unenlightened curatrixes, we might be said to go through in a single life all the stages of a national progress. We began under a superintendence which might be said intellectually to represent the Gothic age; and gradually, as we waxed in years, and went to school and college, we advanced through the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries; finally coming down to the present age, when we adventured into public life. By the extinction of the old nursery system, some part of this knowledge is lost. With these observations, I introduce a series of the rhymes and legends of the old Scottish nursery; trusting that all who, like myself, can be 'pleased again with toys which childhood please,' will be glad to see them at least preserved from the utter oblivion which threatens to befall them. LULLABIES. This is the simplest of the lullaby ditties of the north. It has been conjectured by the Rev. Mr Lamb, in his notes to the old poem of Flodden Field, that this is from the French, as Hê bas! là le loup! (Hush! there's the wolf); but the bugbear character of this French sentence makes the conjecture, in my opinion, extremely improbable. If it be curious to learn, as we do from a Greek poet, that 'B' was the cry of the sheep two thousand years ago, as it is now, it may be also worthy of attention that Ba loo la loo was a Scottish lullaby in the time of our James VI., if not at a much earlier period. This is ascertained from the well-known production of the pious genius of that age, entitled 'Ane Compendious Book of Godly and Spirituall Sangs,' published by Andro Hart in 1621; the object of which was to supplant ordinary profane songs by adapting religious verses to the tunes to which they were sung. One of the said 'spiritual sangs' is to the tune of Baw lula low, unquestionably a lullaby ditty, as more clearly appears from the character of the substituted verses, whereof the following are specimens :— 'Oh, my deir hert, young Jesus sweit, The knees of my hert sall I bow, Hushie ba, burdie beeton! Your daddie's gane a-huntin'; Hush and baloo, babie, Hush and baloo; A' the lave's in their beds- Hush a ba, babie, lie still, lie still; Your mammie's awa to the mill, the mill; Baby is greeting for want of good keeping— Hush a ba, baby, lie still, lie still! The following appears as the Nurse's Lullaby in a manuscript collection of airs by the late Mr Andrew Blaikie of Paisley, now in my possession: -- *Boukie is the endearing diminutive of bouk or bulk, signifying person. |