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Shortly after the successful
publication of the Kilmarnock edition of his poems, Burns was
walking by the banks of Ayr when he spotted Wilhelmina
Alexander, the sister of the landowner. He was deeply impressed
and penned a poem 'The Bony Lass O' Ballochmyle' which he sent
to her with an effusive covering note. She did not acknowledge
it; not unsurprisingly perhaps, in view of the intimacy of his
sentiments (and the implication that she would have reciprocated
them). But over the decades, as Burns’s legend grew, Wilhelmina
would not be parted from the now precious manuscript. She died,
a spinster, in Glasgow in 1843.
Burns’s lilting
original tune, 'Ettrick Banks', to the poem, has the awkward
more-than-octave leaps of its fiddle origins and was supplanted
by the somewhat flowery but easier-on-the-voice melody familiar
today.
Peter Morrison here sings two verses of
the original poem to the modern melody.
Fair is the morn in flow'ry May,
And sweet is night in autumn mild,
When roving in the garden gay,
Or wand'ring in the lonely wild;
But woman, Nature's darling child -
There all her charms she does compile;
Even there her other works are foil'd
Even there her other works are foil'd
By the bonnie lass o' Ballochmyle.
The bonnie lass o' Ballochmyle.
Chorus
The bonnie lass!
The bonnie, bonnie lass!
The bonnie lass o' Ballochmyle.
Oh, had she been a
country maid,
And I a happy country swain,
That shelter'd in the lowest shed
That ever rose on Scotia's plain!
Thro' weary winter's wind and rain,
With joy, with rapture, I would toil;
And nightly to my bosom strain,
And nightly to my bosom strain
The bonnie lass o' Ballochmyle!
The bonnie lass o' Ballochmyle!
Chorus
The bonnie lass!
The bonnie, bonnie lass!
The bonnie lass o' Ballochmyle.
