Peggy.
[The heroine of this song was a young girl residing in Kirkoswald, with whom Burns got acquainted while attending a school there, in his eighteenth or nineteenth summer, with the view of learning mensuration, surveying, dialling, &c. His own account of the matter is as follows: "I went on with a high hand with my geometry till the sun entered Virgo, a month which is always a carnival in my bosom, when a charming fillette, who lived next door to the school, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the sphere of my studies. I, however, struggled on with my sines and co-sines for a few days more: but stepping into the garden one charming noon to take the sun's altitude, there I met my angel,
'Like Proserpine gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower.'—
It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining week I staid I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her; and the two last nights of my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless."—It may be thought prosaic to add, after this high-flown description, that the name of the "charming fillette" was Peggy Thomson, and that she afterwards became Mrs. Neilson, and long lived in the town of Ayr, where her children still reside.—The song is one of Burns's very early ones, and appears in the first edition of his poems printed at Kilmarnock in 1786, with the title of "Song composed in August." It is sung to the tune of "I had a horse, I had nae mair," and has also been adapted to an old air called "When the king came o'er the water."]
Now westlin' winds and slaughtering guns
Bring autumn's pleasant weather;
The muircock springs on whirring wings,
Amang the blooming heather.
Now waving grain, wide o'er the plain,
Delights the weary farmer;
And the moon shines bright when I rove night,
To muse upon my charmer.
The partridge loves the fruitful fells;
The plover loves the mountains,
The woodcock haunts the lonely dells,
The soaring hern the fountains.
Through lofty groves the cushat roves,
The path of man to shun it;
The hazel bush o'erhangs the thrush,
The spreading thorn the linnet.
Thus every kind their pleasure find,
The savage and the tender;
Some social join, and leagues combine;
Some solitary wander:
Avaunt, away! the cruel sway,
Tyrannic man's dominion;
The sportman's joy, the murdering cry,
The fluttering, gory pinion.
But, Peggy dear, the evening's clear,
Thick flies the skimming swallow;
The sky is blue, the fields in view,
All fading green and yellow:
Come let us stray our gladsome way,
And view the charms o' nature,
The rustling corn, the fruited thorn,
And every happy creature.
We'll gently walk and sweetly talk,
Till the silent moon shine clearly;
I'll grasp thy waist, and fondly press't,
And swear I love thee dearly.
Not vernal showers to budding flowers,
Not autumn to the farmer,
So dear can be as thou to me,
My fair, my lovely charmer!