When I tell you, my dear Sir, that a friend of mine, in whom I am much interested, has fallen a sacrifice to these accursed times, you will easily allow that it might unhinge me for doing any good among ballads. My own loss, as to pecuniary matters, is trifling; but the total ruin of a much-loved friend is a loss indeed. Pardon my seeming inattention to your last commands. I cannot alter the disputed lines in the "Mill, Mill, O."[142] What you think a defect I esteem as a positive beauty; so you see how doctors differ. I shall now, with as much alacrity as I can muster, go on with your commands. You know Frazer, the hautboy player in Edinburgh--he is here instructing a band of music for a fencible corps quartered in this country. Among many of the airs that please me, there is one well known as a reel, by the name of "The Quaker's Wife"; and which I remember a grand-aunt of mine used to sing, by the name of "Liggeram Cosh, my bonnie wee lass". Mr. Frazer plays it slow, and with an expression that quite charms me. I became such an enthusiast about it that I made a song for it, which I here subjoin, and inclose Frazer's set of the tune. If they hit your fancy, they are at your service; if not, return me the tune, and I will put it in Johnson's _Museum_. I think the song is not in my worst manner. Blithe hae I been on yon hill, (etc.) I should wish to hear how this pleases you. [Footnote 142: The lines were the third and fourth-- Wi' mony a sweet babe fatherless, And mony a widow mourning.] * * * * X. _June 25th 1793_. Have you ever, my dear Sir, felt your bosom ready to burst with indignation on reading of those mighty villains who divide kingdom against kingdom, desolate provinces, and lay nations waste, out of the wantonness of ambition, or often from still more ignoble passions? In a mood of this kind to-day I recollected the air of "Logan Water;" and it occurred to me that its querulous melody probably had its origin from the plaintive indignation of some swelling, suffering heart, fired at the tyrannic strides of some public destroyer, and overwhelmed with private distress, the consequence of a country's ruin. If I have done anything at all like justice to my feelings, the following song, composed in three quarters of an hour's meditation in my elbow-chair, ought to have some merit. [Here follows "Logan Water."] Do you know the following beautiful little fragment in Witherspoon's _Collection of Scots Songs_? Air--_Hughie Graham._ O gin my love were yon red rose, That grows upon the castle wa', And I mysel' a drap o' dew Into her bonnie breast to fa'! Oh, there beyond expression blest, I'd feast on beauty a' the night; Seal'd on her silk saft faulds to rest, Till fley'd awa by Phoebus light.