e. brown Robert,
and certain specimens of his talents, published in the 90th
Number of the Quarterly Review. The picture which that
paper gives of the habits and feelings of a class of persons with
which the general reader would be apt to associate no ideas
but those of wild superstition and rude manners, is in the
highest degree interesting; and I cannot resist the temptation
of quoting two of the songs of this hitherto unheard of poet of
humble life. They are thus introduced by the reviewer:---
``Upon one occasion, it seems, Rob's attendance upon his
master's cattle business detained him a whole year from home,
and at his return he found that a fair maiden, to whom his
troth had been plighted of yore, had lost sight of her vows, and
was on the eve of being married to a rival, (a carpenter by
trade,) who had profited by the young Drover's absence.
The following song was composed during a sleepless night, in
the neighbourhood of Creiff, in Perthshire, and the home sickness
which it expresses appears to be almost as much that of
the deer-hunter as of the loving swain.
`_Easy in my bed, it is easy,
But it is not to sleep that I incline:
The wind whistles northwards, northwards,
And my thoughts move with it_.
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