The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IX. From Steele and Addison to Pope and Swift.
§ 5. Original Scots Songs in The Tea-Table Miscellany: Lady Grizel Baillie, lady Wardlaw and William Hamilton of Gilbertfield
A lyric in The Tea-Table Miscellany of outstanding excellence and entirely Scottish in sentiment and style, Were na my Heart licht, was written by Lady Grizel Baillie, who also is known to have written various other songs, though none have been recovered except the mournfully beautiful fragment The Ewe-buchtin’s bonnie, which may have been suggested by the peril of her father—Patrick Hume, afterwards earl of Marchmont—when in hiding, in 1684, in the vault of Polwarth because of implication in the Rye house plot. Lady Wardlaw is now known to be the author of the ballads Hardyknute and Gilderoy. Willie was a Wanton Wag—suggested by the English O Willy was so blythe a Lad in Playford’s Choice Ayres (1650), but a sparkling, humorous and original sketch of a Scottish gallant—was sent by William Hamilton of Gilbertfield to Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany; and the lyrics now mentioned with those of Ramsay himself, and others consisting of new—and mostly English—words by “different hands,” whose identity, with few exceptions, cannot now be determined, are the first indication, now visible to us, of the new popular lyrical revival in Scotland; though mention may here be made of the Delectable New Ballad, intituled Leader-Haughs and Yarrow (c. 1690), the work, according to a line of the ballad, of “Minstrel Burn,” which seems to have set the fashion for later Yarrow ballads and songs, and was republished by Ramsay in his Miscellany.