Letter from Robert Burns to Jean McMurdo, contains 'A Ballad'

Copy To Miss Mc Murdo, Drumlanrig; inclosing a song composed on her, by RB Madam, Amid the profusion of complimentary address which your age, sex & accomplishments will now bring you, permit me to approach you with my devoirs, which, however deficient may be their consequence in other respects, have the double novelty & merit, in these frivolous, hollow times of being poetic & sincere. - In the enclosed ballad I have, I think, hit off a few outlines of your portrait. - The personal charms, the purity of mind, the ingenuous naivete of heart & manners. in my heroine, are, I flatter myself, a pretty just likeness of Miss McMurdo in a Cottager. Every composition of this kind must have a series of dramatic incident in it; so I have had recourse to my invention to finish the rest of my ballad.

So much from the Poet: now let me add a few wishes which every man who has himself the honour of being a father must breathe, when he sees female Youth, Beauty & Innocence about to enter into this much chequered & very precarious world. - May you, my young Madam, escape that Frivolity which threatens universally to pervade the minds & manners of Fashionable life. - To pass by the rougher, & still more degenerate Sex; the mob of fashionable Female Youth, what are they? Are they any thing? They prattle, laugh, sing, dance, finger a lesson, or perhaps turn over the leaves of a fashionable Novel; but are their minds stored with any information, worthy of the noble powers of reason & judgement; or do their hearts glow with Sentiment, ardent, generous & humane? - Were I to poetise on the subject, I would call them the butterflies of the human kind: remarkable only for & distinguished only by, the idle variety of

their gaudy glare; sillily straying from one blossoming weed to another, without a meaning & without an aim; the idiot prey of every pirate of the skies, who thinks them worth his while as he wings his way by them; & speedily, by wintry Time, swept to that oblivion whence they might as well never have appeared. - Amid this crowd of Nothings, may you, Madam be Something! May you be a Character, dignified as Rational & Immortal being. - A still more formidable plague in life; unfeeling interested Selfishness; is a contagion too impure to touch you. - The selfish drift to bless yourself alone; to build your fame on another ruin; to look on the child of Misfortune without commiseration, or even the victim of Folly without pity - these, & every other feature of a heart rotten at the core, are what you are totally

totally incapable of. - These wishes, Madam, are of no consequence to you, but to me they are of the utmost, as they give me an opportunity of declaring with what respect I have the honour to be, &c.

A Ballad There was a lass & she was fair, At kirk & market to be seen, When a' our fairest maids were met, The fairest maid was bonie Jean. - And ay she wrought her mother's wark. And ay she sang sae merrilie The blythest bird upon the bush Had ne'er a lighter heart than she. - But hawks will rob the tender joys That bless the little lintwhite's nest, And frost will blight the fairest flowers, And love will break the soundest rest. - Young Robie was the brawest lad, The flower & pride of a' the glen And he had owsen, sheep & kye, And wanton naigies nine or ten. - He gaed wi Jeany to the tryste, He danc'd wi Jeanie on the down, And

And lang ere witless Jeanie wist, Her heart was tint, her peace was stown. - As in the bosom o' the stream The moon-beam dwells at dewy e'en So, trembling, pure, was faithful love, Within the breast o' bonie Jean. - And now she works her mother's wark, And now she sighs wi' care & pain. Yet wist na what her ail might be, Or what would make her weel, again. - But did na Jeanie's heart lowp light And didna joy blink in her e'e As Robie tauld a take o' love, Ae e'ening on the lily lea - The sun was sinking in the west, The birds sang sweet in ilka grove, His cheek to hers he fondly laid, And whisper'd thus his take of love. - "O Jeanie fair I love thee dear O canst thou think to fancy me: Or

"Or wilt thou leave thy Mother's cot, And learn to tent the farms wi' me. - At barn or byre thou shalt na drudge, Or naething else to trouble thee; But stray amang the heather bells, And tent the waving corn wi' me. - Now what could artless Jeanie do? She had na will to say him na At length she blush'd a sweet consent, And love was ay between them twa! -