Soft as the sighing summer's gale,
Gentle and constant as the dove,
Blooming as roses in the vale.

Alas! by Tweed my love did stray,
For me he search'd the banks around;
But, ah! the sad and fatal day,
My love, the pride of swains, was drown'd.

Now droops the willow o'er the stream;
Pale stalks his ghost in yonder grove;
Dire fancy paints him in my dream;
Awake, I mourn my hopeless love.


[4] Of the "Flowers of the Forest," two other versions appear in the
Collections. That version beginning, "I've heard the lilting at our
yow-milking," is the composition of Miss Jane Elliot, the daughter of
Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto, Lord Justice-Clerk, who died in 1766. She
composed the song about the middle of the century, in imitation of an
old version to the same tune. The other version, which is the most
popular of the three, with the opening line, "I 've seen the smiling of
fortune beguiling," was also the composition of a lady, Miss Alison
Rutherford; by marriage, Mrs Cockburn, wife of Mr Patrick Cockburn,
advocate. Mrs Cockburn was a person of highly superior accomplishments.
She associated with her learned contemporaries, by whom she was much
esteemed, and died at Edinburgh in 1794, at an advanced age. "The
forest" mentioned in the song comprehended the county of Selkirk, with
portions of Peeblesshire and Lanarkshire. This was a hunting-forest of
the Scottish kings.