And now a widow I must mourn
Departed joys that ne'er return;
No comfort but a hearty can
When I think on John Highlandman."

Sweet "raucle carlin," she has none of the sentimentality of the English
highwayman's lady; but being wooed by a tinker and

"A pigmy scraper wi' his fiddle
Wha us'd to trystes and fairs to driddle,"

prefers the practical to the merely musical man. The tinker sings with a
noble candor, worthy of a fellow of his strength of body and station in
life--

"My bonnie lass, I work in brass,
A tinker is my station;
I've travell'd round all Christian ground
In this my occupation.
I've ta'en the gold, I've been enroll'd
In many a noble squadron;
But vain they search'd when off I march'd
To go an' clout the caudron."

It was his ruling passion. What was military glory to him, forsooth?
He had the greatest contempt for it, and loved freedom and his copper
kettle a thousand times better--a kind of hardware Diogenes. Of fiddling
he has no better opinion. The picture represents the "sturdy caird"
taking "poor gut-scraper" by the beard,--drawing his "roosty rapier,"