Notes.

Southland Times, Issue 586, 2 November 1866, Page 2

Notes.

* The author of these lines, whan lie was, in early life, a tutor in a gentleman's family, near Inverleithen, in the neighborhood of the farfamed " Bush aboonTraquair" and the " Dowie | dens of Yarrow" had frequent opportunities of enjoying the society of the Ettrick Shepherd, from whom he has imbibed an enthusiastic lore for the song, lore of " bonnie Tweed Side and the classic braes of "Ettrick and Teviot dale." His reminiscences of the gifted author o " the Queen's Wake " are still very vivid, and may at some future time be pitted down to form a part of his biography which has not yet been given to the world. t At a banquet given in honor of the Ettrick Shepherd at Peebles, about the year 1834, Professor Wilson, who occupied the chair, crowned the Poet with a garland of " bonnie heath bells." $ On the night on which the poet died 5> a storm passed over the vale ; and Yarrow, with its tributary streams, rolled their moaning floods by the " Dowie dens " so famed in ancient minstrelsy, proving that there is as much truth as poetic imagination' in the fine stanzas of Sir Walter Scot in the " Lay of the last Miustrel. " Call it not vain^-they do not err Who say that when the Poet dies Mute nature mourns her worshipper And celebrates his obsequies," &c.