2. Feeble. In this sense the word is often applied A Serious Musical Drama in Two Acts (1812). in Scotland [Baillie's note], 2. Wild young goat. 1. This song opens act 1 of Baillie's The Beacon:
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22 2 / JOANNA BAILLIE
The lulling stream, that sooth'd thy dream,
10 Is dancing in the sunny beam: And hours so sweet, so bright, so gay, Will waft good fortune on its way.
Up! time will tell; the friar's bell
Its service sound hath chimed well;
15 The aged crone keeps house alone, And reapers to the fields are gone: The active day, so boon and bright, May bring good fortune ere the night.
1812
Song: Woo d and married and a'1 The bride she is winsome and bonny, Her hair it is snooded2 sae sleek, And faithfu' and kind is her Johnny, Yet fast fa' the tears on her cheek. 5 New pearlins? are cause of her sorrow, lace trimmings New pearlins and plenishing0 too, furnishings The bride that has a' to borrow, Has e'en right mickle ado, Woo'd and married and a'! 10 Woo'd and married and a'! Is na' she very weel aff To be woo'd and married at a'? Her mither then hastily spak, 'The lassie is glaikit0 wi' pride; foolish 15 In my pouch I had never a plack? farthing On the day when I was a bride. E'en tak' to your wheel, and be clever, And draw out your thread in the sun; The gear0 that is gifted,0 it never goods, wealth / given 20 Will last like the gear that is won.0 earned Woo'd and married and a'! Wi' havins0 and toucher0 sae sma', possessions / dowry I think ye are very weel aff, To be woo'd and married at a'!' 25 'Toot, toot!' quo' her gray-headed faither, 'She's less o' a bride than a bairn;0 child She's ta'en like a cout? frae the heather, colt Wi' sense and discretion to learn. Half husband, I trow, and half daddy, 30 As humor inconstantly leans, The chieP maun' be patient and steady, man / must 1. For a reading of 'Woo'd and married and a' ' properly appreciated,
consult Norton Literature Online: Baillie's writing 2. Bound up with a ribbon, in Scots needs to be heard as well as read to be
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ADDRESS TO A STEAMVESSEL / 22 3
That yokes wi' a mate in her teens. A kerchief sae douce' and sae neat, sedate, respectable O'er her locks that the winds used to blaw!
35 I'm baith like to laugh and to greet,0 weep When I think o' her married at a'!'
Then out spak' the wily bridegroom;
Weel waled0 were his wordies, I ween? chosen 'I'm rich, though my coffer be toom,0 empty 40 Wi' the blinks o' your bonny blue een.? eyes
I'm prouder o' thee by my side, Though thy ruffles or ribbons be few, Than if Kate o' the Croft were my bride, Wi' purfles3 and pearlins enow. 45 Dear and dearest of ony! Ye're woo'd and buikit4 and a'!' And do ye think scorn o' your Johnny, And grieve to be married at a'?'
She turn'd, and she blush'd, and she smiled, 50 And she looket sae bashfully down; The pride o' her heart was beguiled, And she played wi' the sleeves o' her gown; She twirled the tag o' her lace, And she nippet her boddice sae blue, 55 Syne? blinket sae sweet in his face, then
And aff like a maukin0 she flew. hare Woo'd and married and a'! Wi' Johnny to roose? her and a'! praise
She thinks hersel very weel aff, 60 To be woo'd and married at a'!
1822
Address to a Steamvessel1
Freighted with passengers of every sort, A motley throng, thou leav'st the busy port: Thy long and ample deck,?where scatter'd lie Baskets and cloaks and shawls of crimson dye;
5 Where dogs and children through the crowd are straying, And on his bench apart the fiddler playing,
3. Embroidered trimmings. are similar to those informing the writings of 4. Booked, i.e., entered as betrothed in the official Wordsworth. His sonnet 'Steamboats, Viaducts, registry of the session clerk. and Railways' (p. 320) acknowledges the sublime 1. Steamships and sightseers were new features in aspects of the new transportation technologies, but Scotland's landscape in Baillie's lifetime; here she he later campaigned against the construction of reckons with their presence. As she notes, new the Kendal and Windermere Railway, and worried steamship routes enabled greater numbers of tour-that the influx of visitors it would bring to the Lake ists, some from the industrial working classes, to District (visitors in some measure drawn there by visit the area's beauty spots, often the sites cele-his poetry) would 'deface' the region's beauties. brated in the period's poetry of natural description. See 'Tintem Abbey, Tourism, and Romantic Land- The mixed feelings she expresses about this change scape' at Norton Literature Online.
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22 4 / JOANNA BAILLIE
While matron dames to tressel'd seats repair,? Seems, on the glassy waves, a floating fair.
Its dark form on the sky's pale azure cast,
10 Towers from this clustering group thy pillar'd mast; The dense smoke, issuing from its narrow vent, Is to the air in curly volumes sent, Which coiling and uncoiling on the wind, Trail, like a writhing serpent, far behind.
15 Beneath, as each merged wheel its motion plies, On either side the white-churn'd waters rise, And newly parted from the noisy fray, Track with light ridgy foam thy recent way, Then far diverged, in many a lustrous line
