[77] "Jessie, the flower o' Dumblane" was published in 1808, and has
since received an uncommon measure of popularity. The music, so suitable
to the words, was composed by R. A. Smith. In the "Harp of Renfrewshire"
(p. xxxvi), Mr Smith remarks that the song was at first composed in two
stanzas, the third being subsequently added. "The Promethean fire," says
Mr Smith, "must have been burning but _lownly_, when such commonplace
ideas could be written, after the song had been so finely wound up with
the beautiful apostrophe to the mavis, 'Sing on, thou sweet mavis, thy
hymn to the e'ening.'" The heroine of the song was formerly a matter of
speculation; many a "Jessie" had the credit assigned to her; and
passengers by the old stage-coaches between Perth and the south, on
passing through Dunblane, had pointed out to them, by the drivers, the
house of Jessie's birth. One writer (in the _Musical Magazine_, for May
1835) records that he had actually been introduced at Dunblane to the
individual Jessie, then an elderly female, of an appearance the reverse
of prepossessing! Unfortunately for the curious in such inquiries, the
heroine only existed in the imagination of the poet; he never was in
Dunblane, which, if he had been, he would have discovered that the sun
could not there be seen setting "o'er the lofty Benlomond." Mr Matthew
Tannahill states that the song was composed to supplant an old one,
entitled, "Bob o' Dumblane.
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