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[Written on Mary R---, a stately and blooming girl—at that time maid to the lady of the late Lieut. General Orde, at Roddam Hall.]

On the same.

On the same.

On the same.

On the same.

On the same.

[On Miss H---, a beautiful young lady in Neweastle—long since dead.]

[In memory of Anna Boer, a fine young woman from Shropshire, who died unmarried. My love for her was the purest I had ever known.]

[Skipton is the capital of the beautiful district of Craven.]

[The lady who inspired this, my first Gargrave song, afterwards Mrs. M---, has been dead many years. The infant Aire flows through the village once perfumed by her sweetness.]

[On Miss H---, of Gargrave, long since dead. The Song, in structure, resembles Burns's inimitable lyric, “O Bonnie was the Rosy Brier.”]

On the same.

[This lady was a Miss Dewhurst, who died at Airton in Malhamdale in, I think, her 16th year.]

[On arriving in Craven, whither I had come on foot, and seeing the hills—so like, and yet so unlike the Northumbrian mountains—I became seized with a home-sickness the most intense. I fancied myself banished to a far-distant land; and if the reader, who may be inclined to smile at the idea, will reflect that railways then were not; that stage coaches were above my means; and that my estimate of distance was founded on my power as a pedestrian; he will see that the idea was not so very absurd.]

[Howdsden—which I have softened into Howsden—a beautiful hill overlooking the Beaumont. It is remarkable as being always the very first to acknowledge, by its verdure, the favours of returning Spring. Its base, when I kept sheep upon it in my boyish days, used to exhibit a perfect forest of broom.]

[Written during a slight attack of illness. I imagined I was going to die—far from Roddam-dean, where, in my feverish excitement, I wished to be buried.]

[On Miss H---, already alluded to. See ante.]

[On the marriage of my late and old friend, Mr. Tatham, of Gargrave Both he and his Isabel have long gone the way of all flesh.]

[The halls meant were those of Eshton, where Ellen Ellison—now Mrs. Story—had resided. Set to music by Gödby.]

On the same.

[The home-sickness begins to disappear.]

[On Ellen Ellison.]

[Written under a Portrait.]

[In memory of Miss Sarah Johnson, a fair pupil of mine, who died in her thirteenth year. She was the daughter of the late Thomas Johnson, Esq., of Eshton. Her mother, who survived her many years, was a warm and unchanging friend of mine; and, strangely enough, I am indebted, indirectly, to her (long after her own death) for the proudest event of my life.]

[Homil-heugh is the name of one of the Cheviot Hills, in the vicinity of Wooler. At the foot of this mountain was fought the celebrated battle in which Hotspur took Archibald, Earl of Douglas, and many others of the Scottish nobility prisoners. The ultimate consequences of that conflict to the House of Percy, are familiar to every reader of English history and of Shakspeare. The mountain is endeared to me by recollections of a thousand wanderings about it, in company with the subject of this lyric—John Smith, of Humbleton—the most beloved, as he was the first, of my youthful friends.]

[I was personally acquainted with all the parties mentioned in this Tale. The heroine was a reaper with me in the fields of Roddam. One word requires explanation. When a young man completes his apprenticeship, the merry-making with which he celebrates it is, in Northumberland, termed a Foy.]

[On seeing a rural dance at Gargrave feast.]

[The “spoiler” in the last stanza was my eldest daughter—then a child of a year old.]

[The hint—for it is no more—of this tale may be found in Whitaker's “History of Craven.” It is to the effect that a young man, residing in the village of Hartlington, was roused from sleep one night, by a voice that cried, “Rise, and save life!” He ran to where the voice seemed to come from, and had the pleasure of saving the honour and perhaps the life of a lady, who, tradition says, was one of the Clifford family. I have altered the name of the hero from Fitz-Harcla, in deference to the wish of my friend, James Henry Dixon, Esq., author of several beautiful songs, and editor of “Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England,” a gentleman whose taste in all literary matters is not to be neglected with safety.

My first dream of King Alfred and of Guthrum.

[I was musing on Northumberland, and humming the air of Macneil's song of “The Way for to Woo,” when the last half stanza of the following lyric came spontaneously, as it were, and adapted itself to the music. I thought it good enough to deserve an introduction, which is correct in feeling, though not entirely so in fact.]

[On Lanton Hill, as on Howsden, I kept sheep when a boy. It, too, overlooks the Beaumont.]

[These lines have been admired. They form the introduction to an ill-natured Satire, published in this year. It was much criticised at the time, but it is now deservedly forgotten.]

[On seeing a favourite tree, which grew in a field belonging to the late Mrs. Watkinson, of Gargrave, felled and lopped. This lady was one of my first Craven patrons.

[On taking possession of a new house in Gargrave.]

[Reflecting on the fate of poor John S---, of Humbleton. His love was a Miss H---, of Wooler, and to her I conceived he might have thus addressed himself.]

[Roddam Dean was the “valley”—not properly so called—that “bloomed before me.”]

[Mr. Gourley, already mentioned in a note, was a self-taught mathematician, and a thirty years' intimate friend and correspondent of mine.]