Old Meg she was a gipsy; And liv'd upon the moors:
Her bed it was the brown heath turf, And her house was out of doors.
Her apples were swart blackberries, Her currants, pods o' broom;
Her wine was dew of the wild white rose, Her book a church-yard tomb.
Her brothers were the craggy hills, Her sisters larchen trees;
Alone with her great family She liv'd as she did please.
No breakfast had she many a morn, No dinner many a noon,
And 'stead of supper she would stare Full hard against the moon.
But every morn, of woodbine fresh She made her garlanding,
And every night the dark glen yew She wove, and she would sing.
And with her fingers old and brown She plaited mats o' rushes,
And gave them to the cottagers She met among the bushes.
Old Meg was brave as Margaret Queen, And tall as Amazon:
An old red blanket cloak she wore, A chip hat had she on.
God rest her aged bones somewhere-- She died full long agone!'Keats and his companion seem to have started from Dumfries again on the 2nd of July, "through Galloway -- all very pleasant and pretty with no fatigue when one is used to it," as he writes to his sister, adding "We are in the midst of Meg Merrilies' country of whom I suppose you have heard," and giving her forthwith a copy of the poem.
Lord Houghton says of this stage --"The pedestrians passed by Solway Frith through that delightful part of Kirkcudbrightshire, the scene of 'Guy Mannering.' Keats had never read the novel, but was much struck with the character of Meg Merrilies as delineated to him by Brown.
He seemed at once to realise the creation of the novelist, and, suddenly stopping in the pathway, at a point where a profusion of honeysuckles, wild rose, and fox-glove, mingled with the bramble and broom that filled up the spaces between the shattered rocks, he cried out, 'Without a shadow of a doubt on that spot has old Meg Merrilies often boiled her kettle.'"On the 3rd of July he writes to Tom from "Auchtercairn" (meaning,
I presume,
Auchencairn, some six miles east of Kirkcudbright) -- "We are now in Meg Merrilies' country, and have, this morning, passed through some parts exactly suited to her.
Kirkcudbright County is very beautiful, very wild, with craggy hills, somewhat in the Westmoreland fashion. We have come down from Dumfries to the sea-coast part of it.
The following song you will have from Dilke, but perhaps you would like it here."I should judge that the scene given by Brown to Lord Houghton belonged rather to the morning of the 3rd than to the evening of the 2nd; and that Keats took out his current letter to his sister at Auchencairn on pausing there to breakfast, and wrote the poem into it when he began a fresh letter to Tom with it.
Thus, besides a rough draft, there would be three fair copies of the poem, one for Tom, one for Fanny, and one for Mr.
Dilke.'~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed.
H.
Buxton Forman,
Crowell publ. 1895.
