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I dinna mind the leddy's name; but there's tocher wi' lass o' his I'll warrant. He's na laird o' Cockpen, for a penniless lass wi' a long pedigree." As I sat meditating over this news which made the torment of suspicion and suspense more intolerable than ever behold a postscript added some two days after. "Oh! Oh! Sic news! gran news! news to make baith the ears o' him that heareth it to tingle.
And he poured out a bumper for his friend, which the old campaigner sucked in with fitting gusto. "Who will give us a song? Binnie, give us the 'Laird of Cockpen. It's capital, my dear General. Capital," the Colonel whispered to his neighbour. Mr. Binnie struck up the "Laird of Cockpen," without, I am bound to say, the least reluctance.
Then Adam Ferguson would sing the "Laird of Cockpen," and other comic songs, and Willie Clerk amused us with his dry wit. When it was time to go away all rose, and, standing hand-in-hand round the table, Scott taking the lead, we sang in full chorus, Weel may we a' be, Ill may we never see; Health to the king And the gude companie.
At a later period, having written some satirical verses upon the Lady Cockpen, he received so severe a chastisement from some persons employed for the purpose, that he was found half dead on the spot where they had thus dealt with him, and one of his thighs having been broken, and ill set, gave him a hitch in his gait, with which he hobbled to his grave.
Among the best of them are The Land of the Leal , Caller Herrin', The Laird o' Cockpen, The Auld House, The Rowan Tree, The Hundred Pipers, and Will ye no come back Again? The Jacobitism of some of these and many others was, of course, purely sentimental and poetical, like that of Scott.
The Laird of Cockpen is a good-natured fellow to whom Trilby tells her troubles instead of pouring them into the capacious ear of a policeman. He is a kind of bewhiskered Sir Galahad who goes in quest of Trilby instead of the Holy Grail, and having found her, sits down on her bed and cheers her up while she kisses and caresses him.
It was formerly called the "Queen's Oak", or the "Cockpen", the latter because of a fine breed of gamecocks that roosted there in the days of a Major Rooke, to whom it owes its present name. The tree is hollow, and, entering by a narrow opening difficult enough for a stout person to negotiate seventeen or eighteen may crowd together in the interior.
"Ah, you're not the youngest brother, remember. It was he who brought her home at last. Come, you need not knock me down; I shall never see any one to surpass the mother, and I'll have no one till I do." He wanted a wife his braw hoose to keep, But favour wi' wooin' was fashous to seek. Laird o' Cockpen
They are worldly-wise to a proverb, and yet wildly susceptible to poetry and romance. The songs of such a people have necessarily a great variety: the color and the perfume of life are in them. Listen to the mocking, railing drollery of "There cam' a young man," the sly humor of the "Laird o' Cockpen," or "Hey, Johnnie Cope!" and you may understand one side of Scottish character.
Emily had no answer ready; but now, as she had wondered what their mother would have felt, she wondered what John would have felt at this utter misunderstanding, this taking for granted that he loved her, and that she did not love him. A sensitive blush spread itself over her face. "She's daft to refuse the laird of Cockpen." Scotch Ballad. And now John Mortimer had again possession of his ring.
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