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"An' what wilta do when t' winter storms coom?" Peregrine continued. "It's not o' thee an' thine, but o' t' yowes I's thinkin'; they'll be liggin theer for mebbe three week buried under t' snow. It's then thou'll be wantin' t' owd shipperd back, aye, an' Rover too, that can set a sheep when shoo's under six foot o' snow."
Shoo were that thrang shee'd sooin getten shut o' all t' wool that Throp could get howd on, an' then shoo axed t' farmers to let t' barns out o' t' village go round t' moors an' bring her t' wool that had getten scratted off t' yowes' backs for ten mile around.
Thea turned presently toward the piano and began softly to waken an old air: "Ca' the yowes to the knowes, Ca' them where the heather grows, Ca' them where the burnie rowes, My bonnie dear-ie." Archie sat down and shaded his eyes with his hand. She turned her head and spoke to him over her shoulder. "Come on, you know the words better than I. That's right."
Wright's predecessor in the parish, of whom, many absurd stories were told, appears to have been an enthusiastic lover of Scottish songs, as Burns in 1794 says it was owing to his singing Ca' the yowes to the knowes so charmingly that he took it down from his voice, and sent it to Mr. Thomson. Currie's Burns, vol. iv. p. 100, and Chambers's Scottish Songs, 2 vols. Edin. 1829, p. 269.
I was gaeing alang wi' the yowes, and there was he and Drummielaw riding and gabbing. Sae there cam on a skirling and jumping wind and rain, and we a' gat under a tree, the yowes and the dogs and Glenfernie and Drummielaw and me. Then we changed gude day and they went on gabbing. And 'Nae, says Glenfernie, 'I am nae lawyer and I am nae sodger.
The voice was clear, and to Mysie very sweet, but it was the words that set her heart awandering among her own moors and heather hills. Ca' the yowes tae the knowes, Ca' them where the heather grows, Ca' them where the burnie rows, My kind dearie, O! This was always the song her father sang, if on a Saturday night he had been taking a glass.
"What for?" asked the smith, who was always suspicious of information coming from the Colonel. "Happen it'll be so as you can tell 'em thro' other fowks. It'll be same as a farmer tar-marks his yowes wi' t' letters o' his name." "Doesta mean that they tar-mark lasses like sheep?" asked William Throup, his mouth agape with wonder.
And the strange thing was that it was a tune I knew, about the last tune you would expect to hear in this part of the world. It was the Scots air: 'Ca' the yowes to the knowes, which was a favourite of my father's. The whistler must have felt my presence, for the air suddenly stopped in the middle of a bar. An unbounded curiosity seized me to know who the fellow could be.
and as he sang, he would fling his arms around Mysie's mother and turn her round upon the floor, in an awkward dance, to the tune of the song, and finally stopping her flow of words with a hug and a kiss, as he repeated the chorus: Ca' the yowes tae the knowes, Ca' them where the heather grows, Ca' them where the burnie rows, My kind dearie, O!
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