Tune: Rothiemurchie
First printed in Currie, 1800.
FULL well thou know’st I love thee dear,
Couldst thou to malice lend an ear!
O, did not Love exclaim, ‘Forbear,
Nor use a faithful lover so.’—
Chorus
5 Fairest maid on Devon banks,
Crystal Devon, winding Devon,
Wilt thou lay that frown aside,
And smile as thou wert wont to do.
Then come, thou fairest of the fair,
10 Those wonted smiles O let me share;
And by thy beauteous self I swear,
No love but thine my heart shall know. —
Fairest maid &c.
This was sent to Thomson on 12th July, 1796 when Burns was at the Brow Well, on the Solway Firth, hoping its bitter iron-dark waters and sea-bathing would help alleviate his rapidly deteriorating health. Letter 706 is profoundly moving; Burns, uncharacteristically, pleads with Thomson, forced to swallow his pride and independent spirit so normally fixed against being paid for song-writing, promptly to despatch £5 to him. As he told Thomson, a ‘cruel scoundrel of a Haberdasher’ had started legal action against him for a minor debt that, at this moment, he could not afford to pay. For Burns, this was his father’s nightmare come back to haunt the son. The ‘horrors of a jail’ he exclaimed exacerbated his illness and shook his nervous framework to the core. He had told Dr Moore that it was death that saved his father from the humiliation of being jailed for a debt. This was the last song and letter from Burns to Thomson. It was printed by Thomson in 1801.