The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IX. From Steele and Addison to Pope and Swift.

XIV. Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns.

§ 12. Robert Crawford.


Robert Crawford, son of the laird of Drumsoy, Renfrewshire, contributed a good many songs to The Miscellany. His Bush Aboon Traquair has one or two excellent lines and semistanzas, the best being, probably, that beginning “That day she smiled and made me glad;” but it evidently owes its repute mainly to its title, and is not by any means so happy an effort as the more vernacular, and really excellent, Down the Burn Davie; while Allan Water and Tweedside are more or less spoiled by the introduction of the current artificialities of the English eighteenth century muse.   14