Bristo Street.] ALISON RUTHERFORD. 329
and conversed on various topics, we took leave
of the venerable lady, highly gratified by the interview.
To see and talk with one whose name is so
indissolubly associated with the fame of Bums,
and whose talents and virtues were so much
fare, where, in the days of her widowhood, as Mrs
Cockburn of Ormiston, resided Alison Rutherford
of Fahielee, Roxburghshire, authoress of the
modem version of the ?? Flowers of the Forest ? and
other Scottish songs-in her youth a ?forest flower
esteemed by the bard-who has now (in 1837)
been sleeping the sleep of death for upwards of
forty years-may well give rise to feelings of no
ordinary description. In youth Clarinda must
have been about the middle size. Bums, she
said, if living, would have been about her own age,
probably a few months older.?
Off Bristo Street there branches westward
Crichton Street, SO named from an architect of the
time, a gloomy, black, and old-fashioned thoroughof
rare beauty.? She removed hither from Blair?s
Close in the Castle-hill, and her house was the
scene of many happy and brilliant reunions Even
in age her brown hair never grew grey, and she
wore it combed over a toupee, with a lace band tied
under her chin, and her sleeves puffed out in the
fashion of Mary?s time. ?She maintained,? says
Scott, ?that rank in the society of Edinburgh
which French women of talent usually do in that of
Paris ; and in her little parlour used to assemble a
