Poetess, was born in Fifeshire, and was the daughter of the Earl of Balcarres; her maiden name being Lindsay. She became one of the minor Scottish poets of the time, whose names are only remembered by a single great poem or song, her assurance of immortality being the beautiful ballad of “Auld Robin Gray,” written in early youth.

Personal

  To entire rectitude of principle, amiability of manners, and kindliness of heart, Anne Barnard added the more substantial, and, in females, the more uncommon quality of eminent devotedness to intellectual labour. Literature had been her favourite pursuit from childhood, and even in advanced life, when her residence was the constant resort of her numerous relatives, she contrived to find leisure for occasional literary réunions, while her forenoons were universally occupied in mental improvement. She maintained a correspondence with several of her brilliant contemporaries, and in her more advanced years, composed an interesting narrative of family Memoirs. She was skilled in the use of the pencil, and sketched scenery with effect. In conversation she was acknowledged to excel; and her stories and anecdotes were a source of delight to her friends. She was devotedly pious, and singularly benevolent. She was liberal in sentiment, charitable to the indigent, and sparing of the feelings of others. Every circle was charmed by her presence; by her condescension she inspired the diffident; and she banished dullness by the brilliancy of her humour. Her countenance, it should be added, wore a pleasant and animated expression, and her figure was modelled with the utmost elegance of symmetry and grace.

Auld Robin Gray

  In the course of our walk he [Scott] entertained us much by an account of the origin of the beautiful song of “Auld Robin Gray.” “It was written,” he said, “by Lady Anne Lindsay, now Lady Anne Barnard. She happened to be at a house where she met Miss Suff Johnstone, a well-known person, who played the air, and accompanied it by words of no great delicacy, whatever their antiquity might be; and Lady Anne, lamenting that no better words should belong to such a melody, immediately set to work and composed this very pathetic story. Truth, I am sorry to say, obliges me to add that it was a fiction. Robin Gray was her father’s gardener, and the idea of the young lover going to sea, which would have been quite out of character here amongst the shepherds, was natural enough where she was then residing, on the coast of Fife. It was long unknown,” he added, “who the author was; and indeed there was a clergyman on the coast whose conscience was so large that he took the burden of this matter upon himself, and pleaded guilty to the authorship. About two years ago I wrote to Lady Anne to know the truth—and she wrote back to say she was certainly the author, but wondered how I could have guessed it, as there was no person alive to whom she had told it. When I mentioned having heard it long ago from a common friend who was dead, she then recollected me, and wrote one of the kindest letters I ever received, saying she had till now not the smallest idea that I was the little lame boy she had known so many years before.”

  O lady Anne Barnard, thou that didst write the ballad of “Auld Robin Gray,” which must have suffused more eyes with tears of the first water than any other ballad that ever was written, we hail, and pay thee homage, knowing thee now for the first time by thy real name! But why wast thou desirous of being only a woman of quality, when thou oughtest to have been (nature intended thee) nothing but the finest gentlewoman of thy time? And what bad example was it, that, joining with the sophistications of thy rank, did make thee so anxious to keep thy secret from the world, and ashamed to be spoken of as an authoress? Shall habit and education be so strong with those who ought to form, instead of being formed by them? Shall they render such understandings as thine insensible to the humiliation of the fancied dignity of concealment, and the poor pride of being ashamed to give pleasure?… The most pathetic ballad that ever was written.

  One of the most celebrated of all the Scotch songs is “Auld Robin Gray.”… Fine as was the old air, the more modern tune which has supplemented it, composed in 1770 by the Rev. William Leeves, Rector of Wrington, in Somersetshire, is still more accordant with the spirit of the verses. Words and music are now so perfectly combined in their sensibility, that “Auld Robin Gray” ranks in popular estimation as the very first of Scotch songs.

  A song altogether of Fife origin and authorship marks the commencement of the period of modern ballads. It will be acknowledged that “Auld Robin Gray” has few superiors, either amongst its predecessors or successors, though to call it the “King of Scottish Ballads,” as Chambers does, is to raise it to a dangerous eminence, which it would not be prudent even for the most patriotic native of the “Kingdom” to claim for it.