Isabel Pagan

Account of the Author’s Lifetime

I was born near four miles from Nithhead,
Where fourteen years I got my bread;
My learning it can soon be told,
Ten weeks when I was seven years old,
With a good old religious wife,
Who lived a quiet and sober life;
Indeed she took of me more pains,
Than some does now with forty bairns.
With my attention and her skill,
I read the Bible no’ that ill,
An’ when I grew a wee thocht mair,
I read when I had time to spare,
But a’ the whole tract of my time,
I found myself inclined to rhyme;
When I see merry company,
I sing a song with mirth and glee,
And sometimes I the whisky pree,
But ‘deed its best to let it be.
A’ my faults I will not tell,
I scarcely ken them a’ mysel’;
I’ve come through various scenes of life,
Yet never was a married wife.