The poem
CAULD is the e’enin blast, O’ Boreas o’er the pool, An’ dawin’ it is dreary, When birks are bare at Yule.
Cauld blaws the e’enin blast, When bitter bites the frost, And, in the mirk and dreary drift, The hills and glens are lost:
Ne’er sae murky blew the night That drifted o’er the hill, But bonie Peg-a-Ramsay Gat grist to her mill.