Cockburn

Cockburn, ALISON, poetess, was born 8th October 1713, the daughter of Robert Rutherford, laird of Fairmile, Selkirkshire. In 1731 she married Patrick Cockburn, advocate, and in 1753 was left a widow, with an only son, who predeceased her in 1780. She died 23d January 1795, having for sixty years and more been a queen of Edinburgh society: in person she was not unlike Queen Elizabeth. Of her lyrics the best known is the exquisite version of The Flowers of the Forest ('I've seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling'), commemorating a wave of calamity that swept over Ettrick Forest, and first printed in 1765. Mrs Cockburn in 1777 discerned in Walter Scott 'the most extraordinary genius of a boy'; in 1786 she made Burns's acquaintance. See Songstresses of Scotland (vol. i. 1871), and Craig-Brown's Letters of Mrs Cockburn (1900).