Corn rigs are bonie. Perhaps it might want the last stanza, and be the better for it. Cauld kail in Aber deen, you must leave with me yet a while. I have vowed to have a song to that air, on the lady whom I attempted to celebrate in the verses, At any rate, my Poortith At any rate, my other song, will never suit. cauld and restless love. Green grow the rashes, That song is current in Scotland under the old title, and to the merry old tune of that name; which of course would mar the progress of your song to celebrity. Your book will be the standard of Scots songs for the future: let this idea ever keep your judgment on. the alarm. I send a song, on a celebrated toast in this country, to suit Bonie Dundee. I send you also a ballad to the Mill mill O. * The last time I came o'er the moor, I would fain attempt to make a Scots song for, and let Ramsay's be the English set, You shall hear from me soon. When you go to London on this business, can you come by Dumfries? I have still several MSS Scots airs by me which I have pickt up, mostly from the singing *The song to the tune of Bonie Dundee, is that in No. XVI. The ballad to the Mill mill O is that beginning, "When wild wars deadly blasts are blawn." E. singing of country lasses. They please me vastly; but your learned lugs* would perhaps be displeased with the very feature for which I like them. I call them simple; you would pronounce them silly. Do you know a fine air, called Jackie Hume's Lament? I have a song of considerable merit to that air. I'll inclose you both the song and tune, as I had them ready to send to Johnson's Museum.† I send you likewise, to me, a beautiful little air, which I had taken down from viva voce. is + The song here mentioned is that given in No. XIX. Oken ye what Meg o' the mill has gotten. This song surely Mr. Burns's own writing, though he does not generally praise his own songs so much.. Note by Mr. Thomson. The air here mentioned is that for which he wrote the ballad of Bonny Jean, to be found p. 79. E. No. XXII. MR. BURNS TO MR. THOMSON. April, 1793. Tune-"THE LAST TIME I CAME O'ER THE MOOR." FAREWELL thou stream that winding flows Around Maria's dwelling! Ah cruel mem❜ry! spare the throes Within my bosom swelling: And still in secret languish, To feel a fire in ev'ry vein, Yet dare not speak my anguish. The wretch of love, unseen, unknown, The bursting sigh, th' unweeting groan, I know my doom must be despair, The music of thy tongue I heard, I saw thine eyes yet nothing fear'd, MY DEAR SIR, I HAD scarcely put my last letter into the post office, when I took up the subject of The last time I came o'er the moor, and ere I slept drew the outlines of the foregoing. How far I have succeeded, I leave on this, as on every other occasion, to you to decide. I own my vanity is flattered, when you give my songs a place in your elegant and superb work; but to be of service to the work is my first wish. As I have often told you, I do not in a single instance wish you, out of compliment to me, to insert any thing of mine. One hint let me give you-whatever Mr. Pleyel does, let him not alter one iota of the original Scottish airs; I mean, in the song department; but let our national music preserve its native features. They are, I own, frequently wild and irreducible to the more modern rules; but on that very eccentricity, perhaps, depends a great part of their effect. No. XXIII. MR. THOMSON TO MR. BURNS Edinburgh, 26th April, 1793. I HEARTILY thank you, my dear Sir, for your last two letters, and the songs which accompanjed them. I am always both instructed and entertained by your observations; and the frankness with which you speak out your mind, is to me highly agreeable. It is very possible I may not have the true idea of simplicity in composition. I confess there are several songs of Allan Ramsay's, for example, that I think silly enough, which another person more conversant than I have been with country people, would perhaps call simple and natural. But the lowest scenes |