mistress." The expression "modest worth" applied to the School Dame, is also applied to Coila in the “ Vision,” and "russet weed" is used by Burns in contradistinction to silk" in the lines" Written in Friars' Carse Hermitage," to indicate modest position in the world. Still one can only bring oneself to the opinion that, whatever influence Shenstone's "Schoolmistress had on Burns, such influence is not so marked as other similarities cited.

Claims have been made as to the greater influence of Shenstone's Schoolmistress" or Fergusson's "Farmer's Ingle" on the "Cottar's Saturday Night." These contentions exhibit in different aspects two kinds of influence of different classes of poets on Burns's literary work. When a solution is sought of the question-where did Burns get his ideas to clothe in a new light?—we must recognise the influence of Shenstone as of a different kind from that he

derived from Ramsay and Fergusson. The relationship of Burns and Fergusson is almost, one might say, personal. Burns and Fergusson belonged to the same era and the same stage. Fergusson died only thirteen years before Burns came to Edinburgh. Burns addresses Fergusson in homely and affectionate terms as My elder brother in misfortune, by far my elder brother in the Muses." Such a familiar term of affinity would be absurd, indeed untrue, if applied to Shenstone.

Burns knew Shenstone as a popular poet and a cultured man, with all the advantages of an Oxford education. He also recognised in Shenstone's life and works the social man of tender and sincere feeling, combined with a simplicity and a love of truth. Burns's envisaging of Shenstone was not that of a man he could be familiar with yet could love and respect in the abstract. He did not find in Shenstone models for the plots of or the "Cottar's Saturday Night." Shenstone's essay on "Man and and philosophical reflections. In these respects the influences were different-on the one hand, the homely influences of his Scottish poetical forebears, and on the

Tam o' Shanter " He rather looked to Manners for moral

other, the educative influences of such poets as Shenstone, Crabbe, and Goldsmith, and others of the early Georgian era shed their influences or conveyed ideas.

In Elegy VII. we have:

""Tis no Italian song nor senseless ditty cheers

the vernal tree,"

and in Elegy IX. :

"Nor boast the produce of Peruvian mines,

Nor with Italian sounds deceive the day."

Compare those two references to Italian music with the line in the Cottar's Saturday Night "

66

66

Compared with these, Italian trills are tame,"

and, without enquiries whether Shenstone and Burns interested themselves in the contemporaneous discussion on the merits of the French and Italian Schools, it is evident that they both preferred the tunes of their native country to any foreign innovation. In this predilection they were joined by Fergusson in his Elegy on "Scots Music," where" the sounds fresh from Italy are called " a bastard breed."

Allusions to Peruvian mines are to be found in Burns. In the "Vision" he says:

--

"And trust me not Potosi's mine."

It would be hypercritical to discount this allusion because Potosi happened to be in Bolivia and not Peru.

Other allusions to Potosi will be found in the apostrophe to "Frugality," in a letter to Peter Hill, of 2nd April, 1789. It is curious to note that Shenstone, in one of his bestknown poems, Nancy of the Vale," describes Her leg so taper, straight and fair," while Burns's Coila in the "Vision," is described as "Sae taper, tight and clean," so that one is inclined to think that the lilt of the one description infected the other.

In Shenstone's Man and Manners" there occurs, in contiguity, two lines:

66

66

'When thou are from me every place is desert.”

Surely Paradise is round me."

These lines from Otway's "Tragedy of the Unhappy Marriage" might be got by Burns from Otway's poem direct, but there is also the possibility of the two lines in Shenstone's essay suggesting the line:

"That desert were a Paradise if thou wert there."

If one felt inclined to give further points of similarity, many more quotations could be found. To show the influence of Shenstone on Burns enough has possibly been said.

These three articles have been a labour of love and a source of information to the writer. He is surprised to find that a certain critic, and a well-known student of Burns, objected strongly to them because they might detract from Burns's reputation.

The writer, speaking for himself, has not found his admiration for the Poet or the man diminished in the slightest as the result of a research which has proved delightful as a literary exercise. Rather the contrary, and he would no more think of accusing Burns of pilfering than he would of accusing Shakespeare of stealing the play of "Hamlet" from "The Historia Danica of Saxo Grammaticus."

A. J. CRAIG.

THE END OF AN OLD SONG.

"An honest man was Duncan Dow; his native place was Glendaruel, A wee bit hallan in the west, some miles ayont the hills o' Cowal; But whaur he's frae it mak's nae odds, be it Mull or Skye or be it Cary,

Some auchty years hae slipped awa' since he dug the grave o' Highland Mary.

Then, if e'er ye gang tae Greenock toon, and hae a half-an-hoor tae tarry,

Gang wast intae the auld kirkyard and see the grave o' Highland

Mary."

TH

HOSE simple lines, popular in the
of last century, no longer apply.

early 'seventies

The song is out

The Old West

of date, and a revised version called for. Kirkyard no longer contains the resting-place of Highland Mary.

On the forenoon of Monday, 8th November, 1920, the grave dug by honest Duncan Dow away back in the eighteenth century was again opened, this time not to be filled in again. That which had formed its contents was, with reverent care, transferred to Greenock Cemetery, for interment in a new place of sepulture prepared for its reception.

The work of transference was carried out under the personal direction of Mr Robert Sheridan, Superintendent of Cemetery and Parks, his staff including Messrs Hugh Campbell, Robert Chalmers, William Elliot, Robert Alcorn, and Patrick Boyle. There were also present :-Ex-Bailie William Hillhouse Carmichael, Convener of Cemetery and Parks Committee; and Mr James Christie, Chief Constable, Greenock Corporation; Mr Ninian M'Whannel, F.R.I., B.A., Burns Federation; Messrs Duncan M'Callum, Junior Vice-President; Arch. MacPhail, Director; Thomas Graham, Musical Director; George B. Grieve, O.B.E., Honorary Secretary, Greenock Burns Club; and Mr Charles