Item 11" Little wats thou o' thy Daddie, hiney."This is another scrap of song not noted by Cromek. The tune, "Elsie Marley," is in Bremner's Reels, 1759, and in later Collections, including Gow's Fourth Repository. Item 12: "The King o' France he rade a race."-This hitherto unpublished Note has a special interest, because it unexpectedly furnishes us with a verse of the old song which Burns used as a model for "Amang the trees where humming bees," published in Cromek's Reliques, 1808, p. 453, to the tune, The King of France he rade a race." In his last two lines 66 He fir'd a fiddler in the North That dang them tapsalteerie, O, it will be seen how closely Burns followed the original, and taking the verse as a whole, how little he was indebted to it. Item 13: "Rob shoor in hairst."-Ignored by Cromek. Item 14: Jockie's gray breeks."-Printed in the Reliques, p. 205, with the word "certain" of the manuscript altered to "certainly." Dick includes it among the " Spurious Notes" (p. 75), but there cannot now be any doubt of its authenticity, even though the original is not in the interleaved Museum. Item 15: "Corn rigs are bonie."-The note given by Cromek (Reliques, p. 231), though slightly varied in sequence of words, is manifestly copied from the Edinburgh University Manuscript. A somewhat similar note in the interleaved Museum (Dick, p. 22) reads: "There must have been an old song under this title; the chorus of it is all that remains O corn-rigs and rye-rigs, O corn-rigs are bonie, And where'er ye meet a bonie lass, Preen up her cockernony. Mr Dick seems, in this instance, to have overlooked the discrepancy between the Reliques version and the Burns holograph in the interleaved Museum. Item 16: "The Posie."-This is the undoubted original of the note in Cromek's Reliques (p. 214) which Dickfailing to find in the interleaved copy of the Scots Musical Museum, and quite evidently unsuspicious of any other authentic manuscript source-printed in his volume (p. 76) among the "Spurious Notes." 66 Item 17: "Saw ye nae my Peggy ?"-In Dick's Appendix (p. 83), he says: Cromek has a long note in his Reliques which is not in the manuscript." Nevertheless it is no invention " of Cromek, who, with two annotations of the song in Burns's handwriting in front of him-as we now for the first time know-in this case printed what he found in the Glenriddell volume, and eked it out with the longer note from the Excise Paper Manuscript of twelve folio pages. 66 66 Item 18: Fy, gar rub her o'er wi' strae.”. -Dick says (p. 84) Cromek reconstructed and made additions to this note." In a sense that is very true. The note as printed in the Reliques (p. 202), is the whole of that in the Excise Paper MS., with the interleaved Museum noteminus the first sentence-sandwiched into it. It is peculiar editing, but it is all genuine Burns lore. is : Item 19: "The lass o' Liviston."-Dick's observation "Here again Cromek has garbled the note. The part of the old song which he quotes incorrectly is... in the Merry Muses. What Cromek did do was to give preference to his alternative manuscript, his indebtedness to which-with a laxity too common in his time--he did not even trouble to mention. He followed it faithfully however (Reliques, 204), and the 'verse also, though not agreeing with the rendering in the Merry Muses, is as Burns penned it in the manuscript under review. Item 20: "The lass o' Patie's Mill.". -This note is very similar, but not quite identical with the one in the Interleaved Glenriddell Volume, which Cromek printed in his Reliques, p. 205, 66 Item 30: "Highland Laddie."-Referring to this note, as given in the Reliques (p. 207), Mr Dick, in his special summing up of the "Spurious Notes" (p. 123), remarks: 66 6 Highland Laddie' is a long composite invention, superseding the short note which Burns wrote." We know now that it was no invention," but a genuine Burns commentary which Cromek selected from his Manuscript No. 2, giving it place rather than the note in the interleaved Museum, from which, however, he borrowed almost verbatim the sentence in parenthesis-" it is an excellent but somewhat licentious song "-which is not in the Edinburgh University Manuscript. Continuing, Dick stresses another objection to the authenticity of this note thuswise: "Here Cromek refers to the "fifth" volume of the Museum, which I did not exist. It was not published until six months after the death of Burns, and therefore could not have been noticed by him, particularly as the last notes in the interleaved Museum were penned about three or four years before the volume was published, and before any arrangement was made for sketching its contents." Nevertheless, this other manuscript, which was probably written towards the close of the Poet's life, shows that he did mention the fifth volume of the Scots Musical Museum. He must have done a lot of work upon it, apart from his own contributions, in the way of determining its contents, and probably correcting proofs, and, expecting its early publication, speaks of it here as already in being. By the way, when was volume V. published? Dick gives December, 1796, but John Glen-unfortunately without indicating his reasons-dates it March, 1797. Item 31: "Clout the Caldron."-This comes first in the "Spurious Notes," as given by Mr Dick (p. 74). The manuscript is exactly as printed in Cromek's Reliques of Robert Burns, p. 199. Item 32: Auld Lang Syne."--Once more in this manuscript we find Burns referring to the fifth volume of the Museum. Dick says (p. 123) Cromek " omits what Burns wrote." What Burns wrote in the interleaved copy O The original & by much the best set of t lang, We'll tak a cups b' kindness yet, the And surely you'll be your print stow/! And will take geup o` kindness yet, We twa And for two have fun about the brass, But we've wanderd mmony a weary foot Sin auld lang Me two have paidd i the buyer. And there's a hand. my trusty five! we FIRST PUBLISHED FACSIMILE, From the Interleaved Copy of The Scots Musical Museum (by kind permission of the owner of the original, Dr John Gribbel, of Philadelphia). " of the Scots Musical Museum was a copy of "Auld Lang Syne," headed, 'The original and by much the best set of the words of this song is as follows :" A facsimile of that page one of the most interesting in the whole of that unique and remarkable volume was kindly given to me by Mr Gribbel, and is herewith illustrated, being, I believe, the first portion of the famous interleaved copy of the Scots Musical Museum published in facsimile. 66 Item 33: "Dainty Davie."-Mr Dick (p. 123), speaking of Cromek's note in the Reliques (p. 304), says: that on Dainty Davie is a suppression of the note in the manuscript, to interpolate and repeat in detail the old chesnut about the Rev. David Williamson and the daughter of the Laird of Cherrytrees." The fact is that Cromek used both manuscripts. He took the anecdote from the one we now distinguish as the Excise Paper, or Edinburgh University Manuscript, and then, far from suppressing the short note in the interleaved Museum, neatly dovetailed a kennin more than half of it-reading: and were their delicacy equal to their wit and humour they would merit a place in any collection "—into the other. He also took the word original" from the Museum holograph, and inserted it before "song " in his printing of its less famous fellow, as well as cutting out the words "and has merit in its way" as in our MS., the expansion of the sentence having rendered them superfluous. 66 66 66 The earliest printed account of the "Dainty Davie " story, I have found, is in the first edition of The Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, 1692, p. 5, a work which has also what is probably the first use in literature of the vernacular phrase, "For ald lang syne." Mr Dick cites the second edition of 1694, p. 64, for that distinction (64 is probably a printer's error, for it should be 68); but it is on page 101 of the first edition, and also on page 80 of an earlier second edition dated 1693. 66 66 Item 34: Tweedside."-J. C. Dick (p. 87) says: The verses quoted in Cromek's Reliques are not in the |