for her love, but in vain.

and that was well.

flattering wind-up.

This conclusion Burns omitted,

The whole thing is told without that

The third stanza (vide supra) is very interesting, as it shows another side of Burns :

"Sae light's he jumped up the stair,

And tirl'd at the pin;

And wha sac ready as hersel'

To let the laddie in ? ""*

We are often told that Burns was not interested in the old popular ballads of his native country, but hundreds of expressions show that he at any rate was a good deal influenced by them.† He knew the old ballads by heart, as we see in "The Five Carlins,' especially stanzas six and

seven

"To send a lad to London town,

They met upon a day;

And mony a Knight, and mony a Laird,
That errand fain wad gae.

O mony a Knight, and mony a Laird,
This errand fain wad gae ;

But nae ane could their fancy please,

O ne'er a ane but twae."

"London town,"

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"met upon a day," mony a," a ane but twae," and the use of reiteration of two lines-all of them are characteristics of the Scotch

fain,

popular ballads. In a letter to William Tytler (August, 1787), Burns enclosed the pieces, "The Braes of Yarrow,"

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*A nearly parallel stanza occurs in a high-kilted" old Scots song entitled, "The Lang Dow."-[Ed.]

†The famous "John Barleycorn cannot be numbered among the productions influenced by old ballads. Professor Ritter recently has published the sources of the song. Burns follows the original very closely. His song is rather a version of the older The mystery of the much-discussed was of the first line (explained differently by Chambers and Henley-Henderson) is unveiled here. It is taken from the old song.

one.

"Rob Roy, the younger," and "Young Hynhorn," and wrote: "I invariably hold it sacrilege to add anything of my own to help out with the shattered wrecks of these venerable old compositions; but they have many various readings." But we must return to the third stanza of Charlie.' This too is influenced by the ballad style. The expression of and tirl'd at the pin" is never found in songs-only in popular ballads--and it is almost an international ballad term, to be found in Danish and German ballads as well as in British ones.

Dr William Wallace, in his Character and Genius of Burns, when comparing Burns with Scott, denies his having any romantic feeling at all: "Burns would have smiled at Abbotsford," &c. I do not think he would have done so Everybody reading his Border and Highland tour diaries will find the romantic Burns. And what about "The gloomy night is gath'ring fast" (especially if the story of the poem is not based upon a mere spurious note by Cromek), and, As I stood on yon roofless tower" ? Certainly that is romanticism!

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Burns had a great deal of ballad-interest; but he was no ballad-writer. He, quite naturally, preferred songpoetry. He would not have been very successful in improving the ballad of " Adam Bell " or " Childe Maurice,” though "It was a' for our rightfu' King," is a very successful effort. His simplicity is of another sort. The ballads are stern. Burns is never stern; he is either serious or merry. His simplicity is permeated with hearty humour, a humour almost unrivalled in poetic literature. Just take such examples as the immortal "Tam o' Shanter," "Address to the Unco Guid," To a Haggis," or "On the late Captain Grose's peregrinations thro' Scotland." These four poems contain four different sorts of humour. Even in his most serious poems and songs, Burns uses this vein of humour. And then, we may say that this humour of Burns is another tool for his song-mending business. The old tedious or coarse songs which he altered were often quite devoid of this great virtue. Certainly "John

Anderson was no fine song before the mending of Burns. It was full of coarseness; now it is tinkling with tenderness and humour.

"There is a naïveté, a pastoral simplicity, in a slight intermixture of Scots words and phraseology, which is more in unison-at least to my taste, and, I will add, to every genuine Caledonian taste-with the simple pathos or rustic sprightliness of our native music than any English verses whatever "—(1793). "In fact, I think that my ideas are more barren in English than in Scotch --(1794). Burns thought the use of the Scotch vernacular part of his art, and all critics (with the exception of the earliest ones) have agreed that his Scotch songs are greatly superior to those written in English. Burns wrote fine English, but he could not compose fine English verses. The overpraised "Highland Mary," "Afton Water," and other English songs, nowadays have lost their place among the masterpieces of the Bard. A very curious example of the importance of a Scotch dressing-up we have in the Poet's mending" of Sir Robert Aytoun's "I do confess thou'rt sweet." The song is raised from a very poor position to the level of real poetry, though it is far from being among Burns's best songs.

Robert Chambers in the fourth volume of his Burns edition edits several of the songs, under the heading of Strictly speaking, he songs in that category. Young Jockie," "It is

66

Old songs improved by Burns." ought to have placed almost all the There we find "Ca' the Yowes," na Jean, Kenmure's on and awa',' It was a' for our rightfu' King," and many other famous songs. Most of them are imitations no more than any other of the Burns songs. The sources of "Kenmure's on and awa' have never been found anywhere.

It may look like diminishing the greatness of Burns to set forth his sources. Certainly he is no smaller Poet because he got his materials from older poetry, just as Shakespeare is not pilloried for having got several of his themes from his predecessors, or Hans Andersen because

he has borrowed a good deal of his plots from folk-lore and old tales that he had heard in his childhood.

At the beginning of this paper I mentioned Mr Morsbach's appreciation of the Burns songs. I know no better way in which to finish than by quoting him: "The lyrical poetry of Burns chiefly consists of sentimental lyrics. But the exaggerated sentimentality of the eighteenth century here gains concrete contents, propped and sustained by the strong and natural feelings of the peasant son. His songs contain the soil-flavour of his local parish, and the bracing air of the Scotch hills blow through it, a healthy realism very often joining the merry humour characterising Scotch vernacular poetry."

TONNY DAA

(Denmark).

BY ARTHUR KEITH, M.D., F.R.S.,

Conservator of the Museum, Royal Coliege of Surgeons, England; President of the Anthropological Institute.

Ο

N the main theme of this article we are not qualified to judge, and therefore offer no remarks. On certain subsidiary points, however, we are not in agreement with the accomplished author. We have long been familiar with the Barrington Nash portraits and the evidence on which their owner bases their claims to authenticity. That evidence he incorporated in a booklet, published by Alex. Gardner, Paisley, in 1896. The portraits were on view at the Glasgow Burns Exhibition in that year, when they formed the subject of a most lively discussion following upon Mr Nash's account of their history and artistic merits as original presentments of the Bard. Dr Findlay has handled all the evidence available in such incisive and convincing style that little remains to be said. There is not a vestige of proof that Raeburn ever painted an original portrait of Burns; on the contrary, the contemporary facts of the Poet's and Painter's lives preclude the possibility of such a thing. But it is absolutely certain that he executed a copy of the Nasmyth for Caddel & Davies in 1803, which has disappeared; and it is by ro means certain that it was ever produced in engraved form by these publishers or anybody else. Mr Nash is in possession of two portraits, neither of which he claims to

* Abstract of evening discourse at the Royal Institution, February 20th, 1914.