yours, that I once more roved out yesterday for a gloamin-shot at the muses; when the muse that presides o'er the shores of Nith, or rather my old inspiring dearest nymph, Coila, whispered me the following. I have two reasons for thinking that it was my early, sweet, simple inspirer that was by my elbow, "smooth gliding without step," and pouring the song on my glowing fancy. In the first place, since I left Coila's native haunts, not a fragment of a poet has risen to cheer her solitary musings, by catching inspiration from her; so I more than suspect that she has followed me hither, or at least makes me occasional visits; secondly, the last stanza of this song I send you in the very words that Coila taught me many years ago, and which I set to an old Scots reel in Johnson's Museum. MY DEAR SIR, Edinburgh, 1st Sept. 1793. SINCE Writing you last, I have received half a dozen songs, with which I am delighted beyond expression. The humour and fancy of Whistle and I'll come to you, my lad, will render it nearly as great a favourite as Duncan Gray. Come let me take thee to my breast, Adown winding Nith, and By Allan stream, &c. are full of ima gination and feeling, and sweetly suit the airs for which they are intended. Had I a cave on some wild distant shore, is a striking and affecting composition. Our friend, to whose story it refers, read it with a swelling heart, I assure you. The union we are now forming, I think can never be broken; these songs of yours will descend with the music to the latest • Dainty Davie is the title of an old Scotch song, from which Burns has taken nothing but the title and the measure. posterity, and will be fondly cherished so long as genius, taste, and sensibility exist in our island. While the muse seems so propitious, I think it right to inclose a list of all the favours I have to ask of her, no fewer than twenty and three! I have burdened the pleasant Peter with as many as it is probable he will attend to most of the remaining airs would puzzle the English poet not a little; they are of that peculiar measure and rhythm, that they must be familiar to him who writes for them. No. XXXIX. MR BURNS to MR THOMSON. Sept. 1793. You may readily trust, my dear sir, that any exertion in my power is heartily at your service. But one thing I must hint to you; the very name of Peter Pindar is of great service to your publication, so get a verse from him now and then; though I have no objection, as well as I can, to bear the burden of the busi ness. You know that my pretensions to musical taste, are merely a few of nature's instincts, untaught and untutored by art. For this reason, many musical compositions, particularly where much of the merit lies in counterpoint; however they may transport and ravish the ears of you connoisseurs, affect my simple lug no otherwise than merely as melodious din. On the other hand, by way of amends, I am delighted with many little melodies, which the learned musician despises as silly and insipid. I do not know whether the old air Hey tuttie taittie may rank among this number; but well I know that, with Fraser's hautboy, it has often filled my eyes with tears. There is a tradition, which I have met with in many places of Scotland, that it was Robert Bruce's march at the battle of Bannockburn. This thought, in my solitary wanderings, warmed me to a pitch of enthusiasm on the theme of Liberty and Independence, which I threw into a kind of SCOTTISH ode, fitted to the air that one might suppose to be the gallant ROYAL SCOT's address to his heroic followers on that eventful morning.* BRUCE TO HIS TROOPS. 209 ON THE EVE OF THE BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN To its own Tune. Scors, wha hae wi' WALLACE bled, Now's the day, and now's the hour; Wha will be a traitor-knave? Wha can fill a coward's grave? Wha sae base as be a slave? Let him turn and flee Wha for SCOTLAND's king an. law By oppression's woes and pains Lay the proud usurpers low! So may God ever defend the cause of Truth and Liberty, as he did that day!-Amen. P. S.-I showed the air to Urbani, who was highly pleased with it, and begged me to make soft verses for it; but I had no idea of giving myself any trouble on the subject, till the accidental recollection of that glorious struggle for freedom, associated with the glowing ideas of some other struggles of the same nature, not quite so ancient, roused my rhyming mania. Clarke's set of the tune, with his bass, you will find in the Museum; though I am afraid that the air is not what will entitle it to a place in your elegant selection. *This noble strain was conceived by our poet during a storm among the wilds of Glen-Ken in Galloway. A more finished copy will be found afterwards. No. XL. MR BURNS to MR THOMSON. Sept. 1793. I DARE say, my dear sir, that you will begin to think my correspondence is persecution. No matter, I can't help it; a ballad is my hobby-horse; which, though otherwise a simple sort of harmless, idiotical beast enough, has yet this blessed headstrong property, that when once it has fairly made off with a hapless wight, it gets so enamoured with the tinkle-gingle, tinkle-gingle of its own bells, that it is sure to run poor pil-garlick, the bedlam jockey, quite beyond any useful point or post in the common race of man. The following song I have composed for Oran-gaoil, the Highland air that you tell me, in your last, you have resolved to give a place to in your book. I have this moment finished the song; so you have it glowing from the mint. If it suit you, well! if not, 'tis also well! and I think Lewie Gordon is most happily adapted to your ode; at least with a very short variation of the fourth line, which I shall presently submit to you. There is in Lewre Gordon more of the grand than the plaintive, particularly when it is sung with a degree of spirit, which your words would oblige the singer to give it. I would have no scruple about substituting your ode in the room of Lewie Gordon, which has neither the interest, the grandeur, nor the poetry that characterise your verses. Now the variation I have to suggest upon the last line of each verse, the only line too short for the air, is as follows: Or to glorious victorie. Verse 1st, Tune-"Oran-gaoil." BEHOLD the hour, the boat arrive ; But fate has will'd, and we must part. Yon distant isle will often hail : "E'en here, I took the last farewell; "There latest mark'd her vanish'd sail." Along the solitary shore, While flitting sea fowl round me cry, Across the rolling, dashing roar. I'll westward turn my wistful eye : Happy, thou Indian grove, I'll say, Where now my Nancy's path may be ! While thro' thy sweets she loves to stray, O tell me, does she muse on me! If you connect each line with its own verse, I do not think you will find that either the sentiment or the expression loses any of its energy. The only line which I dislike in the whole of the song is, "Welcome to your gory bed." Would not another word be preferable to welcome? In your next I will expect to be informed whether you agree to what I have proposed. These little alterations I submit with the greatest deference. The beauty of the verses you have mad for Oran-gaoil will insure celebrity to the air. No. XLI. MR THOMSON to MR BURNS. Edinburgh, 5th Sept. 1793. I BELIEVE it is generally allowed that the greatest modesty is the sure attendant of the greatest merit. While you are sending me verses that even Shakspeare might be proud to own, you speak of them as if they were ordinary productions! Your heroic ode is to me the noblest composition of the kind in the Scottish language. I happened to dine yesterday with a party of your friends, to whom I read it. They were all charmed with it, entreated me to find out a suitable air for it, and reprobated the idea of giving it a tune so totally devoid of interest or grandeur as Hey tuttie taittie. Assuredly your partiality for this tune must arise from the ideas associated in your mind by the tradition concerning it, for I never heard any person, and I have conversed again and again with the greatest enthusiasts for Scottish airs -I say I never heard any one speak of it as worthy of notice. I have been running over the whole hundred airs, of which I lately sent you the list; No. XLII. MR BURNS to MR THOMSON September, 1793. I HAVE received your list, my dear sir, and here go my observations on it. * Down the burn Davie. I have this moment tried an alteration, leaving out the last half of the third stanza, and the first half of the last stanza, thus: As down the burn they took their way, And love was aye the tale. With "Mary, when shall we return, Thro' the wood laddie-I am decidedly of opinion, that both in this and There'll never be * Mr Thomson's list of songs for his publication. In his remarks, the bard proceeds in order, and goes through the whole; but on many of them he merely signifies his approbation. All his remarks of any importance are presented to the reader. + This alteration Mr Thomson has adopted, (or at least intended to adopt,) instead of the original song, which is objectionable in point of delicacy. peace till Jamie comes hame, the second or high part of the tune being a repetition of the first part an octave higher, is only for instrumental music, and would be much better omitted in singing. Cowden-knowes. Remember in your index that the song in pure English to this tune, beginning "When summer comes, the swains on Tweed," is the production of Crawford: Robert was his Christian name. Blythe hae I been o'er the hill is one of the finest songs ever I made in my life; and besides is composed on a young lady, positively the most beautiful, lovely woman in the world. As I purpose giving you the names and designations of all my heroines, to appear in some future edition of your works, perhaps half a century hence, you must certainly include the bonniest lass in a' the warld in your collection. thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine times, Daintie Davie I have heard sung, nineteen and always with the chorus to the low part of much as your opinion on this subject. If it the tune; and nothing has surprised me so will not suit, as I proposed, we will lay two of the stanzas together, and then make the chorus follow. Laddie lie near me, must lie by me for some time. I do not know the air; and until I am complete master of a tune, in my own singing, (such as it is,) I never can compose for it. My way is I consider the poetic sentiment correspondent to my idea of the musical expression; then choose my theme; begin one set of this tune when he plays it slow; in fact, "Fee him father"-I inclose you Fraser's stanza; when that is composed, which is gener- he makes it the language of despair. I shall ally the most difficult part of the business, I walk out, sit down now and then, look out for here give you two stanzas in that style; mereobjects in nature around me, that are in uni-y to try if it will be any improvement. Were son or harmony with the cogitations of my fan- which Fraser gives it in playing, it would make it possible, in singing, to give it half the pathos cy, and workings of my bosom; humming an admirable pathetic song. I do not give every now and then the air, with the verses I these verses for any merit they have. I comhave framed. When I feel my music beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of posed them at the time in which " Patie Allan's mither died, that was about the back o' midmy study, and there commit my effusions to night;" and by the leeside of a bowl of punch, paper; swinging at intervals on the hind legs which had overset every mortal in company, of my elbow-chair, by way of calling forth my except the hautbois and the muse. own critical strictures, as my pen goes on. Seriously, this at home, is almost invariably my way. What cursed egotism! Gill Morice I am for leaving out. It is a plaguey length; the air itself is never sung: and its place can well be supplied by one or two songs for fine airs that are not in your list. For instance, Craigieburn-wood and Roy's Wife. The first, beside its intrinsic merit, has novelty; and the last has high merit, as well as great celebrity. I have the original words of a song for the last air, in the hand-writing of the lady who composed it; and they are superior to any edition of the song which the public has yet seen.* Thou hast me forsaken, Jamie, Thou hast me forsaken. Thou hast me forsaken, Jamie, Thou hast me forsaken, Thou canst love anither jo, While my heart is breaking: Soon my weary e'en I'll close-Never mair to waken, Jamie, Ne'er mair to waken.+ Highland laddie. The old set will please a mere Scotch ear best; and the new an Italianized one. There is a third, and what Oswald calls the old Highland laddie, which pleases me more than either of them. It is sometimes called Ginglan Johnnie; it being the air of an old humorous tawdry song of that name. You will find it in the Museum, I hae its place would put "There's nae luck about "Jocky and Jenny" I would discard, and in been at Crookie-den, &c. I would advise you, the house," which has a very pleasant air; and in this musical quandary, to offer up your pray-which is positively the finest love-ballad in that ers to the muses for inspiring direction; and in the meantime, waiting for this direction, bestow style in the Scottish, or perhaps in any other a libation to Bacchus; and there is not a doubt language. "When she cam ben she bobbet," but you will hit on a judicious choice. Probatum est. Auld Sir Simon, I must beg you to leave out, and put in its place, The Quaker's wife. *This song, so much admired by our bard, will be found in the future part of the volume. 02 *The Scottish (the Editor uses the word substantive. ly, as the English) employ the abbreviation I'll for 1 shall as well as I will; and it is for I shall it is used here In Annandale, as in the northern counties of England, for I shall they use I'se. +This is the whole of the song. The bard never proceeded farther.-Note by Mr Thomson. as an air, is more beautiful than either, and in the andante way, would unite with a charming sentimental ballad. "Saw ye my father" is one of my greatest favourites. The evening before last, I wandered out and began a tender song; in what I think is its native style. I must premise that the old way, and the way to give most effect, is to have no starting note, as the fiddlers call it, but to burst at once into the pathos. Every country girl sings-" Saw ye my father," &c. My song is but just begun; and I should like, before I proceed, to know your opinion of it. I have sprinkled it with the Scottish dialect, but it may be easily turned into correct English. FRAGMENT. Tune-" Saw ye my father." WHERE are the joys I hae met in the morning, Nae mair a-winding the course o' yon river, Is it that summer's forsaken our valleys, No, no; the bees humming round the gay roses Fain would I hide, what I fear to discover, CETERA DESUNT. "Todlin' hame." Urbani mentioned an idea of his, which has long been mine; that this air is highly susceptible of pathos; accordingly, you will soon hear him, at your concert, try it to a song of mine in the Museum, "Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon."-One song more and I have done. "Auld lang syne." The air is but "mediocre ;" but the following song, the old song of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript, until I took it down from an old man's singing, is enough to recommend any air. AULD LANG SYNE. SHOULD auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to min'? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And days o' lang syne? Now, I suppose I have tired your patience fairly. You must, after all is over, have a number of ballads, properly so called. Gill Morice, Tranent Muir, McPherson's Farewell, Battle of Sheriff-muir,' or We ran and they ran, (I know the author of this charming ballad, and his history), Hardiknute, Barbara Allan,' (I can furnish a finer set of this tune than any that has yet appeared), and besides, do you know that I really have the old tune to which The Cherry and the Slae' was sung; and which is mentioned as a well known air in Scotland's Complaint, a book published before poor Mary's days. It was then called The banks o' Helicon;' an old poem which Pinkerton has brought to light. You will see all this in Tytler's History of Scottish Music. The tune to a learned ear, may have no great merit; but it is a great curiosity. I have a good many original things of this kind. No. XLIII. MR BURNS to MR THOMSON. September, 1793. I AM happy, my dear sir, that my ode pleases you so much. Your idea, "honour's bed," is, *This song of the olden times is excellent.-It is worthy of our bard. |