thinks his friend is a little too ready to sacrifice simplicity for the sake of something striking. No one can hope to compose a song to a tune unless he can either hum it, or whistle it, or sing it: the music commands the proper words, and a true poet will obey it, as Burns always did, save in one or two instances, where he evidently had not mastered the air. He tells us that he was in the habit of crooning the tune while in the act of composing it: nor will a song that echoes the music be obtained on easier terms.] My song, "Here awa, there awa," as amended by Mr. Erskine, I entirely approve of, and return you. Give me leave to criticise your taste in the only thing in which it is, in my opinion, reprehensible. You know I ought to know something of my own trade. Of pathos, sentiment, and point, you are a complete judge; but there is a quality more necessary than either in a song, and which is the very essence of a ballad; I mean simplicity: now, if I mistake not, this last feature you are a little apt to sacrifice to the foregoing. Ramsay, as every other poet, has not been always equally happy in his pieces: still I cannot approve of taking such liberties with an author as Mr. W. proposes doing with "The last time I came o'er the moor." Let a poet, if he chooses, take up the idea of another, and work it into a piece of his own; but to mangle the works of the poor bard, whose tuneful tongue is now mute for ever, in the dark and narrow house,-by Heaven, 'twould be sacrilege! I *["The song to the tune of 'Bonnie Dundee' is that in No. XVI. The ballad to the 'Mill, Mill, O,' is that begin ning, When wild war's deadly blasts are blawn." CURRIE.] grant that Mr. W.'s version is an improvement; but I know Mr. W. well, and esteem him much; let him mend the song as the Highlander mended his gun: he gave it a new stock, a new lock, and a new barrel. I do not, by this, object to leaving out improper stanzas, where that can be done without spoiling the whole. One stanza in "The Lass o' Patie's Mill" must be left out: the song will be nothing worse for it. I am not sure if we can take the same liberty with "Corn Rigs are bonnie." Perhaps it might want the last stanza, and be the better for it. "Cauld Kail in Aberdeen" 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, "Poortith cauld and restless love." At any rate, my other song, "Green grow the Rashes," will never suit. 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 "Bonnie 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 MS. Scots airs by me, which I have picked up, mostly from the 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 enclose you both the song and tune, as I had them ready to send to Johnson's Museum.t I send you likewise, to me, a beautiful little air, which I had taken down from viva voce.‡-Adieu! No. XXII. BURNS TO G. THOMSON. MY DEAR SIR: R. B. April 1793. 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 + ["The song here mentioned is that given in No. XVIII., Oken ye what Meg o' the Mill has gotten?" This song is surely 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 "Bonnie Jean." See No. XXVII. 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 sup 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 anything 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. G. THOMSON TO BURNS. R. B. Edinburgh, 26th April, 1793. I HEARTILY thank you, my dear Sir, for your last two letters, and the songs which accompanied 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 of simple nature will not please generally, if copied precisely as they are. The poet, like the painter, must select what will form an agreeable as well as a natural picture. On this subject it were easy to enlarge; but at present suffice it to say that I consider simplicity, rightly understood, as a most essential quality in composition, and the ground-work of beauty in all the arts. I will gladly appropriate your most interesting new ballad, "When wild war's deadly blast," &c., to the "Mill, Mill, O," as well as the two other songs to their respective airs; but the third and fourth lines of the first verse must undergo some little alteration in order to suit the music. Pleyel does not alter a single note of the songs. That would be absurd indeed! With the airs which he introduces into the sonatas, I allow him to take such liberties as he pleases, but that has nothing to do with the songs. P.S.-I wish you would do as you proposed with your "Rigs of Barley." If the loose sentiments are thrashed out of it, I will find an ["It is quite plain, from this letter, that Thomson was at issue with his correspondent on the subject-matter of simplicity. Burns, like old Burton, was a plain man, calling "a spade a spade;" simplicity of expression was dear to his heart, and he considered it as essential in song. Thomson says, "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." He desired to vindicate the diplomatic language of the polished city; but Burns feit that elegance and simplicity were "sisters twin," and that words which failed to convey a clear meaning, or present a distinct image, were not for him." CUNNINGHAM.] No. XXIV. BURNS TO G. THOMSON. June 1790. WHEN I tell you, my dear Sir, that a friend of mine, in whom I am much interested, has fallen a sacrifice to these accursed times, you will easily allow that it might unhinge me for doing any good among ballads. My own loss as to pecuniary matters, is trifling: but the total ruin of a much-loved friend is a loss indeed. Pardon my seeming inattention to your last commands. I cannot alter the disputed lines in the "Mill, Mill, O."* What you think a defect, I esteem as a positive beauty: so you see how doctors differ. I shall now, with as much alacrity as I can muster, go on with your commands. You know Fraser, the hautboy-player in Edinburgh he is here, instructing a band of music for a fencible corps quartered in this courtry. Among many of his airs that please me, there is one, well known as a reel, by the name of "The Quaker's Wife," and which I remember a grand-aunt of mine used to sing, by the name of "Liggeram Cosh, my bonnie wee lass." Mr. Fraser plays it slow, and with an expression that quite ite charms me. I becam such an enthusiast about it that I made a song for it, which I here subjoin, and enclose Fraser's set of the tune. If they hit your fancy they are at your service; if not, return me the tune, and I will put it in Johnson's Museum. I think the song is not in my worst manner. • [The lines were the third and fourth :- "As our poet had maintained a long silence, and the first part of Thomson's Musical work was in the press, this gentleman ventured, by Mr. Erskine's advice, to substitute for them in that publication, 'And eyes again with pleasure beam'd, &c.,' which, though better suited to the music, are inferior to the original. This is the only alteration adopted by Thomson, which Burns did not approve, or at least assent to."-. CURRIE.] [Though Miss Lesley Baillie, the heroine of this song, passed before the eyes of the Poet like a vision which never returus, her loveliness seems to have been long remembered. In expressing the hopelessness of misplaced love, Burns has surpassed all other poets: this song, and that of Jessy, would go far to sustain the assertion; but there are others of equal tenderness, which cannot but be present to the minds of all readers. Of the old song, from which he has borrowed nothing but the air, little is known: it was sometimes sung in Nithsdale, and had a touch of the nursery about it.] No. XXV. BURNS TO G. THOMSON. June 25th, 1793. HAVE you ever, my dear Sir, felt your bosom ready to burst with indignation on reading of those mighty villains who divide kingdom against kingdom, desolate provinces, and lay nations waste, out of the wantonness of ambition, or often from still more ignoble passions? In a mood of this kind to-day, I recollected the air of "Logan Water," and it occurred to me that its querulous melody probably had its origin from the plaintive indignation of some swelling, suffering heart, fired at the tyrannic strides of some public destroyer; and overwhelmed with private distress, the consequence of a country's ruin. If I have done any thing at all like justice to my feelings, the following song, composed in three-quarters of an hour's meditation in my elbow-chair, ought to have some merit : Logan Braes. Tune-Logan Water. I. O LOGAN, sweetly didst thou glide II. Again the merry month o' May III. Within yon milk-white hawthorn bush, IV. O wae upon you, men o' state, [Burns in one of his letters says, " I remember the two last lines of a verse in some of the old songs of Logan water, which I think pretty : "Now my dear lad maun face his faes, These lines belong to the "Logan braes" of the late John Mayne: the song was printed in the Star newspaper of May 23, 1789, and soon became a favourite, as it well might : "By Logan streams that rin sae deep, * Originally "Ye mind na, 'mid your cruel joys, Nae mairat Logan kirk will he The old verses to the same air, on which the modern songs are founded, will be given in the Poet's notes on Scottish Song-they are curious.] Do you know the following beautiful little fragment, in Witherspoon's collection of Scots songs? Air-Hughie Graham. "O GIN my love were yon red rose, That grows upon the castle wa'; And I mysel' a drap o' dew, Into her bonnie breast to fa'! "Oh, there beyond expression blest, This thought is inexpressibly beautiful; and quite, so far as I know, original. It is too short for a song, else I would forswear you altogether, unless you gave it a place. I have often tried to eke a stanza to it, but in vain. After balancing myself for a musing five minutes, on the hind-legs of my elbow-chair, air, I produced the following. The verses are far inferior to the foregoing, I frankly confess; but, if worthy of insertion at all, they might be first in place; as every poet, who knows any thing of his trade, will husband his best thoughts for a concluding stroke. O were my love yon lilac fair, Wi' purple blossoms to the spring; When wearied on my little wing! been. R. B. [There are fragments of song of a nature so exquisitely fine that, like the purest marble, they cannot be eked out or repaired without showing where the hand of the restorer has Burns, though eminently skilful, has not succeeded in writing a verse worthy of the one preserved by Witherspoon: his lines are beautiful: but lilacs are not favorites with birds: the odour of their blossoms is unpleasing to the musicians of the air, and they seldom build in them, or seek them out as a shelter. Tradition has many additional verses, of which the following are pretty : "O were my love yon pickle leeks, No. XXVI. G. THOMSON TO BURNS. Monday, 1st July, 1793. I AM extremely sorry, my good Sir, that any thing should happen to unhinge you. The times are terribly out of tune, and when harmony will be restored, Heaven knows. The first book of songs, just published, will be dispatched to you along with this. Let me be favoured with your opinion of it, frankly and freely. I shall certainly give a place to the song you have written for the "Quaker's Wife," it is quite enchanting. Pray will you return the list of songs, with such airs added to it as you think ought to be included. The business now rests entirely on myself, the gentlemen who originally agreed to join the speculation having requested to be off. No matter, a loser I cannot be. The superior excellence of the work will create a general demand for it, as soon as it is properly known. And, were the sale even slower than it promises to be, I should be some what compensated for my labour by the pleasure I shall receive from the music. I cannot express how much I am obliged to you for the exquisite new songs you are sending me; but thanks, my friend, are a poor return for what you have done: as I shall be benefited by the publication, you must suffer me to inclose a small mark of my gratitude, and to repeat it afterwards, when I find it convenient. Do not return it, for, by Heaven! if you do, our correspondence is at an end: and, though this would be no loss to you, it would mar the publication, which, under your auspices, cannot fail to be respectable and interesting. I HAVE just finished the following ballad, and, as I do think it in my best style, I send it you. Mr. Clarke, who wrote down the air from Mrs. Burns' wood-note wild, is very fond of it; and has given it a celebrity by teaching it to some young ladies of the first fashion here. If you do not like the air enough to give it a place in your collection, please return it. The song you may keep, as I remember it. There was a Lass, and she was fair. * [In the original MS. our Poet asks Mr Thomson if this stanza is not original?-CURRIE.] VII. And now she works her mammie's wark, And aye she sighs wi' care and pain; Yet wist na what her ail might be, Or what wad mak her weel again. VIII. But did na Jeanie's heart loup light, As Robie tauld a tale o' love IX. The sun was sinking in the west, x. "O Jeanie fair, I lo'e thee dear; O canst thou think to fancy me? Or wilt thou leave thy mammie's cot, And learn to tent the farms wi' me? XI. "At barn or byre thou shalt na drudge, Or naething else to trouble thee; But stray amang the heather-bells, And tent the waving corn wi' me." XII. Now what could artless Jeanie do? I have some thoughts of inserting in your index, or in my notes, the names of the fair ones, the themes of my songs. I do not mean the name at full; but dashes or asterisms, so as ingenuity may find them out. The heroine of the foregoing is Miss M., daughter to Mr. M., of D., one of your subscribers. I have not painted her in the rank which she holds in life, but in the dress and character of a cottager. R. B. [Some of the finest of the songs of Burns were composed in honour of the charms of ladies of my native vale. Jean, the eldest daughter of John M'Murdo, Esq. of Drumlanrig, was the heroine of this exquisite song. The original, presented by the Poet to the family, lies before me: there are many variations, but they are of language rather than of sentiment. It wants the verse which Burns reckoned original: "As in the bosom of the stream The moonbeam dwells at dewy e'en; The first two lines of the eleventh verse stand thus in the manuscript, and perhaps it would be as well to restore them: |