When purple Morning starts the hare, When Day, expiring in the west, And that's my ain dear Davie. So much for Davie. The chorus, you know, is to the low part of the tune. See Clarke's set of it in the Museum. N.B.-In the Museum, they have drawled out the tune to twelve nonsense. Four lines of song, and lines of poetry, which is four of chorus, is the way. The tune of Dainty Davie had been in Burns's hands some years before, when he composed to it a song with the awkward burden, The Gardener wi' his Paidle. His taste suggesting to him the impossibility of any such song becoming popular, he now put the verses into the above improved fashion. It is understood that the homely old song which Burns thus superseded was composed upon an adventure of the Rev. David Williamson, in the time of the Persecution.' Williamson died minister of St Cuthbert's, near Edinburgh, after having married seven wives. The letters of this month shew a remarkable activity in songwriting. The commercial distresses of the country were great; the government was preparing to try Muir and Palmer for sedition, and no mercy was expected; the world, in Burns's opinion, was out of joint. Yet we see him full of enthusiasm in writing and criticising Scottish songs, and making only that faint glance at politics, in the remark on the Georgium Sidus. It must not be supposed from this fact, that he had forced himself into an indifference towards either the state of affairs in France, where the unfortunate Girondists were now perishing in the fields and on the scaffold, or to the progress of the reaction at home, which threatened to crush every sentiment of liberty in which England had formerly gloried. But the beauty of the season had come over him with its benign influence, and he gladly sought some relief from the exasperations of public affairs in the soothing blandishments of the Doric Musc. See Volume III., p. 99. MR THOMSON TO BURNS. EDINBURGH, 1st Sept. 1793. MY DEAR SIR-Since writing you last, I have received half-adozen 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 imagination 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, reads 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 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 enclose a list of all the favours I have to ask of her-no fewer than twentyand-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. BURNS TO MR THOMSON. Sept. 1793. 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 taitie, 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 in Scotland-that it was Robert Bruce's march at the battle of Bannockburn. This thought, in my yesternight's evening-walk, warmed me to a pitch of enthusiasm on the theme of liberty and independence, which I threw into a kind of Scottish ode, fitted 1 Fraser was many years after the hautboy-player in the orchestra of the Edinburgh theatre, where his solos were always greatly admired. 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 MEN AT BANNOCKBURN. Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Now's the day, and now's the hour; See approach proud Edward's power- Wha will be a traitor knave? Let him turn and flee! Wha for Scotland's king and law By oppression's woes and pains! Lay the proud usurpers low! Let us do or die! So may God ever defend the cause of truth and liberty, as He did that day! Amen. P.S.-I shewed 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. So, the magnificent ode of Bruce to his Men, sprang partly from the inspiration afforded by the success of the French in beating back the arrogant enemies of their republic! According to Mr Syme, in his letter on the Galloway excursion of July, Burns was engaged in the composition of this ode while riding in the storm from Kenmure to Gatehouse, and when passing on the second morning thereafter on his way from Kirkcudbright to Dumfries. Mr Syme adds, that the poet presented him with a copy of the poem next day, along with a second one for Mr Dalzell. There is a discrepancy here, which can only be cleared up by supposing that Mr Syme, writing at the distance of some years, had misapplied circumstances to dates, or been misled by his imagination. The discrepancy had been observed by Dr Currie; but he unfortunately adopted a way of overcoming the difficulty little creditable to himself, for he altered the expression my yesternight's evening-walk,' into my solitary wanderings'-a vitiation of the original letter, which has only been of late detected. I do not, indeed, see in Burns's letter conclusive proof that the composition was not commenced or thought of during the Galloway excursion, for a person of all desirable fidelity of mind, in relating an indifferent matter to a friend, may give it in such an abbreviated form, or with such a suppression of particulars, as may amount to a kind of misrepresentation. For example-it is not doubted that Burns composed Tam o' Shanter, as has been related, while wandering one day by the banks of the Nith, in the autumn of 1790; yet, on the 22d of January 1791, he says in a letter to Alexander Cunningham: 'I have just finished a poem (Tam o' Shanter), which you will receive enclosed.' No one could have supposed from this expression that the whole poem had been produced at a heat three or four months before, and that only a few corrections at most had lately been administered to it by the hand of its author. So also the song of Behold the hour, the boat arrive, is sent by Burns to Clarinda in a letter of 27th December 1791, apparently meaning it as appropriate to her circumstances, she being then about to embark for the West Indies. Yet in a letter to Mr Thomson of September 1793, he sends the same song, saying, 'I have this moment finished the song, so you have it glowing from the mint.' It is impossible, however, to observe in this letter of September, the expressions that he had thought no more of Urbani's request till the accidental recollection,' &c., in his 'yesternight's evening-walk,' warmed' him to a pitch of enthusiasm,' and continue to believe that Burns had given Syme a copy the day after the conclusion of their excursion at the beginning of the preceding month. And an error being proved here, it may be the more doubted if Burns was at all engaged in such a subject of poetic meditation during that storm on the wilds of Kenmure. BURNS TO MR THOMSON. [Sept. 1793.] I daresay, my dear sir, that you will begin to think my correspondence is persecution. No matter, I can't help it: a ballad is my hobbyhorse, 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 pilgarlick, the bedlam jockey, quite beyond any useful point or post in the common race of men. 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! BEHOLD THE HOUR. TUNE-Oran Gaoil. Behold the hour, the boat arrive! Thou goest, thou darling of my heart! But fate has willed, and we must part. Yon distant isle will often hail : There, latest marked her vanished sail.' Along the solitary shore, While flitting sea-fowl round me cry, I'll westward turn my wistful eye: MR THOMSON TO 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 |