But there seems also to be a recollection of a little-known Ode by Thomson-Tell me, thou soul of her I love!'

P. 322. My Nannie O. The Lugar joins the river Ayr about two miles south of Mauchline. Burns wrote Stinchar, and in all editions in his lifetime Stinchar appears where we now read the more euphonious Lugar; but it was the poet himself that first suggested Lugar. Burns perhaps never wrote more spontaneously and happily than when he wrote lines 25-28.

P. 323. Ae fond Kiss. The lady was 'Clarinda 'Agnes Craig (Mrs. M'Lehose). See Burns's correspondence for the years 17871788.

P. 323. My Nannie's Awa. The reference is to Clarinda.'

P. 325. Of a' the Airts. 'This song I composed out of compliment to Mrs. Burns. N.B. It was during the honeymoon.-R. B.' It was written at Ellisland, in June 1788.

P. 326. There was a Lad. Kyle is the central division of Ayrshire. Jan. 25, 1759, the date of my bardship's vital existence.-R. B.' 1. 13. To tell his fortune by palmistry.

6

Produced Jan. 1, 1795.

P. 328. For a' that and a' that. 'The piece,' wrote Burns, is not really poetry.' Much of the sentiment of this poem will be found in Young (Night Thoughts-Night Sixth'). 1. 25. Cf. Goldsmith:

Princes and lords may flourish or may fade;

A breath can make them.

Deserted Village.

1. 28. He cannot cause that to happen; Fate has not given a King such power. See Ritson's Scot. Songs, vol. ii. p. 104-'Faith! they

ma' na fa' that.' See also Scott's Note xlix, Lady of the Lake.

P. 329. Auld Lang Syne. This is a reunion song-but almost always sung at parting. Allan Ramsay's song with this title suggested nothing to Burns but the opening line-and the title. For the original version, see F. Sempill's Auld Lang Syne.

P. 330. Scots wha hae.

Il. 22, 23. I have borrowed the last stanza from the common stall edition of Wallace [Hamilton of Gilbertfield's—a mere travesty of Minstrel Harry's]:

A false usurper sinks in every foe,
And liberty returns with every blow:

--a couplet worthy of Homer.'-BURNS.

P. 332. Macpherson's Farewell. This notorious freebooter was executed at Banff in 1700. Except the chorus and one stanza this wild stormful song is wholly Burns's.

P. 333. Braw Lads.

Gala is a tributary of Tweed.

The choral stanza is Tibbie Pagan's (1740

P. 334. Ca' the Yowes. 1821).

1. 13. Cluden or Clouden is Lincluden Abbey, at the confluence of Clouden and Nith, near Dumfries.

P. 338. Duncan Gray. See the 'Wowing of Jok and Jenny' in The Evergreen. Ailsa Craig is an island rock in the Firth of Clyde, opposite Girvan.

1. 15. Committing suicide by drowning. Cf. The lover's lowp' in Ramsay's The Gentle Shepherd.

P. 342. The Gloomy Night. When Burns wrote this song, in the autumn of 1786, he expected to sail to the West Indies in a few days.

11. 5, 6. Cf. Otway's Orphan, v. ii. :

So in the fields

When the destroyer has been out for prey

The scattered lovers of the feathered kind, &c.

P. 344. And maun I still on Menie doat?

11. 21-28. Cf. Gray's Elegy-beginning 'Haply some hoary-headed swain may say.'

P. 351. My ain kind Dearie O. Otherwise entitled The Lea-rig. This lovely pastoral was suggested by a song in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, mostly composed' (says Burns) by poor Fergusson in one of his merry humours.' With this remark David Laing agrees.

P. 354. Clarinda.

11. 3, 4. Cf. Ford's The Lady's Trial; also Thomson's Winter:

Miserable they.

Take their last look of the descending sun.

P. 355. Song of Death.

ll. 11, 12. Cf. Young (Night Thoughts, v.):

Death loves a shining mark-a signal blow!

P. 363. Willie brew'd. Willie was William Nicol, one of the masters of the Edinburgh High School; Allan and Rab were Allan

Masterton, also of the High School, and Burns. The meeting was at Nicol's lodging (in the summer vacation) near Moffat.

P. 364. No Churchman am I.

Il. 21, 22. Young (Night Thoughts, ii.):

Life's cares are comforts; such by Heaven design'd;

He that has none must make them or be wretched.

P. 368. Does Haughty Gaul. Burns joined a company of Volunteers enrolled at Dumfries in 1795, and on the occasion wrote this song.

P. 418. The Fête Champêtre.

11. 8, 9. James Boswell, who accompanied Dr. Johnson (UrsaMajor') on his tour through the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

P. 461.

The Dean of Faculty.

1. 7. Henry Erskine, and Robert Dundas (of Arniston). Dundas was elected (1796).

P. 515. Bonnie Lass of Albany. The marriage of Prince Charles Edward Stuart (the Young Pretender) with Clementina Walkinshaw was announced, and their daughter, the Duchess of Albany, was legitimated, by the Parliament of Paris, 1787.

P. 529. Willie's Wife. Linkumdoddie is no imaginary place, as is commonly supposed. The son of the minister of Broughton, Mr. J. R. Cosens, Advocate, writing to The Scotsman, Oct. 4, 1889, thus identifies it :-'Five and a half miles above Broughton, on the road to Tweedsmuir and Moffat, there is a hill burn, which joins the Tweed, called the Logan Water, and on the bank of the Tweed, nearly opposite to the spot where the waters meet, stood a thatched cottage known as Linkumdoddie. The place is still marked by three trees, but the cottage disappeared forty years ago. An old inhabitant of this district told me that he minds his grandfather speaking to him about a Gideon Thomson, a weaver, who at the end of last century lived at Linkumdoddie. This man was what in those days was called a customer weaver, and seems to have been a character. My informant says he himself remembers the cottage, and is sure that his grandfather always spoke of the place by the name of Linkumdoddie.'