PREFACE. THE peculiar merits of the Songs of Scotland have so often been insisted upon, that little remains for me here, except to point out what my aim has been in adding one more to the already long list of printed collections. Hitherto compilers have studied to have quantity rather than quality; there is not a sufficient number of really excellent Scottish Songs, exclusive of Burns's, to fill more than a small volume; so that the wheat has in few cases been separated from the chaff. I have inserted no song except such as I believed to be possessed of real merit; and, at the same time, have chosen only those that have won their way to the hearts of the Scottish people, and dwelt there,-in itself a good test, for, as Goethe says, 'What has kept its place in the hearts of the people even for twenty years is pretty certain to have true merit.' The smallness of the space at my command, while allowing me to exclude such as I deemed inferior, has compelled me to leave out many excellent songs of Burns, whose name will be lovingly cherished as long as there are Scotch hearts in the world. Mr. Carlyle says of him, 'It will seem a small praise if we rank him as the first of all our song-writers; for we know not where to find one worthy of being second to him.' I should have preferred to make these songs the foundation of this collection, but they have been so often printed, and are so well known, that it has been thought advisable to introduce them rather as a spice than as the pièce de resistance. In the case of a few of the older songs, written in an age, as far as language is concerned at least, more rude than our own, where I have not been able to give the earliest versions entire, I have chosen to omit an indelicate stanza, when not destroying the sense, rather than substitute commonplace vulgarized readings of them. When there are changes they are for most part by the delicate masterly hand of Burns. When |