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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 business.

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 Frazer'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

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ROYAL SCOT's address to his heroic followers on that eventful morning.*

BRUCE TO HIS TROOPS,

ON THE EVE OF THE BATTLE OF

BANNOCKBURN.

TO ITS AIN TUNE.

SCOTS, wha hae wi' WALLACE bled,
SCOTS, wham BRUCE has aften led;
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victorie.

Now's the day, and now's the hour;
See the front o' battle lour;

See approach proud Edward's power-
Chains and slavery!

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 and law
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
FREE-MAN stand, or FREE-MAN fa',

Let him follow me!

This noble strain was conceived by our poet during a stor19 among the wilds of Glen-Ken in Galloway. A more finished copy will be found afterwards.

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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 ryhming 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.

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 tinklegingle, tinkle-gingle of its own bells; that it is sure to run poor pilgarlic, the bedlam-jockey, quite beyond any useful point or post in the common race of man.

The following song I have composed for Orangaoil, 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!

Tune- ORAN-GAOIL.”

BEHOLD the hour, the boat arrive ;
Thou goest, thou darling of my heart!
Sever'd from thee, can I survive?

But fate has will'd, and we must part.

I'll often greet this surging swell,

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!

No. XLI.

MR THOMSON to MR BURNS.

Edinburgh, 5th September, 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 Shakespeare 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; intreated 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; and I think Lewie Gordon is most happily adapted to your ode:

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