e Lothians, though the Lowlands, as a whole,
are well represented. Of Gaelic proverbs there is scarce a trace,
showing how faintly, despite his Jacobitism, his sympathies were aroused
by Celtic tradition or Celtic poetry. Many of the sayings were
undoubtedly coined in Ramsay's own literary mint, though the ideas may
have been common property among the people of his day. But how close the
union between the ideas and their expression in this collection! Of
looseness of phrase there is scarce a trace. How apt the stereotyping of
current idioms in such pithy verbal nuggets as--'Ne'er tell your fae
when your foot sleeps,' 'Nature passes nurture,' 'Muckledom is nae
virtue,' 'Happy the wife that's married to a motherless son,' 'Farmers'
faugh gar lairds laugh.'

Ramsay's dedication of his volume of _Scots Proverbs_ to 'The Tenantry
of Scotland, Farmers of the Dales and Storemasters of the Hills,' shows
the value he attached to this kind of literature. He writes in the
colloquial Scots, and his words are valuable as presenting us with a
reliable example of the Scots vernacular as spoken in educated circles
early last century. 'The following hoard of _Wise Sayings_ and
observations of our forefathers,' he remarks, 'which have been gathering
through many bygone ages, I have collected with great care, and restored
to their proper sense, which had been frequently _tint_ [lost] by
publishers that did not understand our landwart [inland] language.... As
naething helps our happiness mair than to hae the mind made up with
right principles, I desire you, for the thriving and pleasure of you and
yours, to use your een and lend your lugs to these guid auld says, that
shine wi' wailed sense and will as lang as the warld wags. Gar your
bairns get them by heart; let them hae a place among your family-books;
and may never a window-sole through the country be without them. On a
spare hour, when the day is clear, behind a rick, or on the green howm,
draw the treasure frae your pooch and enjoy the pleasant companion. Ye
happy herds, while your hirdsels are feeding on the flowery braes, ye
may eithly mak yoursels masters of the holy ware.'

Hitherto the sky of Ramsay's life had been well-nigh cloudless.
Misfortune and failure had never shrivelled his hopes or his enterprises
with the frost of disappointment. Nothing more serious than an envious
scribbler's splenetic effusions had ever assailed him. Now he was to
know the sting of mortification a