ted pride,
She me to love beguiled,
I wished her for my bride.'

Take also 'Bessy Bell and Mary Gray'; what a rich fancy and charming
humour plays throughout the piece, united to a keen knowledge of the
human heart--

'O Bessy Bell and Mary Gray,
They are twa bonny lasses;
They bigg'd a bower on yon burnbrae,
And theek'd it o'er with rashes.
Fair Bessy Bell I loo'd yestreen,
And thought I ne'er could alter;
But Mary Gray's twa pawky e'en,
They gar my fancy falter,'

or that verse in his 'Scots Cantata,' with what simplicity, yet with
what true pathos, is it not charged?--

'O bonny lassie, since 'tis sae,
That I'm despised by thee,
I hate to live; but O, I'm wae,
And unco sweer to dee.
Dear Jeany, think what dowy hours
I thole by your disdain:
Why should a breast sae saft as yours
Contain a heart of stane?'

George Withers' famous lines, 'Shall I, wasting in despaire,' are not a
whit more pathetic. Then if we desire humour pure and unadulterated,
where can be found a more delightful _lilt_ than 'The Widow'?

'The widow can bake, and the widow can brew,
The widow can shape, and the widow can sew,[3]
And mony braw things the widow can do,--
Then have at the widow, my laddie.'

Or if you affect a dash of satire in your songs, what more to your taste
than--

'Gi'e me a lass wi' a lump o' land,
And we for life shall gang thegither,
Though daft or wise I'll ne'er demand,
Or black or fair it maks na whether.
I'm aff wi' wit, and beauty will fade,
And blood alane is no worth a shilling;
But she that's rich, her market's made,
For ilka charm aboot her's killing.'

Or if the reader desire the wells of his deepest sympathies to be
stirred, what more truly pathetic than his 'Auld Lang Syne,' which
supplied Burns with many of the ideas for his immortal song; or his
version of 'Lochaber No More'--

'Farewell to Lochaber, and farewell my Jean,
Where heartsome wi' thee I've mony day been;
For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more,
We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more,'

--a song than which to this day few are more popular among Scotsmen. As
a song-writer Ramsay appeals to all natures and all temperaments. He was
almost entirely free from the vice of poetic conventionality. He wrote
what seemed to him best, undeterred by the dread of offending aga