was still alive, an aged
Episcopalian clergyman, living in primitive simplicity in _a but and a
ben_ at Lishart, near Peterhead, and that on his way to Aberdeen he
had passed near the place without knowing it, Burns expressed the
greatest regret at having missed seeing the author of songs he so
greatly admired. Soon after his return to Edinburgh, he received from
old Mr. Skinner a rhyming epistle, which greatly pleased the poet, and
to which he replied,--"I regret, and while I live shall regret, that
when I was north I had not the pleasure of paying a younger brother's
dutiful respect to the author of the best Scotch song ever Scotland
saw, _Tulloch-gorum's my delight_." This is strong, perhaps too strong
praise. Allan Cunningham, in his _Songs of Scotland_, thus freely
comments on it:--"_Tulloch-gorum_ is a lively clever song, but I would
never have edited this collection had I thought with Burns that it is
the best song Scotland ever saw. I may say with the king in my
favourite ballad,--

I trust I have within my realm,
Five hundred good as he."

We also find Burns, on his return to Edinburgh, writing to the (p. 075)
librarian at Gordon Castle to obtain from him a correct copy of a
Scotch song composed by the Duke, in the current vernacular style,
_Cauld Kail in Aberdeen_. This correct copy he wished to insert in the
forthcoming volume of _Johnson's Museum_, with the name of the author
appended.

At Perth he made inquiries, we are told, "as to the whereabouts of the
burn-brae on which be the graves of Bessy Bell and Mary Gray." Whether
he actually visited the spot, near the Almond Water, ten miles west of
Perth, is left uncertain. The pathetic story of these two hapless
maidens, and the fine old song founded on it, had made it to him a
consecrated spot.

O Bessy Bell and Mary Gray!
They were twa bonny lasses,
They biggit a bower on yon burn-brae,
And theekit it owre wi' rashes,

is the beginning of a beautiful song which Allan Ramsay did his best
to spoil, as he did in many another instance. Sir Walter Scott
afterwards recovered some of the old verses which Ramsay's had
superseded, and repeated them to Allan Cunningham, who gives them in
his _Songs of Scotland_. Whether Burns knew any more of the song than
the one old verse given above, with Ramsay's appended to it, is more
than doubtful.

As he passed through Perth he sec