ion to fundamental human emotions, four songs may be
mentioned, in each of which a different phase of love has been
rendered for all time--

Of a' the airts the wind can blaw,

Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon,

Go fetch to me a pint o' wine;

and that other, in which the calm depth of long-wedded and happy love
utters itself, so blithely yet pathetically,--

John Anderson, my Jo, John.

Then for comic humour of courtship, there is--

Duncan Gray cam here to woo.

For that contented spirit which, while feeling life's troubles, yet
keeps "aye a heart aboon them a'," we have--

Contented wi' little, and cantie wi' mair.

For friendship rooted in the past, there is-- (p. 206)

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

even if we credit antiquity with some of the verses.

For wild and reckless daring, mingled with a dash of finer feeling,
there is _Macpherson's Farewell_. For patriotic heroism--

Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled;

and for personal independence, and sturdy, if self-asserting,
manhood--

A man's a man for a' that.

These are but a few of the many permanent emotions to which Burns has
given such consummate expression, as will stand for all time.

In no mention of his songs should that be forgotten which is so
greatly to the honour of Burns. He was emphatically the purifier of
Scottish song. There are some poems he has left, there are also a few
among his songs, which we could wish that he had never written. But we
who inherit Scottish song as he left it, can hardly imagine how much
he did to purify and elevate our national melodies. To see what he has
done in this way, we have but to compare Burns's songs with the
collection of Scottish songs published by David Herd, in 1769, a few
years before Burns appeared. A genuine poet, who knew well what he
spoke of, the late Thomas Aird, has said, "Those old Scottish
melodies, sweet and strong though they were, strong and sweet, were,
all the more for their very strength and sweetness, a moral plague,
from the indecent words to which many of them had long been set. How
was the plague to be stayed? All the preachers in the land could not
divorce the grossness from the music. The only way was to put (p. 207)
something better in its stead. This inestimable something better
Burns gave us."

So purified and ennobled by Burns,