ture
is not to be totally changed even by such a force as the Reformation.
Especially among the peasantry occasions recurred--weddings, funerals,
harvest-homes, New-Year's Eves, and the like--when, the minister being
at a safe distance and whisky having relaxed the awe of the kirk
session, the "wee sinfu' fiddle" was produced, and song and the dance
broke forth. It was under such clandestine conditions that the
traditional songs of Scotland had been handed down for some
generations before Burns's day, and the conditions had gravely
affected their character. The melodies could not be stained, but the
words had degenerated until they had lost most of whatever imaginative
quality they had possessed, and had acquired instead only grossness.

Such words, it was clear, Johnson could not use in his _Museum_, and
the discovery of Burns was to him the most extraordinary good fortune.
For Burns not only knew, as we have seen, the old songs--words and
airs--by the score, but was able to purify, complete, or replace the
words according to the degree of their corruption. Various poets have
caught up scraps of folk-song and woven them into their verse; but
nowhere else has a poet of the people appeared with such a rare
combination of original genius and sympathetic feeling for the tone
and accent of the popular muse, as enabled Burns to recreate Scottish
song. If patriotic Scots wish to justify the achievement of Burns on
moral grounds, it is here that their argument lies: for whatever of
coarseness and license there may have been in his life and writings,
it is surely more than counter-balanced by the restoration to his
people of the possibility of national music and clean mirth.

One can not classify the songs of Burns into two clearly separated
groups, original and remodeled, for no hard lines can be drawn. Since
he practically always began with the tune, he frequently used the
title or the first line of the old song. He might do this, yet
completely change the idea; or he might retain the idea but use none
of the old words. In other cases the first stanza or the chorus is
retained; in still others the new song is sprinkled with here a phrase
and there an epithet recalling the derelict that gave rise to it. Some
are made up of stanzas from several different predecessors, others are
almost centos of stock phrases.

The contribution thus made to Johnson's collection, of songs rescued
or remade or wholly original, amounted to some