And at night she’ll return to her nest back again.’
In a foot-note Cromek remarks—‘It is pleasing to mark those touches of sympathy which shew the sons of genius to be of one kindred.—In the following passage from the poem of his countryman, the same figure is illustrated with characteristic simplicity; and never were the tender and the sublime in poetry more happily united, nor a more affectionate tribute paid to the memory of Burns.
—— “Thou simple bird,
Of all the vocal quire, dwell’st in a home
The humblest; yet thy morning song ascends
Nearest to Heaven;—sweet emblem of his[22] song,
Who sung thee wakening by the daisy’s side!”’
It can only be inferred from the nature of this foot-note that Cromek believed the verses to have been written by Burns, notwithstanding the fact that he had Gilbert Burns’s statement that his brother was not their author. The subsequent editorial history of the lines is still more interesting. In the Kilmarnock edition of the poet’s works, they are given with this note:—‘Although this double stanza exists in Burns’s own writing, his brother, Gilbert, assured Cromek that the little song was sung by every ploughman and ploughman’s mistress in Ayrshire, before the poet was born.’[23] The Rev. Dr. P. Hately Waddel, and the Rev. George Gilfillan, in their editions of the works of Burns, both insert the verses without any comment. Mr. William Scott Douglas, one of the latest and most competent editors of Burns, has this note upon the ‘Ploughman’s Song’:—‘Gilbert Burns expressed to Cromek a strong doubt regarding his brother’s authorship of these lines, as also of some other pieces found in his handwriting, and included in the Reliques of the poet; but as the authorship of the “Bonie Muirhen”—one of the pieces referred to—has been clearly traced to Burns, we do not feel at liberty to reject the lines in the text.’[24] Mr. Douglas inserts the verses under the date 1780, when Burns was twenty-two years of age; and in this connection it is worthy of notice that another editor has put it under the year 1794, when the poet was thirty-six years of age.
The obvious suggestion from what has been said is, that Burns was not the author of the ‘Lines on a Merry Ploughman,’ which his editors, after the dogmatic statement of Gilbert Burns, have more or less insisted upon attributing to him; and, as a corollary, that the verses having been found among others at the end of one of Dougal Graham’s chap-books, as a consistent finish to the exploits of his hero, Lothian Tom, in an edition published when Burns was a youth, their authorship may be more clearly traced to Graham. With a due admiration for the talents of Graham, we must submit that the character of the verse, even as given in a slightly polished state by Cromek, was not worthy of Burns, who said himself that his work was all the result of careful revisal. Graham’s verses often display false quantity; his rhyme is often far from true; and his grammar is frequently lame: but these are faults which the greatest detractor of the genius of Robert Burns would find it difficult to lay to his charge. It might be urged, of course, that this may have been a youthful production of Burns’s pen; but it is more probable, from his known habit of noting down any remnant of song he found among the people, that he wrote out what he had heard sung from his infancy. In support of this idea, there is Gilbert Burns’s assurance ‘that the little song was sung by every ploughman and ploughman’s mistress in Ayrshire before the poet was born.’ To us it seems conclusive that Burns was not its author, and that, from its position in an early—not by any means the first—edition of one of Graham’s most popular chap-books, to Graham must be attributed its composition, with all the praise or blame that may attach to it.