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 one hundred eighty-four; to Thomson's about sixty-four. Some examples will make clear the nature of his services.
[Auld Lang Syne], perhaps the most wide-spread of all songs among the English-speaking peoples, is in its oldest extant form attributed on uncertain grounds to Francis Sempill of Beltrees or Sir Robert Aytoun.[2] That still older forms had existed appears from its title in the broadside in which it is preserved:
“An excellent and proper new ballad, entitled Old Long Syne. Newly corrected and amended, with a large and new edition [sic] of several excellent love lines.”
[2] ] The melody to which the song is now sung is not that to which Burns wrote it, but was an old strathspey tune. It is possible, however, that he agreed to its adoption by Thomson.
It opens thus:
Should old acquaintance be forgot
And never thought upon,
The Flames of Love extinguishèd