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and ballads, soon seized upon the rough lyric —believed to have been " polished" by Francis Sempill, of Beltrees—and destroyed the in-tention of the original, as may be observed from this verse, in which Ramsay casts good-fellow-ship overboard, and makes love the keynote :
" Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
Tho' they leturn with scars, These are the noble hero's lot,
Obtained in glorious -wars ; "Welcome my Vara, to my breast,
Thy arms about me twine, And make me once again as blest
As I was lang syne."
This song of honest Allan's was first printed in his "Tea-Table Miscellany" in 1724, from which it was transferred to Johnson's " Musical Museum," published during Burns's sojourn in the Scottish capital. Allan Ramsay's lyric is not so bad as many have tried to make out, and as a love-song was very popular for a long time. Burns, who was partly responsible for the edit-ing of the " Musical Museum" for Johnson, in which so many ancient pieces first saw the light as printed matter, made many annotations and alterations, and of "Auld Lang Syne" he wrote: " Ramsay here, as usual with him, has taken the idea of the song and the first line
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