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FAMOUS SONGS
polished and improved the words and made the song more singable and consistent, and there is not the slightest doubt that he did take it down, in a rough state, perhaps, from the lips of some old minstrel—they were just dying out then—or wandering bag piper, as he avowedly took down so many other songs. Now Burns has had many pieces credited to him which he never acknowledged himself, and Burns was not the writer to deny himself the least claim to fame or celebrity. The fact is that Burns communicated in words and music more than sixty songs, "begged, borrowed or stolen," as he jocularly declares, to make up the " Mu-seum." Besides which, a great number of his own finest songs carried no signature, and it is therefore not wonderful that some confusion should have occasionally occurred in allocating a few of the borrowed ones. For instance, " Comin thro' the Rye" (" Gin a body meet a body") is attributed by Joseph Skipsey to the poet, while another editor says he wrote " Could aught of Song"—pieces that were anonymous long before Burns's time ! It seems to me that we have no right whatever to assume that Burns was deliberately deceiving both Mrs. Dunlop and Mr. Thomson as to the authorship of the song. Anyhow, the words—of the
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