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STORIES OF
tenderness and sentiment of the poet himself, and these we are inclined to accept as being by-Burns.
And now as to the music of this fine old song. The original air, which Burns pronounced to be mediocre, was soon abandoned, and one said to be from " I fee'd a lad at Michaelmas," which, in its turn, was taken from a Strathspey dance tune called " The Miller's Wedding," was used in its stead, and is given in Bremner's " Collec-tion of Scots Reels," 1759. The tune bears a strong resemblance to " Comin' thro' the Rye," " Oh hey, Johnnie lad," and " For the sake of Somebody." To come to the point at once, the melody to which the lyric is now sung was be-yond dispute composed by William Shield, who was born at Durham, 1748, and buried in West-minster Abbey in 1829. He wrote the music of thirty-five operas, operettas, dramas and pan-tomimes, and to such favourite old songs as "Old Towler," "The Thorn," "The Wolf," " The Heaving of the Lead," " Arethusa," " The Post Captain" and "Auld Lang Syne." A writer in the "Newcastle Weekly Chronicle," early in December 1891, said: "I have been privileged to read the correspondence between Dr. Bruce and Mr. Chappell, the learned author of 'Popular Music in the Olden Times,' on
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