Allan Ramsay. [A biography.] - National Library of Scotland

—
ALLAN RAMSAY 151
Or if you affect a dash of satire in your songs, what more
to your taste than
—
' Gi'e me a lass wi' a lump o' land,
And we for life shall gang thegither,
Though daft or wise I'll ne'er demand,
Or black or fair it males na whether.
I'm aff wi' wit, and beauty will fade,
And blood alane is no worth a shilling ;
But she that's rich, her market's made,
For ilka charm aboot her's killing.'
Or if the reader desire the wells of his deepest sympathies
to be stirred, what more truly pathetic than his 'Auld
Lang Syne,' which supphed Burns with many of the
ideas for his immortal song ; or his version of ' Lochaber
No More'
' Farewell to Lochaber, and farewell my Jean,
Where heartsome wi' thee I've mony day been
For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more,
We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more,'
—a song than which to this day few are more popular
among Scotsmen. As a song-writer Ramsay appeals to
all natures and all temperaments. He was almost
entirely free from the vice of poetic conventionality.
He wrote what seemed to him best, undeterred by
the dread of offending against poetic canons, or the
principles of this, that, or the other school of poetry.
He was a natural singer, not one formed by art—
singer, voicing his patriotic enthusiasm in many a lay,
that for warmth of national feeling, for intense love of
his species, for passionate expression of the tenderer
emotions, is little behind the best of the songs of Robert
Burns. Granted that his was not the power to sweep.
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