Preface

imals, revealed one of the most attractive sides of burns' personality. many of his poems were never printed during his lifetime, the most remarkable of these being “the jolly beggars,” a pie which, by the iy of his imaginative sympathy and the brilliance of his teique, he renders a picture of the lowest dregs of society in such a way as to raise it into the realm of great poetry.

but the real national importance of burns is due chiefly to his songs. the puritan austerity of the turies following the reformation had disced secular music, like other forms of art, in scotland; and as a result scottish song had bee hopelessly degraded in point both of ded literary quality. from youth burns had been ied in colleg the fragments he had heard sung or found printed, and he came tard the resg of this almost lost national ian the light of a vocation. about his song-making, two points are especially hy: first, that the greater number of his lyrics sprang from actual emotional experien

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