that almost all were posed to old melodies. while in edinburgh he uook to supply material for johnson's “musical museum,” and as few of the traditional songs could appear in a respectable colle, burns found it necessary to make them over. sometimes he kept a stanza or two; sometimes only a line or chorus; sometimes merely the name of the air; the rest was his own. his method, as he has told us himself, was to bee familiar with the traditional melody, to catch a suggestion from some fragment of the old song, to fix upon an idea or situation for the new poem; then, humming or whistling the tune as he went about his work, he wrought out the new verse
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