In 1736 our poet published a collection of _Scots Proverbs_, which, for some reason or another, has never been printed with his poems in those editions that are professedly complete. Only in Oliver's pocket edition is this excellent thesaurus of pithy and forcible Scottish apophthegms presented with his other works. That it is one of the best repertories of our proverbial current coin that exists, particularly with regard to the crystallised shrewdness and keen observation embodied in them, must be apparent to any reader, even the most cursory. To supersede the trashy works of Fergusson and Kelly was the reason why Ramsay set himself to gather up the wealth of aphoristic wisdom that lay manna-like on all sides of him. As might be expected, it is richest in the sayings common throughout the three Lothians, though the Lowlands, as a whole, are well represented. Of Gaelic proverbs there is scarce a trace, showing how faintly, despite his Jacobitism, his sympathies were aroused by Celtic tradition or Celtic poetry. Many of the sayings were undoubtedly coined in Ramsay's own literary mint, though the ideas may have been common property among the people of his day. But how close the union between the ideas and their expression in this collection! Of looseness of phrase there is scarce a trace. How apt the stereotyping of current idioms in such pithy verbal nuggets as--'Ne'er tell your fae when your foot sleeps,' 'Nature passes nurture,' 'Muckledom is nae virtue,' 'Happy the wife that's married to a motherless son,' 'Farmers' faugh gar lairds laugh.' Ramsay's dedication of his volume of _Scots Proverbs_ to 'The Tenantry of Scotland, Farmers of the Dales and Storemasters of the Hills,' shows the value he attached to this kind of literature. He writes in the colloquial Scots, and his words are valuable as presenting us with a reliable example of the Scots vernacular as spoken in educated circles early last century. 'The following hoard of _Wise Sayings_ and observations of our forefathers,' he remarks, 'which have been gathering through many bygone ages, I have collected with great care, and restored to their proper sense, which had been frequently _tint_ [lost] by publishers that did not understand our landwart [inland] language.... As naething helps our happiness mair than to hae the mind made up with right principles, I desire you, for the thriving and pleasure of you and yours, to use your een and lend your lugs to these guid auld says, that shine wi' wailed sense and will as lang as the warld wags. Gar your bairns get them by heart; let them hae a place among your family-books; and may never a window-sole through the country be without them. On a spare hour, when the day is clear, behind a rick, or on the green howm, draw the treasure frae your pooch and enjoy the pleasant companion. Ye happy herds, while your hirdsels are feeding on the flowery braes, ye may eithly mak yoursels masters of the holy ware.'