But whatever may be said for the Gaelic, it is certain that Scotticisms were in those days winning their place in song and in tale. Since the day, in the first quarter of the century (1725), when Allan Ramsay had sent out from his book shop in Edinboro', his rustic eclogue of the _Gentle Shepherd_, a love had been ripening and growing for those Scottish strains which were to find their last and unsurpassable expression by and by, in the glow and passion of Burns. Meantime there were hundreds along the Teviot, and the Esk, and by Ettrickdale, who rolled under their tongues delightedly the Scottish bubbles of song, which broke--now from a bookseller, now from a schoolmaster, now from a Jacobite, {229} and now from a "stickit" minister.[6] I will give you one taste of this Scotticism of the borders, were it only to clear your thought of the gloom and crags of Ossian. It is usually attributed to Halket, a Jacobite school-master, not so well known as Ramsay or Robert Ferguson:-- [Sidenote: Logie O'Buchan.] "O Logie o' Buchan, O Logie the laird, They ha'e ta'en awa' Jamie, that delved in the yard, Wha played on the pipe, and the viol sae sma', They ha'e ta'en awa' Jamie, the flower o' them a'. "Tho' Sandy has ousen, has gear and has kye, A house and a hadden, and siller forbye; Yet I'd tak' my ain lad, wi' his staff in his hand, Before I'd ha'e him, wi' the houses and land. "My Daddie looks sulky, my Minnie looks sour, They frown upon Jamie because he is poor; Tho' I lo'e them as weel as a daughter should do They're nae half sa dear to me, Jamie, as you. "I sit on my creepie, I spin at my wheel And think on the laddie that lo'ed me sae weel, He had but ae saxpence, he brak it in twa And gied me the hauf o't, when he ga'd awa'." {230} Yet the poet, from whom we quote, died only three years before Burns was born; but I think we can see from the graces of this modest schoolmaster singer, that taste and accomplishment were both ripening in those north latitudes for the times and the man, in which and in whom, such poetry as that of Burns should be possible.