Like Davie Gellatley, Jock “is in good earnest the half-crazed simpleton which he appears to be, and incapable of any steady exertion. He has just so much wild wit as saves him from the imputation of insanity, warm affections, a prodigious memory, and an ear for music.” This latter quality is a point of resemblance which puts all question of their identity past the possibility of doubt. Davie it must be well remembered by the readers of “Waverley,” is there represented as constantly singing wild scraps of ancient songs and ballads, which, by a beautiful fiction of the author, he is said to have received in legacy from a poetical brother who died in a decline some years before. His conversation was in general carried on by means of these, to the great annoyance of young Waverley, and such as, like him, did not comprehend the strange metaphorical meaning of his replies and allusions. Now, Jock’s principal talent and means of subsistence are vested in his singular and minstrel-like powers of song, there being few of our national melodies of which he cannot chaunt forth a verse, as the occasion may suggest to his memory. He never fails to be a welcome guest with all the farmers he may chance to visit,[2] on account of his faculties of entertaining them with the tender or warlike ditties of the Border, or the more smart and vulgar songs of the modern world. It is to be remarked, that his style of singing, like the styles of all other great geniuses in the fine arts, is entirely his own. Sometimes his voice soars to the ecstasy of the highest, and sometimes descends to the melancholious grunt of the lowest pitch; while ever and anon he throws certain wild and beautiful variations into both the words and the music, _ad libitum_, which altogether stamp his performances with a character of the most perfect originality. He generally sings very much through his nose, especially in humorous songs; and, from his making a curious hiss, or twang, on setting off into a melody, one might almost think that he employs his notorious buck-teeth in the capacity of what musicians term a _pitchfork_. Jock, by means of his singing powers, was one of the first who circulated the rising fame of his countryman, the Ettrick Shepherd, many of whose early songs he committed to memory, and sung publicly over all the country round. One beginning, “Oh Shepherd, the weather is misty and changing,” and the well known lyric of “Love is like a dizziness,” besides being the first poetical efforts of their ingenious and wonderful author, were the earliest of Jock Gray’s favourite songs, and perhaps became the chief means of setting him up in the trade of a wandering minstrel. We have seen him standing upon a _dees stane_ in the street of Peebles, entertaining upwards of a hundred people with the latter ludicrous ditty; and many a well-told penny has he made it squeeze from the iron purses of the inhabitants of that worthy town, “albeit unused to the _opening_ mood.”