As he passed through Aberdeen, Burns met Bishop Skinner, a Bishop of the Scottish Episcopal Church; and when he learnt that the Bishop's father, the author of the song of _Tulloch-gorum_, and _The Ewie wi' the crookit horn_, and other Scottish songs, was still alive, an aged Episcopalian clergyman, living in primitive simplicity in _a but and a ben_ at Lishart, near Peterhead, and that on his way to Aberdeen he had passed near the place without knowing it, Burns expressed the greatest regret at having missed seeing the author of songs he so greatly admired. Soon after his return to Edinburgh, he received from old Mr. Skinner a rhyming epistle, which greatly pleased the poet, and to which he replied,--"I regret, and while I live shall regret, that when I was north I had not the pleasure of paying a younger brother's dutiful respect to the author of the best Scotch song ever Scotland saw, _Tulloch-gorum's my delight_." This is strong, perhaps too strong praise. Allan Cunningham, in his _Songs of Scotland_, thus freely comments on it:--"_Tulloch-gorum_ is a lively clever song, but I would never have edited this collection had I thought with Burns that it is the best song Scotland ever saw. I may say with the king in my favourite ballad,-- I trust I have within my realm, Five hundred good as he." We also find Burns, on his return to Edinburgh, writing to the (p. 075) librarian at Gordon Castle to obtain from him a correct copy of a Scotch song composed by the Duke, in the current vernacular style, _Cauld Kail in Aberdeen_. This correct copy he wished to insert in the forthcoming volume of _Johnson's Museum_, with the name of the author appended. At Perth he made inquiries, we are told, "as to the whereabouts of the burn-brae on which be the graves of Bessy Bell and Mary Gray." Whether he actually visited the spot, near the Almond Water, ten miles west of Perth, is left uncertain. The pathetic story of these two hapless maidens, and the fine old song founded on it, had made it to him a consecrated spot. O Bessy Bell and Mary Gray! They were twa bonny lasses, They biggit a bower on yon burn-brae, And theekit it owre wi' rashes, is the beginning of a beautiful song which Allan Ramsay did his best to spoil, as he did in many another instance. Sir Walter Scott afterwards recovered some of the old verses which Ramsay's had superseded, and repeated them to Allan Cunningham, who gives them in his _Songs of Scotland_. Whether Burns knew any more of the song than the one old verse given above, with Ramsay's appended to it, is more than doubtful. As he passed through Perth he secured an introduction to the family of Belches of Invermay, that, on crossing the river Earn on his southward journey, he might be enabled to see the little valley, running down from the Ochils to the Earn, which has been consecrated by the old and well-known song, _The Birks of Invermay_.