Some little time before I left Scotland there came to Thornliebank a designer for the Crum Mills, who had a very fine tenor voice. He was a little unlike some of our native singers, such as John Semple, whose bass was one of the most sonorous I have ever heard; who gave to his solo work a genius of interpretation I have never known excelled, but who couldn’t read a note, and relied entirely on his unfailing, memorial ear. Our tenor was a technician, with a passion for the science of melody, and a determination to excel in the professional world--which he has since done in two continents. He is George Neil, conductor of the Toronto Scottish Chorus, one of the sweetest lyric tenors you could wish to hear, and a relentless worker in the cause of perpetuating Scottish songs. Discussing, the other evening, the musical associations of the region we both knew so well, George and I agreed that the Pageant Chorus, which has opened a new chapter in the great story of the Canadian National Exhibition, is a measurable, modernized, Canadianized expansion of the Tannahill concerts on Gleniffer Braes, to which, with myriads more, Thornliebank used to flock on a summer Saturday afternoon, to hear anywhere up to a thousand voices, drawn from city and country choirs, commemorate a Scottish poet who thus received a tribute unequalled, I think, by anything that has annually been dedicated to his master Burns. Tannahill was the son of a Paisley handloom weaver. He was put to the shuttle as a boy, but studied the poetry of Burns, Fergusson and Ramsay till he developed an intense ambition to emulate them. He fused his muse with the music of his loom, and tuned his metres with his shuttle. At thirty-three he took the advice of those who noted the local popularity of his poetry and published a volume of 175 songs and lyrics that enabled him to bank twenty pounds. But at thirty-six, when Constable refused to publish a corrected edition, his heart broke and he was found drowned. One of his best pieces is “The Braes of Gleniffer”; and it was in a natural amphitheatre, on the braes of Gleniffer, visible from Thornliebank, that the yearly commemorative concert was held. The braes were five miles from home; but nothing was thought of walking the distance. The Tannahill concerts were known all over the south of Scotland; and for several decades it was a distinction to be a singer in them. My father was a foreman in the Crum mills, and did his bit in religious and social service. He was a highly Calvinistic Presbyterian, of a sect which has no perpetuation in Canada. My mother, a Blair of Barrhead, was also of his kirk--the kirk of Original Seceders it was formally called, after a certain process of union had been consummated.