With song-writing Burns began his poetical career, with song-writing
he closed it; and, brilliant as was his achievement in other fields,
it is as a song-writer that he ranks highest among his peers, it is
through his songs that he has rooted himself most deeply in the hearts
of his countrymen.

The most notable and significant fact in connection with his making of
songs is their relation to the melodies to which they are sung. In the
vast majority of cases these are old Scottish tunes, which were known
to Burns before he wrote his songs, and were singing in his ear during
the process of composition. The poet was no technical musician.
Murdoch, his first teacher, says that Robert and Gilbert Burns "were
left far behind by all the rest of the school" when he tried to teach
them a little church music, "Robert's ear, in particular, was
remarkably dull, and his voice untunable. It was long before I could
get them to distinguish one tune from another." Either Murdoch
exaggerated, or the poet's ear developed later (Murdoch is speaking of
him between the ages of six and nine); for he learned to fiddle a
little, once at least attempted to compose an air, could read music
fairly easily, and could write down a melody from memory. His
correspondence with Johnson and Thomson shows that he knew a vast
number of old tunes and was very sensitive to their individual quality
and suggestion.[1] Such a sentence as the following from one of his
Commonplace Books shows how important his responsiveness to music was
for his poetical composition.

"These old Scottish airs are so nobly sentimental that when one
would compose to them, to _south_ the tune, as our Scottish phrase