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The 'tired ploughman,' too, may owe something to this farther line of Burns:—
'Poor labour sweet in sleep was lock'd';
while the animals seeking shelter may well follow this inimitable and touching description:—
l. 91. 'I cannot help here mentioning that, on the night on which these lines were written, suggested as they were by a sudden fall of snow, beginning after sunset, an unfortunate man perished exactly in the manner here described, and his body was next morning found close to his own house. The accident happened within five miles of the farm of Ashestiel.'—Scott.
l. 101. 'The Scottish Harvest-home.'—Scott. Perhaps the name 'kirn' is due to the fact that a churnful of cream is a feature of the night's entertainment. In Chambers's Burns, iii. 151, Robert Ainslie gives an account of a kirn at Ellisland in 1790.
l. 102. Cp. the 'wood-notes wild' with which Milton credits Shakespeare, 'L'Allegro,' 131.
ll. 104-5. The ideal pastoral life of the Golden Age.
l. 132. 'Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, Baronet; unequalled, perhaps, in the degree of individual affection entertained for him by his friends, as well as in the general respect and esteem of Scotland at large. His "Life of Beattie," whom he befriended and patronised in life, as well as celebrated after his decease, was not long published, before the benevolent and affectionate biographer was called to follow the subject of his narrative. This melancholy event very shortly succeeded the marriage of the friend, to whom this introduction is addressed, with one of Sir William's daughters.'—Scott.
l. 133. 'The Minstrel' is Beattie's chief poem; it is one of the few poems in well-written Spenserian stanza.
l. 147. Ps. lxviii. 5.
l. 151. Prov. xxvii. 10.
l. 155. For account of Sir W. Forbes, see his autobiographical 'Memoirs of a Banking House'; Chambers's 'Eminent Scotsmen'; and 'Dictionary of National Biography.'