INTRODUCTORY NOTE. A 1877 V, I MAIN ALLAN LLAN RAMSAY'S Poems have always been popular in Scotland, and to this day his Gentle Shepherd is as much read and as often quoted by many of the peasantry as any of the poems of Burns. In Ayrshire there still exist companies of rural actors who relieve the monotony of field labour by evening rehearsals of this pastoral play, and these votaries of Thespis are engaged to act in barns or drawing-rooms on occasions of festivity. The rustics are thoroughly acquainted with their parts, and show intense appreciation of the points of the play. A few years ago, when arrangements were being made by an Ayrshire gentleman with one of these companies for a performance in his drawing-room, he objected to the presentation of a real haggis on the scene, and with difficulty obtained the concession that an imitation one stuffed with bran, should be substituted. To his consternation, he discovered, while the play was in progress, that several of the actors considered it their duty to eat the bran as if it had been savoury haggis. RAMSAY during his lifetime was greatly pleased with the popularity of his poems in Ireland; and that his fame is not yet dead on the other side of the Channel is shown by the fact that to the students of Trinity College, Dublin, passages from his writings are often prescribed for translation into Greek or Latin verse. RAMSAY began his work at a time when such an one as he was needed to rescue ancient Scottish popular poetry from dying amidst the neglect to which it had been long subjected.. The seventeenth century saw Scotchmen engaged in a struggle which called for all their energies, and under whose pressure poetry could not well flourish. ALLAN |