DEAR SIR,
I was favoured with yours of the 16th ult., and am much obliged to you for your candid remarks on my last song. I am really ashamed of these bungled airs which I have sent you. Not acquainted with the rules of transposition, and knowing very little of music, it was indeed presumption in me to think of writing them for you. Let my fondness to send you something of the kind plead my exculpation, and be so kind as consign them to the flames. I never was more ambitious to have a song to any air than to “Kitty;” it is worthy of the best poetry that ever was penned. By your friendly suggestions, I have done all in my power to accomplish one to it; with what success, you must now determine. You are, indeed, fastidious; but not too much so. It is in great part owing to that, that Scotland can now with justice boast of perhaps the best collection of songs that ever was produced; and although I may at times pay as much deference to my own dear opinion as ever fool did, yet to yours in these things I shall ever most cheerfully submit. My highest gratification, next to the pleasure of composing a song, is to see it published in some respectable work; and if you think the present one will now stand for a place in yours, I shall gladly let it lie past till convenient for you to publish. If otherwise, I perhaps will send it to some magazine, or give it to some one of the music-sellers. As the first four lines of the concluding stanza correspond with the superstitions of the common people in Ireland, I thought proper to retain them. I beg leave to transcribe you the whole of the song.