Here at last is the true ring, without bravado, without conceit, without bestiality,—only the splendid high spirits, the foolish, unhesitating happiness of youth:—
"It is the moon, I ken her horn,
That's blinkin' in the lift sae hie;
She shines sae bright to wyle us hame,
But, by my sooth, she'll wait a wee!"
When Burns sings in this strain, even those who wear the blue ribbon may pause and listen kindly, remembering, if they like, before leaving the world of "Scotch wit, Scotch religion, and Scotch drink," so repellent to Mr. Arnold's pitiless good taste, how another jovial north-countryman has defined for them the inestimable virtue of temperance. "Nae man shall ever stop a nicht in my house," says the Ettrick Shepherd, "without partakin' o' the best that's in it, be 't meat or drink; and if the coof canna drink three or four tummlers or jugs o' toddy, he has nae business in the Forest. Now, sir, I ca' that no an abstemious life,—for why should any man be abstemious?—but I ca' 't a temperate life, and o' a' the virtues, there's nane mair friendly to man than Temperance."
