with critical observations and biographical notices, by Robert Burns

£07
Songs, called, '^ What ails the Lasses at meT' and
" The Rock and the zeee pickle tozv." They are
printed in this Collection immediately after *' l^he
Bridal o't" He was born about the year 1700. His
father was a farmer, in the parish of Kincardine
O'Neil, Aberdeenshire. His first settlement was at
Birs, as parochial school-master, about the year
1733. He removed to Lochlee, Forfarshire, where
he died in May 1783, after residing fifty years in the
centre of the Grampians, almost secluded from the
converse of men and books. Mr. Ross's grandson,
the Rev. Alexander Thomson, gives the following
account of him in a letter to Mr. Campbell, author
of An Introduction to the History of Poetry in
Scotland^ dated Lintrethen, 14th June, 1798.
" He (Ross) was a plain man, had the character of
being a good school-master, was very rehgious,
which appeared by his behaviour as much as by his
profession. He was an excellent Latin scholar, and
wrote with considerable accuracy, till the days of old
age and infirmity, when he wrote a Poem, entitled,
* The Orphan J and attempted to publish it at
Aberdeen, with some other little performances,
which, on account of their inaccuracy, of which the
worthy author was not so sensible as he would have
formerly been, he was advised by Dr. Beattie, one
of his best friends, not to publish."