Teaching harmony, I wanted to encourage my students to trust their musical instincts. To do this, I suggested they harmonize old folksongs rather than dull harmony exercises. Beyond that, for myself as their teacher, it was much more pleasant to grade twenty versions of How Lang and Dreary is the Night than any textbook exercise.

At the same time, these melodies hold a special place in my heart - perhaps it is my long ago Scots ancestry or perhaps my tendency toward sappiness - when the opportunity arose to arrange several melodies, I took it with great pleasure. The original melodies are taken from a collection of Burns' poetry. In these arrangments, Burn's melodies are toyed with in a relatively straightforward manner.