d at a
sitting, while they seldom underwent any revision after being committed
to paper. To the following incident, his most popular song,
"Tullochgorum," owed its origin. In the course of a visit he was making
to a friend in Ellon (not Cullen, as has been stated on the authority of
Burns), a dispute arose among the guests on the subject of Whig and Tory
politics, which, becoming somewhat too exciting for the comfort of the
lady of the house, in order to bring it promptly to a close, she
requested Mr Skinner to suggest appropriate words for the favourite air,
"The Reel of Tullochgorum." Mr Skinner readily complied, and, before
leaving the house, produced what Burns, in a letter to the author,
characterised as "the best Scotch song ever Scotland saw." The name of
the lady who made the request to the poet was Mrs Montgomery, and hence
the allusion in the first stanza of the ballad:--

"Come gie 's a sang, Montgomery cried,
And lay your disputes all aside;
What signifies 't for folks to chide
For what was done before them?
Let Whig and Tory all agree," &c.

Though claiming no distinction as a writer of verses, Mr Skinner did not
conceal his ambition to excel in another department of literature. In
1746, in his twenty-fifth year, he published a pamphlet, in defence of
the non-juring character of his Church, entitled "A Preservative against
Presbytery." A performance of greater effort, published in 1757, excited
some attention, and the unqualified commendation of the learned Bishop
Sherlock. In this production, entitled "A Dissertation on Jacob's
Prophecy," which was intended as a supplement to a treatise on the same
subject by Dr Sherlock, the author has established, by a critical
examination of the original language, that the words in Jacob's prophecy
(Gen. xlix. 10), rendered "sceptre" and "lawgiver" in the authorised
version, ought to be translated "tribeship" and "typifier," a difference
of interpretation which obviates some difficulties respecting the exact
fulfilment of this remarkable prediction. In a pamphlet printed in 1767,
Mr Skinner again vindicated the claims and authority of his Church; and
on this occasion, against the alleged misrepresentations of Mr Norman
Sievewright, English clergyman at Brechin, who had published a work
unfavourable to the cause of Scottish Episcopacy. His most important
work, "An Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, from the first appearance
of Christianity i