 His writings cover a fairly wide variety of themes - love, death, sorrow, regret, longing, religion, nature, philosophy and patriotism etc.as well as hymnology and political speeches.Undoubtedly the most popular of his poems is "Auld Selkirk Toon" the words of which were put to music by G. R. Colledge and adopted as one of the town's songs at Selkirk's great annual festival - the common riding.