As a semi-irrelevant aside, about forty or fifty years ago I read the opinion of a "leading" meteorologist of the time that, in their opinion, August should be regarded as an autumn month. Well, I spent the Augusts of both 1975 and 1976 in the northern Highlands, and anyone of a certain age (me included) who was in Scotland at that time will attest that those remarkable Augusts were anything but "autumnal!" And in Burns' time the climate was much colder than it is today.