Volume Vi Part 1 (2/2)
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Thomas of Ercildoune, better known as the Rhymer, lived in the reign of Alexander III. No lyric of his composition has been preserved.
[2] The ballads of Professor Aytoun, it is hardly necessary to remark, would have been an ornament to any age.
[3] The publisher of this meritorious little work, Mr David Robertson of Glasgow, was a native of Port of Menteith, Perths.h.i.+re; he died at Glasgow on the 6th of October 1854. Mr Robertson maintained an extensive correspondence with the humbler bards, and succeeded in recovering many interesting lyrics, which would otherwise have perished. He was also reputed as the publisher of the facetious collection of anecdotes which appeared under the t.i.tle of the ”Laird of Logan.”
[4] Robert Archibald Smith, so justly celebrated in connexion with the modern history of Scottish Music, was born at Reading, Berks.h.i.+re, on the 16th November 1780. In his twentieth year he settled in Paisley, where he formed the acquaintance of Tannahill, whose best songs he subsequently set to music. In 1823, he became precentor in St George's Church, Edinburgh, on the recommendation of its celebrated pastor, the late Dr Andrew Thomson. His numerous musical works continue to be held in high estimation. His death took place at Edinburgh on the 3d January 1829.
OBSERVATIONS ON SCOTTISH SONG:
WITH
REMARKS ON THE GENIUS
OF
LADY NAIRN, THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD, AND ROBERT TANNAHILL.
BY HENRY SCOTT RIDDELL.
Songs are the household literature of the Scottish people; they are especially so as regards the rural portion of the population. Till of late years, when collections of song have become numerous, and can be procured at a limited price, a considerable trade was carried on by itinerant venders of halfpenny ballads. Children who were distant from school, learned to read on these; and the aged experienced satisfaction in listening to words and sentiments familiar to them from boyhood. That the Scots, a thoughtful and earnest people, should have evinced such a deep interest in minstrelsy, is explained in the observation of Mr Carlyle, that ”serious nations--all nations that can still listen to the mandates of Nature--have prized song and music as the highest.” Deep feeling, like powerful thought, seeks and finds relief in expression; the wisdom of Divine benevolence has so arranged, that what brings relief to one, generally affords peace or pleasure to another. And, further, where there is a susceptibility, a capacity of enjoyment, there will be efforts made in order to its gratification. The human heart loves the things of romance, and in the exercise of its native privilege, delights to feel. Scottish song has been written in harmony with nature, scenery, and circ.u.mstances; and fledged in its own melodies, which seem no less the outpouring of native sensibility, has borne itself onward from generation to generation.
Respecting these airs or melodies, a few remarks may be offered. The genius of our mountain land, as if prompted alike by thought and feeling, has in these wrought a spell of matchless power--a fascination, which, reaching the hearts both of old and young, maintains an imperishable sway over them. One has said,--
”'Tis not alone the scenes of glen and hill, And haunts and homes beside the murmuring rill; Nor all the varied beauties of the year, That so can Scotland to our hearts endear-- The merry both and melancholy strain, Their power a.s.sert, and o'er the spirit reign; Indebted more to nature than to art, They reach the ear to fascinate the heart; And waken hope that, animating, cheers, Or bathe our being in the flow of tears.”
Native, as well as foreign writers, a.s.sert that King James the First was the inventor of a new kind of music, which they further characterise as being sweet and plaintive. These terms certainly indicate the leading features of Scottish music. There is something not only of wild sweetness, but touches of pathos even in its merriest measures. Though termed a new kind of music, however, it was not new. The king took up the key-note of the human heart--the primitive scale, or what has been defined the scale of nature, and produced some of those wild and plaintive strains which we now call Scottish melodies. His poetry was descriptive of, and adapted to the feelings, customs, and manners of his countrymen; and he followed, doubtless, the same course in the music which he composed. By his skill and education, he rendered his compositions more regular and palpable, than those songs and their airs which had been framed and sung by the sad-hearted swain on the hill, or the love-lorn maiden in the green wood.
Not in music only, but in the words of song, some of the Scottish kings had such a share as to stamp the art and practice of song-writing with royal sanction. Thus encouraged, the native minstrelsy was fostered by the whole community, receiving accessions from succeeding generations. A people who, along with their heroic leader, possessed sufficient courage to face, with such appalling odds, the foe at Bannockburn--who, at an after date, fought at Flodden against both their better wit and will, rather than gainsay their king--and who, in more recent times, protected him whom they regarded as their rightful prince, at the risk of life and fortune, were not likely to fail in advancing what royalty had loved, especially when it was deemed so essential to their happiness. The poetic spirit entered in and arose out of the heart of the people. The song and air produced in the court, represented the sentiment of the cottage. It is still the same. Rights and privileges have been lost, manners and customs have changed, but song, the forthgiving of the heart, does not on the heart quit its claim.
Within the modern period, the harp of Caledonia gives forth similar utterances in the hands of Lady Nairn, the Ettrick Shepherd, and Robert Tannahill. Different in station and occupations--even in motives to composition--these three great lyrists were each deeply influenced by that peculiar acquaintance with Scottish feeling which, brilliantly ill.u.s.trated by their genius, has deeply impressed their names on the national heart.
Lady Nairn, highly born and educated, delighted to sympathise with the people. If among these she found the forthgivings of human nature less sophisticated, the principles upon which she proceeded impelled her to write for the humbler cla.s.ses of society, and the result has been that she has written for all. In every cla.s.s human nature is essentially the same; and though hearts may have wandered far from the primitive truths which belong to the life and character of mankind in common, they may yet be brought back by that which tells winningly upon them--by that which awakens native feeling and early a.s.sociations. There is much of this kind of efficiency in song, when song is what it ought to be. If, when the true standard is adhered to by those who exercise their powers in producing it, and who have been born and bred in circ.u.mstances of life so different, it can establish a unity of sentiment--it must necessarily effect, in a greater or less degree, the same thing among those who learn and sing the lays which they produce. And, indeed, it would seem a truth that, by the congenial influences of song, the hearts of a nation are more united--more willing to be subdued into acquiescence and equality, than by any other merely human instrumentality.
If, in Scotland till of late years, writing for fortune was rather than otherwise regarded as disreputable, writing for fame was never so accounted. But even than for fame Lady Nairn had a higher motive. She knew that the minstrels of ruder times had composed, and, through the aid of the national melodies, transmitted to posterity strains ill fitted to promote the interests of sound morality, yet that the love of these sweet and wild airs made the people tenacious of the words to which they were wedded. Her princ.i.p.al, if not her sole object, was to disjoin these, and to supplant the impurer strains. Doubtless that capacity of genius, which enabled her to write as she has done, might, as an inherent stimulus, urge her to seek gratification in the exercise of it; but, even in this case, the virtue of her main motive underwent no diminution. She was well aware how deeply the Scottish heart imbibed the sentiments of song, so that these became a portion of its nature, or of the principles upon which the individuals acted, however unconsciously, amid the intercourse of life. Lessons could thus be taught, which could not, perhaps, be communicated with the same effect by any other means. This pleasing agency of education in the school of moral refinement Lady Nairn has exercised with genial tact and great beauty; and, liberally as she bestowed benefactions on her fellow-kind in many other respects, it may be said no gifts conferred could bear in their beneficial effects a comparison to the songs which she has written. Her strains thrilled along the chords of a common nature, beguiling ruder thought into a more tender and generous tone, and lifting up the lower towards the loftier feeling. If feeling const.i.tutes the nursery of much that is desirable in national character, it is no less true that well a.s.sorted and confirmed nationality will always prove the most trustworthy and lasting safeguard of freedom. It is the combination of heart--the universal unity of sentiment--which renders a people powerful in the preservation of right and privilege, home and hearth; and few things of merely human origin will serve more thoroughly to promote such unity, than the songs of a song-loving people. The continual tendency of these is to imbue all with the same sentiment, and to awaken, and keep awake, those sympathies which lead mankind to a knowledge of themselves individually, and of one another in general, thus preventing the different grades of society from diverging into undue extremes of distinction. Nor ought the observation to be omitted, that if a lady of high standing in society, of genius, refined taste and feeling, and withal of singular purity of heart, could write songs that the inhabitants of her native land could so warmly appreciate as by their singing to render them popular, it would evince no inconsiderable worth in that people that she could so sympathise and so identify herself with them.
From the position and circ.u.mstances of Lady Nairn, those of the Ettrick Shepherd were entirely different. Hogg was one of the people. To write songs calculated to be popular, he needed only to embody forth in poetic shape what he felt and understood from the actual experiences of life amid the scenes and circ.u.mstances in which he had been born and bred; his compeers, forming that cla.s.s of society in which it has been thought the nature of man wears least disguise, were his first patrons. He required, therefore, less than Lady Nairn the exercise of that sympathy by which we place ourselves in the circ.u.mstances of others, and know how in these, others think and feel. His poetic effusions were homely and graphic, both in their sprightful humour and more tender sentiment. They were sung by the shepherd on the hill, and the maiden at the hay-field, or when the _kye cam' hame_ at ”the farmer's ingle,” and in the _bien_ cottage of the _but_ and _ben_, where at eventide the rustics delighted to meet. As experience gave him increased command over the hill harp, his ambition to produce strains of greater beauty and refinement also increased. By and by his minstrel numbers manifested a vigour and perfection which rendered them the admiration of persons of higher rank, and more competent powers of judgment.
If, with the very simple and seemingly insignificant weapon of Scottish song, the Baroness Nairn ”stooped,” the Shepherd stood up ”to conquer.”
Both adhered to the dictates of nature, and in both cases the result was the same; nor could the most marked inconveniences which circ.u.mstances imposed hinder that result. A time comes when false things shew their futility, and things depending upon truth a.s.sert their supremacy. The difference between the auth.o.r.ess and the author lay in those external circ.u.mstances of station and position which could not long, much less always, be of avail. Their minds were directed by a power of nature to do essentially the same thing; the difference only being that each did it in her and his own way. We may suppose that while Lady Nairn in her baronial hall wrote--
”Bonnie Charlie 's now awa', Safely ower the friendly main, Mony a heart will break in twa Should he ne'er come back again;”
the Ettrick Shepherd seated on ”a moss-gray stane,” or a heather-bush, and subst.i.tuting his knee for his writing desk, might be furnis.h.i.+ng forth for the world's entertainment the lament, commencing--
”Far over yon hills of the heather sae green, And down by the corrie that sings to the sea, The bonnie young Flora sat sighing alane, Wi' the dew on her plaid and the tear in her e'e.”
Or when the lady was producing ”The land o' the leal,” a lay which has reached and sunk so deeply into all hearts, the Shepherd might be singing among the wild mountains the affecting and popular ditty, the truth of which touched his own heart so powerfully, of ”The moon was a'
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