Part 1

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THE

MODERN SCOTTISH MINSTREL;

OR,

THE SONGS OF SCOTLAND OF THE PAST HALF CENTURY.

WITH

Memoirs of the Poets,

AND

SKETCHES AND SPECIMENS IN ENGLISH VERSE OF THE MOST CELEBRATED MODERN GAELIC BARDS.

BY

CHARLES ROGERS, LL.D., F.S.A. SCOT.

IN SIX VOLUMES.

VOL. III

EDINBURGH:

ADAM & CHARLES BLACK, NORTH BRIDGE, BOOKSELLERS AND PUBLISHERS TO HER MAJESTY. M.DCCC.LVI.

EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY, PAUL'S WORK.

TO

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL SIR JAMES EDWARD ALEXANDER, K.L.S., AND K.ST.J.,

A DISTINGUISHED TRAVELLER, A GALLANT OFFICER, AND A PATRIOTIC SCOTSMAN,

THIS THIRD VOLUME

OF

The Modern Scottish Minstrel

IS DEDICATED,

WITH SENTIMENTS OF RESPECT AND GRATITUDE,

BY

HIS VERY OBEDIENT, FAITHFUL SERVANT,

CHARLES ROGERS.

SCOTTISH AND HELLENIC MINSTRELSY:

An Essay.

BY JAMES DONALDSON, A.M.

Men who compare themselves with their nearest neighbours are almost invariably conceited, speak boastingly of themselves, and disrespectfully of others. But if a man extend his survey, if he mingle largely with people whose feelings and opinions have been modified by quite different circumstances, the result is generally beneficial. The very act of accommodating his mind to foreign modes of thought expands his nature; and he becomes more liberal in his sentiments, more charitable in his construction of deeds, and more capable of perceiving real goodness under whatever shape it may present itself. So when a Scotsman criticises Scotch poetry viewed by itself alone, he is apt to be carried away by his patriotism,--he sees only the delightful side of the subject, and he ventures on assertions which flatter himself and his country at the expense of all other nations. If, however, we place the productions of our own country side by side with those of another, the excellences and the deficiencies of both are seen in stronger relief; the contrasts strike the mind, and the heart is widened by sympathising with goodness and beauty diversely conceived and diversely portrayed. For this reason, we shall attempt a brief comparison of Hellenic and Scottish songs.

Before we enter on our characterisation of these, we must glance at the materials which we have to survey. Greek lyric poetry arose about the beginning of the eighth century before the Christian era, and continued in full bloom down to the time when it passed into drama on the Athenian stage. The names of the poets are universally known, and have become, indeed, almost part of our poetic language. Every one speaks of an Anacreon, a Sappho, and a Pindar; and the names of Archilochus, Alcman, Alcaeus, Stesichorus, Simonides, Ibycus, and Bacchylides, if not so often used, are yet familiar to most. Few of these lyrists belonged to Greece proper. They belonged to Greece only in the sense in which the Greeks themselves used the word, as including all the colonies which had gone forth from the motherland. Most of the early Greek song-writers dwelt in Asia Minor--some were born in the islands of the Cyclades, and some in Southern Italy; but all of them were proud of their Greek origin, all of them were thorough Greeks in their hearts. It is only the later bards who were born and brought up on the Greek mainland, and most of these lived to see the day when almost all the lyric poets took their grandest flights in the choral odes of their dramas. These odes, however, do not fall within the province of our comparison. The lyrical efforts both of AEschylus and Sophocles were inwoven with the structure of their plays, the chorus in AEschylus being generally one of the actors; and they have their modern representatives, not in the songs of the people, but in the arias of operas. Setting these aside, we have few genuine efforts of the Greek lyric muse belonging to the dramatic period--the most important being several songs sung by the Greeks at their banquets, which have fortunately been preserved. After this era, we have no lyric poems of the Greeks worth mentioning. The verse-writers took henceforth to epigrams--epigrams on everything on the face of the earth. These have been collected into the "Greek Anthology;" but the greater part of them are contemptible in a poetic point of view. They are interesting as throwing light on the times; but they are weak and vapid as expressions of the beatings of the human heart, and they are full of conceits. Besides these, there are the Anacreontic odes, known to all Greek scholars and to a great number of English, since they have been frequently translated. With one or two exceptions, they were all written between the third and twelfth centuries of the Christian era, though some scholars have boldly asserted that they were forgeries even of a later date. Most of them seem to be expansions of lines of Anacreon. They are in general neat, pretty, and gaysome, but tame and insincere. There is nothing like earnestness in them, nothing like genuine deep feeling; but thus they are all the more suited for a certain class of lovers and drinkers, who do not wish to be greatly moved by anything under the sun.

Scotch lyric poetry may be said to commence with the lyrics attributed to James I., or with those of Henryson. There is clear proof, indeed, that long before this time the Scotch were much given to song-making and song-singing; but of these early popular lilts, almost nothing remains. Henryson's lyrics, however, belonged more to the class that were intended to be read than to be sung, and this is true of a considerable number of his successors, such as Dunbar, and Maitland of Lethington, who were learned men, and wrote with a learned air, even when writing for the people. The Reformation, as surely as it threw down every carved stone, shut up the mouth of every profane songster. Wedderburne's "Haly Ballats" may have been spared for a time by the iconoclasts, because they had helped to build up their own temple; but they could not survive long,--they were cast in a profane mould, they were sung to profane tunes, and away they must go into oblivion. Our song-writers, for a long time after, are unknown minstrels, who had no character to lose by making or singing profane songs,--they were of the people, and sang for them. So matters continued, until, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, Scottish songs began to be the rage both in England and Scotland, and an eager desire arose to gather up old snatches and preserve them. Henceforth Scotch poetry held up its head, and a few remarkable poets won their way into the hearts of large masses of the people. At last appeared the emancipator of Scottish song in the form of a ploughman, stirring the deepest feelings of all classes with songs that may be justly styled the best of all national popular songs, and for ever settling the claims of a song-writer to one of the highest niches in the temple of Fame.

The first thing that strikes us, on dipping into a book of Greek songs, and then a book of Scotch, is the different position of the poets. The Greek poet was regarded as a kind of superior being--an interpreter between gods and men; and, supposed to be under the special protection of Divinity, he was highly honoured and reverenced wherever he went. The Scotch bard, on the other hand, is a poor wanderer, whose name is unknown, who received little respect, and whose knowledge of God and the higher purposes of life cannot be reckoned in any way great. There may be a few exceptions. We find nobles sometimes writing popular songs, and occasionally a learned man may have contributed strains; but these are generally not superior either in wit, pathos, or morality, to the verses of the unknown and hard-toiling. This striking contrast arises from a change that had taken place in the history of song. In Greece, all the teeming ideas of the fertile-minded people found expression in harmonious measures, and their songs touched every chord of their varied existence. This was partly owing to their innate love of melody, and partly to the public life which they led. From the earliest ages, they were fond of sweet sounds; and their continual public gatherings gave innumerable opportunities for using their vocal powers unitedly, and turning music to all its best and noblest purposes. They sang sacred songs as they marched in procession to their temples; and on entering, they hymned the praises of the gods. When they rushed on to battle, they shouted their inspiring war-songs; and if victory crowned the fight, the battle-field rang with their joyous paeans, and their poets tuned their lyres in honour of the brave that had fallen. A victor in the Olympic games would have lost one of his greatest rewards, if no poet had sung his fame. Then, in their banquets, the Greeks amused themselves in stringing together pretty verses, and joined in merry and jovial drinking-songs. If there happened to be a marriage, the young people assembled round the house, and late in the evening and early in the morning sang the praises of bride and bridegroom, prayed for blessings on the couple, and sometimes discussed the comparative blessedness of single and married life. Or if a notable person happened to die, his dirge was sung, and the poet composed an encomium on him, full of wise reflections on destiny, and the fate that awaits all. There was, in fact, no public occasion which the Greeks did not beautify with song.

It is entirely different with us. Our minister now performs the function of the Greek poet at marriages and funerals. Our funeral sermons and newspaper paragraphs have taken the place of the Greek encomiums. Our fiddles or piano do duty instead of the Greek dithyrambs, hyporchems, and other dancing songs. Our warriors are either left unsung, or celebrated in verse that reads much better than it sings. The members of the "Benevolent Pugilistic Association" do not stand so high in the British opinion as the wrestlers of old stood in the Greek; and our jockeys have fallen frightfully from the grand position which the Greek racers occupied in the plains of Olympia. Very few in these days would think the champion of England, or the winner of the Derby, worth a noble ode full of old traditions and exalted religious aspirations. Through various causes, song has thus come to be very circumscribed in its limits, and to perform duty within a comparatively small sphere in modern life.

Indeed, song in these days does exactly what the Greeks rarely attempted: it concerns itself with private life, and especially with that most characteristic feature of modern private life--love. Love is, consequently, the main topic of Scottish song. It is a theme of which neither the song-writer nor the song-singer ever wearies. It is the one great passion with which the universal modern mind sympathises, and from the expressions of which it quaffs inexhaustible delight. This holds true even of the cynical people who profess a distaste for love and lovers. For love has for them its comic side,--it appears to them exquisitely humorous in the human weakness it causes and brings to light; and if they do not enjoy the song in its praise, they seldom fail to laugh heartily at the description of the plights into which it leads its devotees.

Perhaps no country contains a richer collection of love-songs than Scotland. We have a song for every phase of the motley-faced passion,--from its ludicrous aspect to its highest and most rapturous form. Every pulsation of the heart, as moved by love, has had its poetic expression; and we have lovers pouring out the depths of their souls to all kinds of maids, and in all kinds of situations. And maids are represented as bodying forth their feelings, also, under the sway of love. Many of these feminine lyrics are written by women themselves. Some of them exult in the full return which their love meets; but for the most part, it is a keen sorrow that forces women to poetic composition. They thus contribute our most pathetic songs--wails sometimes over blasted hopes and blighted love, as in "Waly, Waly;" or over the death of a deeply-loved one, as in Miss Blamire's "Waefu' Heart;" or over the loss of the brave who have fallen in battle, as in Miss Jane Elliot's "Flowers of the Forest."

Peculiarly characteristic of Scotland are the songs that describe the development of love, after the lovers have been married. Here the comical phase is most predominant. For the most part, the Scottish songster delights in describing the quarrels between the goodman and the goodwife--the goodwife in the early poems invariably succeeding in making John yield to her. Sometimes, however, there is a deeper and purer current of feeling, to which Burns especially has given expression. How intensely beautiful is the affection in "John Anderson, my Jo!" And we have in "Are ye sure the news is true?" the whole character of a very loving wife brought out by a simple incident in her life,--the expected return of her husband. Some of these songs also have been written by poetesses, such as Lady Nairn's exquisite "Land of the Leal;" and really there is such delicacy, such minute accuracy in the portrayal of a woman's feelings in "Are ye sure the news is true?" that one cannot help thinking it must have been written by Jean Adams, or some woman, rather than by Mickle:--

"His very foot has music in 't, As he comes up the stair."

What man has an ear so delicate as to hear such music?

The contrast between Greek poetry and Scotch is very marked in this point. There is not one Greek lyric devoted to what we should designate love, with perhaps something like an exception in Alcman. In fact, while moderns rarely make a tragedy or comedy, a poem or novel, without some love-concern which is the pivot of the whole, all the great poems and dramas of the ancients revolve on entirely different passions. Love, such as we speak of, was of rather rare occurrence. Women were in such a low position, that it was a condescension to notice them,--there was no chivalrous feeling in regard to them; they were made to feel the dominion of their absolute lords and masters. Besides this, the greater number of them were confined to their private chambers, and seldom saw any man who was not nearly related. Those who were on free terms of intercourse with men, were for the most part strangers, whose morals were low, and who could not be expected to win the respectful esteem of true lovers. The men enjoyed the society of these--their tumbling, dancing, singing, and lively chat; but the distance was too great to permit that deep devotion which characterises modern love. Moreover, when a Greek speaks of love, we have to remember that he fell in love as often with a male companion as with a woman--he admired the beauty of a fair youth, and he felt in his presence very much as a modern lover feels in the presence of his sweetheart. We have, therefore, to examine expressions of love cautiously. Anacreon says, for instance, that love clave him with an axe, like a smith; but it seems far more likely that the reference is to the affection excited by some charming youth.[1] We have a specimen remaining of the nonchalant style in which he addressed a woman, in the ode commencing "O Thracian mare!"--Schneidewin, Poet. Lyr. Anac. fr. 47.

The great poet of Love was not Anacreon, but Sappho, whose heart and mind were both of the finest. Her life is involved in obscurity, but it is probable that she was a strong advocate of woman's rights in her own land; and as she found men falling in love with other men, so she took special pains to win the affections of the young AEolian ladies, to train them in all the accomplishments suited to woman's nature, and to initiate them into the art of poetry,--that art without which, she says, a woman's memory would be for ever forgotten, and she would go to the house of Hades, to dwell with the shadowy dead, uncared for and unknown. We have two poems of hers which have come down to us tolerably complete, both, we think, addressed to some of her female friends, and both remarkably sweet, touching, and beautiful.

The Scottish songs devoted to other subjects than love are few, and almost exclusively descriptive. Our sense of the humorous gives us a delight in queer and odd characters, in which the Greeks probably would not have participated. Though they had an abundance of wit, and a keen perception of the ridiculous, no songs have reached us which are intended to please by their pure absurdity and good-natured foolishness. Archilochus and Hipponax wrote many a jocular song; but the fun of the thing would have been lost, had the sting which they contained been extracted.

Nor do the Greeks seem to have cared much for descriptive songs. They frequently introduced their heroes into their odes, but these were ever living, ever present to their minds; and several of the songs written on particular occasions were probably sung when the singer had no connexion with the events. But they lived, like boys, too much in the present, to throw themselves back into the past. They wished to give utterance to the feelings of the moment in their own persons, and directly; while we are content to be mere listeners, and are often as much pleased by the occurrences of another's life as by the sentiments of our own hearts.

We are remarkably deficient in what are called class-songs. The Greeks had none of these, for there scarcely existed any classes but free and slave. The people were all one--had the same interests and the same emotions. There was far less of individuality with them than with us, and there was still less of that feeling which divides society into exclusive circles. A Greek turned his hand to anything that came in his way, while division of labour has reached its utmost limit among us. We can find, therefore, no contrast here between Greek and Scotch songs; but we find a very marked one between Scotch and German. We have no student-songs, very few expressive of the feelings of soldiers (Lockhart's are almost the only), sailors, or of any other class.

Indeed, we are deficient not only in class-songs, but in social-songs. The Scotch propensity to indulge in drink is, unfortunately, notorious; and yet our drinking-songs of a really social nature would be comprised in a few pages. One sings of his coggie, as if he were in the custom of gulping his whisky all alone; many describe the boisterous carousals in which they made fools of themselves; not a few extol the power and properties of whisky, and incite to Bacchanalian pleasures; and we have several good songs suitable for singing at the close of an evening pleasantly spent, but almost none which express the feelings that naturally well-up when one sees his friends around him, becomes exhilarated through pleasant social intercourse, and finds the path of life smoothed and sweetened by the aid of his brothers.

The reason of this peculiar circumstance is not far to seek. It lies in the distinctive character of the two great classes into which the Scotch have been divided since the Reformation, called, at the early period of Scottish song, the Covenanters and the Cavaliers. The one party bowed before religion, most scrupulously abstained from all worldly pleasures, and regarded and denounced as sin, or something akin to it, every approach to levity or frivolity. The other party was a wild rebound from this. Sanctimoniousness was hateful in their eye; and not being able to find a medium, they abjured religion, and rushed into the pleasures of this life with headlong zest. The poets, in accordance with their joy-loving natures, allied themselves to the latter class. There was thus in Scotland a deep, dark gulf between the religious and the poetical or beautiful, which has not yet been completely bridged over. The consequence is, that the elder Scottish songs, of all songs, contain the fewest references to the Divine Being. The name of God is never mentioned unless in the caricatures of the Covenanters; and a foreigner, taking up a book of Scottish songs written since the Reformation, and judging of the religion of the Scotch from them alone, would be prone to suppose that, if Scotland had any religion at all, it consisted in using the name of the devil occasionally with respect or with dread. The Cavaliers, in their most energetic moods, swore by him and by no other; while the Covenanters had no songs at all, scarcely any poetry of any kind, and doubtless would have regarded as impious the tracing of any but the most spiritual pleasures to God. The words, for instance, which Allan Cunningham puts into the mouth of a Covenanter, "I hae sworn by my God, my Jeanie" (p. 17 of this volume), would still be regarded by many people as profane.

The case was the very opposite with the Greeks. Every joy, every sorrow, was traced to the gods. They almost never opened their lips without an allusion to their divinities. They sang their praises in their processions and in all their public ceremonials. Wine was a gift from a kind and beneficent god, to cheer their hearts and soothe the sorrows of life. And they delighted in invoking his presence, in celebrating his adventures, and in using moderately and piously the blessings which he bestowed on them. Then, again, when love seized them, it was a god that had taken possession of their minds. They at once recognised a superior power, and they worshipped him in song with heart and soul. In fact, whatever be the subject of song, the gods are recognised as the rulers of the destinies of men, and the causes of all their joys and sorrows. We cannot expect such a strong infusion of the supernatural in modern lays, but still we have enough of it in German songs to form a remarkable contrast to Scotch. Take any German song-book, and you will immediately come upon a recognition of a higher power as the spring of our joys, and upon an expressed desire to use them, so as to bring us nearer one another, and to make us more honest, upright, happy, and contented men. Let this one verse, taken from a song of Schiller's, in singing which a German's heart is sure to glow, suffice:--

"Joy sparkles to us from the bowl! Behold the juice, whose golden colour To meekness melts the savage soul, And gives despair a hero's valour!

"Up, brothers! Lo, we crown the cup! Lo, the wine flashes to the brim! Let the bright foam spring heavenward! 'Up!' TO THE GOOD SPIRIT--this glass to HIM!

_Chorus._

"Praised by the ever-whirling ring Of stars and tuneful seraphim-- TO THE GOOD SPIRIT--the Father-king In heaven!--this glass to Him!"[2]

We meet with the contrast in the Reformers of the respective nations--Knox and Luther. Knox, ever stern, frowning on all the amusements of the palace and the people, and indifferent to every species of poetry; Luther, often drinking his mug of ale in a tavern, making and singing his tunes and songs, and though frequently enough tormented by devils, yet still ready to throw aside the cares of life for a while, and enjoy himself in hearty intercourse with the various classes of the people. Who would have expected the German Reformer to be the author of the couplet--

"He who loves not women, wine, and song, Will be a fool his whole life long."

And yet he was. And his songs, sacred though most of them be, have a place in German song-books to this day.