Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey | Page 6

been
lulled to sleep in my childhood; and with them the looks and voices of
those who had sung them, and who were now no more. It is these
melodies, chanted in our ears in the days of infancy, and connected
with the memory of those we have loved, and who have passed away,
that clothe Scottish landscape with such tender associations. The
Scottish songs, in general, have something intrinsically melancholy in
them; owing, in all probability, to the pastoral and lonely life of those
who composed them: who were often mere shepherds, tending their
flocks in the solitary glens, or folding them among the naked hills.
Many of these rustic bards have passed away, without leaving a name
behind them; nothing remains of them but their sweet and touching
songs, which live, like echoes, about the places they once inhabited.
Most of these simple effusions of pastoral poets are linked with some
favorite haunt of the poet; and in this way, not a mountain or valley, a
town or tower, green shaw or running stream, in Scotland, but has some
popular air connected with it, that makes its very name a key-note to a
whole train of delicious fancies and feelings.
Let me step forward in time, and mention how sensible I was to the
power of these simple airs, in a visit which I made to Ayr, the

birthplace of Robert Burns. I passed a whole morning about "the banks
and braes of bonnie Doon," with his tender little love verses running in
my head. I found a poor Scotch carpenter at work among the ruins of
Kirk Alloway, which was to be converted into a school-house. Finding
the purpose of my visit, he left his work, sat down with me on a grassy
grave, close by where Burns' father was buried, and talked of the poet,
whom he had known personally. He said his songs were familiar to the
poorest and most illiterate of the country folk, "and it seemed to him as
if the country had grown more beautiful, since Burns had written his
bonnie little songs about it."
I found Scott was quite an enthusiast on the subject of the popular
songs of his country, and he seemed gratified to find me so alive to
them. Their effect in calling up in my mind the recollections of early
times and scenes in which I had first heard them, reminded him, he said,
of the lines of his poor Mend, Leyden, to the Scottish muse:
"In youth's first morn, alert and gay, Ere rolling years had passed away,
Remembered like a morning dream, I heard the dulcet measures float,
In many a liquid winding note, Along the bank of Teviot's stream.
"Sweet sounds! that oft have soothed to rest The sorrows of my
guileless breast, And charmed away mine infant tears; Fond memory
shall your strains repeat, Like distant echoes, doubly sweet, That on the
wild the traveller hears."
Scott went on to expatiate on the popular songs of Scotland. "They are
a part of our national inheritance," said he, "and something that we may
truly call our own. They have no foreign taint; they have the pure
breath of the heather and the mountain breeze. All genuine legitimate
races that have descended from the ancient Britons; such as the Scotch,
the Welsh, and the Irish, have national airs. The English have none,
because they are not natives of the soil, or, at least, are mongrels. Their
music is all made up of foreign scraps, like a harlequin jacket, or a
piece of mosaic. Even in Scotland, we have comparatively few national
songs in the eastern part, where we have had most influx of strangers.
A real old Scottish song is a cairngorm--a gem of our own mountains;
or rather, it is a precious relic of old times, that bears the national

character stamped upon it--like a cameo, that shows what the national
visage was in former days, before the breed was crossed."
While Scott was thus discoursing, we were passing up a narrow glen,
with the dogs beating about, to right and left, when suddenly a
blackcock burst upon the wing.
"Aha!" cried Scott, "there will be a good shot for Master Walter; we
must send him this way with his gun, when we go home. Walter's the
family sportsman now, and keeps us in game. I have pretty nigh
resigned my gun to him; for I find I cannot trudge about as briskly as
formerly."
Our ramble took us on the hills commanding an extensive prospect.
"Now," said Scott, "I have brought you, like the pilgrim in the Pilgrim's
Progress, to the top of the Delectable Mountains, that I may show you
all the goodly regions hereabouts. Yonder is Lammermuir, and
Smalholme; and there you have