The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III | Page 3

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