The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III | Page 6

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.
Though Scottish songs seldom refer to a Divine Being, yet they are very far from being without their noble sentiments and inspirations. On the contrary, they have frequently sustained the moral life of a man. "Who dare measure in doubt," says William Thom in his "Recollections," "the restraining influences of these very songs? To us, they were all instead of sermons.... Poets were indeed our priests. But for those, the last relict of our moral existence would have surely passed away!"
Yet there is a marked contrast between the very aims of Scottish and Greek song-writers. The Scottish wish merely to please, and consequently never concern themselves with any of the deeper subjects of this life or the life to come. There is seldom an allusion to death, or to any of the great realities that sternly meet the gaze of a contemplative man. There may be a few exceptions in the case of pious song-writers, like Lady Nairn; but even such poets are shy of making songs the vehicle of what is serious or profound. The Greeks, on the other hand, regarding their poets as inspired, expected from them the deepest wisdom, and in fact delighted in any verse which threw light on the great mysteries of life and death. Thus it happens that the remains of the Greek lyric poets, especially the later, such as Simonides and Bacchylides, are principally of a deeply moral cast. The Greeks do not seem to have had the extravagant rage which now prevails for merely figurative language. They sought for truth itself, and the man became a poet who clothed living truths in the most appropriate and expressive words.
There is a remarkable contrast between the Scotch and Greeks in their historical songs. The lyric muse sings at great epochs, because then the deepest emotions of the human heart are roused. But since, in Greece, the states were small, and every emotion thrilled through all the free citizens, there was more of determined and unanimous feeling than with us, and consequently a greater desire to see the heroic deeds of themselves or their fellows wedded to verse. And then, too, the poet did not live apart; he was one of the people, a soldier and a citizen as well as others, and animated by exactly the same feelings, though with greater rapture. This is the reason why the Greeks abounded in songs in honour of their brave. At the time of the resistance to the Persian invasion, there was no end to the encomiums and p?ans. Almost every individual hero was celebrated, and these songs were made by the acknowledged masters of the lyre, such as ?schylus and Simonides. With us, great deeds have to wait their poets. Distance of time must first throw around them a poetic hue; and after the hero has sunk unnoticed into a nameless grave, the bard showers his praises on him, and his worth is universally recognised. Or if his merits are discerned before his death, song is not one of the appointed organs through which our people demand that he should be praised. If a heroic action gets its poet, the people will listen; but if it pass unsung, none will regret it. Besides, we do not discern the poetry of the present so strongly as the Greeks did. Everything with them seems to have been capable of finding its way into verse. Alcman delights in speaking of his porridge, and Alc?us of the various implements of war which adorned his hall. The real world in which the Greeks moved had the most powerful attraction for them. This is also, in a great measure, true of the unknown poets, who have contributed so much to Scottish minstrelsy in the days of the later Stuarts. There is no squeamishness about the introduction of realities, whatever they be; and the people took delight in a mere series of names skilfully strung together, or even in an enumeration of household articles or dishes.[3]
This pleasure in the contemplation of the actual things around us, is not nearly so great in modern cultivated minds. We are continually trying to get out of ourselves, to transport ourselves to other times, and to throw ourselves into bygone scenes and characters. Hence it is that almost all our best historical songs, written in these days, have their basis in the past; and the one which moves us most powerfully, "Scots wha hae wi'