The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III | Page 5

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