The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III | Page 7

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' Wallace bled," actually carries us back to the times of
Robert the Bruce.
It is rather singular that most of the Scottish songs which refer to our
history, are essentially aristocratic, and favourable to the divine right of
kings. The Covenanters--our true freemen--disdained the use of the
poet's pen. They uttered none of their aspirations for freedom in song,
and thus the Royalists had the whole field of song-writing to
themselves. Such was the state of matters until Burns rose from amidst
the people, and sang in his own grand way of the inherent dignity of
man as man, and of the rights of labour. It is one of the frequent
contradictions which we see in human nature, that the very same people
who sing "A Man's a Man for a' that," and "Scots wha hae," mourn over

the unfortunate fate of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and lament his disasters,
as if his succession to the throne of Scotland would have been a
blessing. Notwithstanding, however, what Burns has done, Scotland is
still deficient in songs embodying her ardent love of freedom. Liberty
and her blessings are still unsung. It was not so in Greece, especially in
Athens. The whole city echoed with hymns in its praise, and the people
wiled away their leisure in making little chants on the men who they
fancied had given the death-blow to tyranny. The scolia of Callistratus,
beginning, "I'll wreathe my sword in myrtle bow," are well known.
Few of the patriotic songs of the Greeks are extant, and it is probable
that they were not so numerous as ours. Institutions had a more
powerful hold on them than localities. They were proud of themselves
as Greeks, and of their traditions; but wherever they wandered, they
carried Greece with them, for they were part of Greece themselves.
Thus we may account for the absence of Greek songs expressive of
longing for their native land, and of attachment to their native soil. We,
on the other hand, have very many patriotic songs, full of that warm
enthusiasm which every Scotsman justly feels for his country, and
containing frequently a much higher estimate of ourselves and our
position than other nations would reckon true or fair. In these songs, we
are exceedingly confined in our sympathies. The nationality is stronger
than the humanity. We have no such songs as the German, "Was ist des
Deutschen Vaterland?"
Perhaps there is no point in which the Greeks contrast with the Scotch
and all moderns more strikingly than in their mode of describing nature.
This contrast holds good only between the cultivated Greek and the
cultivated modern; for the cultivated Greek and the uncultivated
Scotsman are one in this respect. Perhaps we should state it most
correctly, if we say that the Greek never pictures natural scenery with
words--the modern often makes the attempt. There is no song like
Burns's "Birks o' Aberfeldy," or even like the "Welcome to May"[4] of
early Scottish poetry, in the Greek lyric poets. The Greek poet seizes
one or two characteristic traits in which he himself finds pleasure; but
his descriptions are not nicely shaded, minute, or calculated to bring the
landscape before the mind's eye. No doubt, the Greek was led to this

course by an instinct. For, first, his interest in inanimate nature was
nothing as compared to his strong sympathies with man. He had not
discovered that "God made the country, and man made the town." The
gods, according to his notion, ruled the destinies of man, and every
thought and device of man were inspirations from above. He saw
infinitely more of deity in his fellow-men--in his and their pleasures,
pursuits, and hopes--than in all the insentient things on the face of the
earth; and consequently he clung to men. He delighted in
representations of them; and in embodying his conceptions of the gods,
he gave them the human form as the noblest and most beautiful of all
forms. Nature was merely a background exquisitely beautiful, but not
to be enjoyed without the presence of man. And, secondly, though the
Greeks may not have enunciated the principle, that poetry is not the art
suited for picturing nature, still they probably had an instinctive feeling
of its truth. Poetry, as Lessing pointed out in his Laocoon, has the
element of time in it, and is therefore inapplicable in the description of
those things which,