The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. | Page 2

gay?The rose and lily grew;?But the pride of my garden is wither'd away,?And it 's a' grown o'er wi' rue.
"Farewell, ye fading flowers!?And farewell, bonnie Jean!?But the flower that is now trodden under foot,?In time it may bloom again."
Nay--passing from the tender to the grotesque--would it not have been agreeable to hear something more than two lines from the lips of a lover so stout-hearted, yet so ardent, in his own rough, blunt way, as he who has thus commenced his song:--
"I wish my love were in a mire,?That I might pull her out again;"
or to know something more of the details of that extraordinary parish, of which one surviving verse draws the following sombre picture:--
"Oh! what a parish!--eh! what a parish!?Oh! what a parish is that o' Dunkel':?They 've hang'd the minister, droon'd the precentor;?They 've pu'd doon the steeple, and drunk the kirk-bell."
The Scottish lyrics, lying all about, thus countless and scattered--
"Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks?In Vallambrosa"--
are not like those which mark and adorn the literature of many other countries, the euphonisms of a meretricious court, or the rhymed musings of philosophers, or conceits from Pagan mythology, or the glancing epigrams of men of wit and of the world, or mere hunting choruses and Bacchanalian catches of a rude squirearchy. They are the ballads, songs, and tunes of the people. In their own language, but that language glittering from the hidden well of poesy--in ideas which they at once recognise as their own, because photographed from nature--these lyrics embody the loves and thoughts of the people, the themes on which they delight to dwell, even their passions and prejudices; and vibrate in their memories, quickening the pulses of life, knitting them to the Old Land, and shedding a poetic glow over all the commonplaces of existence and occupation. It is the faithful popular memory, more than anything else, which has been the ark to save the ancient lyrics of Scotland. Not only so, but there is reason to believe that our national lyrics have, generally speaking, been creations of the men, and sometimes of the women, of the people. They are the people's, by the title of origin, no less than by the feeling of sympathy.
This, of course, is clear, as regards the great masters of the lyre who have appeared within the period of known authorship--Ramsay, Burns, Tannahill, Hogg, and Cunningham. The authors of the older lyrics--I mean both compositions and tunes--are, with few exceptions, absolutely unknown; but were there room here for discussion, it might be shewn that all the probabilities lead up, principally, to the ancient order of Minstrels, who from very early times were nearly as much organised and privileged and honoured in Scotland, as ever were the troubadours in Provence and Italy. Ellis, in the Introduction to his "Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances," alluding to Scott's publication of "Sir Tristrem," remarks--"He has shewn, by a reference to ancient charters, that the Scottish minstrels of this early period enjoyed all the privileges and distinctions possessed by the Norman trouveurs, whom they nearly rivalled in the arts of narration, and over whom they possessed one manifest advantage, in their familiar acquaintance with the usual scenes of chivalry." These minstrels, like the majority of poetic singers, were no doubt sons of the people--bold, aspiring, and genius-lit--bursting strong from their mother earth, with all her sap and force and fruitfulness about them. Amongst the last of the professed minstrels was one Burn, who wonned on the Borders as late as the commencement of the eighteenth century, and who, in his pleasant, chirping ditty of "Leader Haughs and Yarrow," takes to himself this very title of _Minstrel_.
"But Minstrel Burn cannot assuage?His grief while life endureth,?To see the changes of this age,?That fleeting time procureth.?For many a place stands in hard case,?Where blythe folk kenn'd nae sorrow,?With Homes that dwelt on Leader-side,?And Scotts that dwelt on Yarrow."
Of this minstrel Burn there is a quaint little personal reminiscence. An aged person at Earlstoun many years ago related, that there used to be a portrait of the minstrel in Thirlestane Castle, near Lauder, "representing him as a douce old man, _leading a cow by a straw-rope_." The master of the "gay science" gradually slipping down from the clouds, and settling quietly and doucely on the plain hard ground of ordinary life and business! Let all pale-faced and sharp-chinned youths, who are spasmodic poets, or who are in danger of becoming such, keep steadily before them the picture of minstrel Burn, "leading a cow by a straw-rope"--and go and do likewise.
But as trees and flowers can only grow and come to perfection in soils by nature appropriate to them, so it is manifest that all this rich and fertile growth of lyrics, of minstrelsy and music, could only