The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century

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• Publié par: muvub
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 35
• Langue: English

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Project Gutenberg's The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV., by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century Author: Various Release Date: October 11, 2006 [EBook #19525] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN SCOTTISH MINSTREL *** Produced by Susan Skinner, Ted Garvin and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Lithographed for the Modern Scottish Minstrel, by Schenck & McFarlane. THE MODERN SCOTTISH MINSTREL; OR, THE SONGS OF SCOTLAND OF THE PAST HALF CENTURY. WITH Memoirs of the Poets, AND SKETCHES AND SPECIMENS IN ENGLISH VERSE OF THE MOST CELEBRATED MODERN GAELIC BARDS. BY CHARLES ROGERS, LL.D. F.S.A. SCOT. IN SIX VOLUMES; VOL. IV. EDINBURGH: ADAM & CHARLES BLACK, NORTH BRIDGE, BOOKSELLERS AND PUBLISHERS TO HER MAJESTY. M.DCCC.LVI. EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY, PAUL'S WORK. TO FRANCIS BENNOCH, ESQ., F.S.A., ONE OF THE MOST ACCOMPLISHED OF LIVING SCOTTISH SONG-WRITERS, AND THE MUNIFICENT PATRON OF MEN OF LETTERS, THIS FOURTH VOLUME OF The Modern Scottish Minstrel IS DEDICATED, WITH SINCERE REGARD AND ESTEEM, BY HIS VERY FAITHFUL SERVANT, CHARLES ROGERS. THE INFLUENCE OF BURNS ON [Pg v] SCOTTISH POETRY AND SONG: An Essay. BY THE REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN. It is exceedingly difficult to settle the exact place of, as well as to compute the varied influences wielded by, a great original genius. Every such mind borrows so much from his age and from the past, as well as communicates so much from his own native stores, that it is difficult to determine whether he be more the creature or the creator of his period. But, ere determining the influence exerted by Burns on Scottish song and poetry, it is necessary first to inquire what he owed to his predecessors in the art, as well as to the general Scottish atmosphere of thought, feeling, scenery and manners. First of all, Burns felt, in common with his forbears in the genealogy of Scottish song, the inspiring influences breathing from our mountain-land, and from the peculiar habits and customs of a "people dwelling alone, and not reckoned [Pg vi] among the nations." He was not born in a district peculiarly distinguished for romantic beauty—we mean, in comparison with some other regions of Scotland. The whole course of the Ayr, as Currie remarks, is beautiful; and beautiful exceedingly the Brig of Doon, especially as it now shines through the magic of the Master's poetry. But it yields to many other parts of Scotland, some of which Burns indeed afterwards saw, although his matured genius was not much profited by the sight. Ayrshire—even with the peaks of Arran bounding the view seaward—cannot vie with the scenery around Edinburgh; with Stirling —its links and blue mountains; with "Gowrie's Carse, beloved of Ceres, and Clydesdale to Pomona dear;" with Straths Tay and Earn, with their two fine rivers flowing from finer lakes, through corn-fields, woods, and rocks, to melt into each other's arms in music, near the fair city of Perth; with the wilder and stormier courses of the Spey, the Findhorn, and the Dee; with the romantic and song-consecrated precincts of the Border; with the "bonnie hills o' Gallowa" and Dumfriesshire; or with that transcendent mountain region stretching up along Lochs Linnhe, Etive, and Leven—between the wild, torn ridges of Morven and Appin—uniting Ben Cruachan to Ben Nevis, and including in its sweep the lonely and magnificent Glencoe—a region unparalleled in wide Britain for its quantity and variety of desolate grandeur, where every shape is bold, every shape blasted, but all blasted at such different angles as to produce endless diversity, and yet where the whole seems twisted into a certain terrible harmony; not to speak of the glorious isles "Placed far amid the melancholy main," Iona, which, being interpreted, means the "Island of the Waves," the rocky [Pg vii] cradle of Scotland's Christianity; Staffa with grass growing above the unspeakable grandeur which lurks in the cathedral-cave below, and cows peacefully feeding over the tumultuous surge which forms the organ of the eternal service; and Skye, with its Loch Coriskin, piercing like a bright arrow the black breast of the shaggy hills of Cuchullin. Burns had around him only the features of ordinary Scottish scenery, but from these he drank in no common draught of inspiration; and how admirably has he reproduced such simple objects as the "burn stealing under the lang yellow broom," and the "milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale," the "burnie wimplin' in its glen," and the "Rough bur-thistle spreadin' wide Amang the bearded bear." These objects constituted the poetry of his own fields; they were linked with his own joys, loves, memories, and sorrows, and these he felt impelled to enshrine in song. It may, indeed, be doubted if his cast of mind would have led him to sympathise with bold and savage scenery. In proof of this, we remember that, although he often had seen the gigantic ridges of Arran looming through the purple evening air, or with the "morning suddenly spread" upon their summer summits, or with premature snow tinging their autumnal tops, he never once alludes to them, so far as we remember, either in his poetry or prose; and that although he spent a part of his youth on the wild smuggling coast of Carrick, he has borrowed little of his imagery from the sea—none, we think, except the two lines in the "Vision"— "I saw thee seek the sounding shore, Delighted with the dashing roar." [Pg viii] His descriptions are almost all of inland scenery. Yet, that there was a strong sense of the sublime in his mind is manifest from the lines succeeding the above— "And when the North his fleecy store Drove through the sky, I saw grim Nature's visage hoar Struck thy young eye;" as well as from the delight he expresses in walking beside a planting in a windy day, and listening to the blast howling through the trees and raving over the plain. Perhaps his mind was most alive to the sublimity of motion, of agitation, of tumultuous energy, as exhibited in a snow-storm, or in the "torrent rapture" of winds and waters, because they seemed to sympathise with his own tempestuous passions, even as the fierce Zanga, in the "Revenge," during a storm, exclaims—"I like this rocking of the battlements. Rage on, ye winds; burst clouds, and waters roar! You bear a just resemblance of my fortune, And suit the gloomy habit of my soul." Probably Burns felt little admiration of the calm, colossal grandeur of mountainscenery, where there are indeed vestiges of convulsion and agony, but where age has softened the storm into stillness, and where the memory of former strife and upheaving only serves to deepen the feeling of repose—vestiges which, like the wrinkles on the stern brow of the Corsair, "Speak of passion, but of passion past." With these records of bygone "majestic pains," on the other hand, the genius of Milton and Wordsworth seemed made to sympathise; and the former is never greater than standing on Niphates Mount with Satan, or upon the "hill of [Pg ix] Paradise the highest" with Michael, or upon the "Specular Mount" with the Tempter and the Saviour; and the latter is always most himself beside Skiddaw or Helvellyn. Byron professes vast admiration for Lochnagar and the Alps; but the former is seen through the enchanting medium of distance and childish memory; and among the latter, his rhapsodies on Mont Blanc, and the cold "thrones of eternity" around him, are nothing to his pictures of torrents, cataracts, thunderstorms; in short, of all objects where unrest—the leading feeling in his bosom—constitutes the principal element in their grandeur. It is curious, by the way, how few good descriptions there exist in poetry of views from mountains. Milton has, indeed, some incomparable ones, but all imaginary —such, at least, as no actual mountain on earth can command; but, in other poets, we at this moment remember no good one. They seem always looking u p to, not down from, mountains. Wordsworth has given us, for example, no description of the view from Skiddaw; and there does not exist, in any Scottish poetical author, a first-rate picture of the view either from Ben Lomond, Schehallion, Ben Cruachan, or Ben Nevis. After all, Burns was more influenced by some other characteristics of Scotland than he was by its scenery. There was, first, its romantic history. That had not then been separated, as it has since been, from the mists of fable, but lay exactly in that twilight point of view best adapted for arousing the imagination. To the eye of Burns, as it glared back into the past, the history of his country seemed intensely poetical—including the line of early kings who pass over the stage of Boece' and Buchanan's story as their brethren over the magic glass of Macbeth's witches—equally fantastic and equally false—the dark tragedy of [Pg x] that terrible thane of Glammis and Cawdor—the deeds of Wallace and Bruce —the battle of Flodden—and the sad fate of Queen Mary; and from most of these themes he drew an inspiration which could scarcely have been conceived to reside even in them. On Wallace, Bruce, and Queen Mary, his mind seems to have brooded with peculiar intensity—on the two former, because they were patriots; and on the latter, because she was a beautiful woman; and his allusions to them rank with the finest parts in his or any poetry. He seemed especially adapted to be the poet-laureate of Wallace—a modern edition, somewhat improved, of the broad, brawny, ragged bard who actually, it is probable, at