ART. II.-1. The Ballads of Scotland. By William Edmondstoune Aytoun, D.C.L. 1858. 2. The Modern Scottish Minstrel. By Charles Rogers, LL.D. 1856. 3. Scottish Ballads and Songs. By James Maidment. 1859. NOT the least interesting feature about the ballads and songs of Scotland is that they represent-and stand almost alone in representing, to the mind of Europe the native and indigenous literature of the ancient kingdom to which they belong. People in the South of tolerable cultivation, and the scholars of the Continent everywhere, are no doubt acquainted with the fact that Scotland has a body of writers as distinctively Scottish, as Shakspeare or Rabelais are English or French; using a language which is as naturally a growth of the soil of the Lowlands as the ash or the fir; and reflecting a nationality as clearly defined as that of any historic nation on record. But if it were not for the ballad section of that literature we suspect that this knowledge would go for little. The 'History of the Reformation' by Knox-the translation of the Æneid by Bishop Douglas-the Poems of Dunbar and Sir David Lindsay-are no more familiar to the Southern reader, than the literatures of Scandinavia or Russia. Eminent writers of Scottish birth-a Hume or a Scott-do not yield in celebrity to any writers in Europe; and Sir Walter especially, as much by deliberate intention as by instinct, has stamped his nationality on his works with an energy like that with which one of his favourite old barons sealed a charter with his sword-hilt. Yet what would Europe have said if Sir Walter had written his 'Napoleon' in the language in which the venerable Scottish Reformer has described the burning of Scone or the landing of Queen Mary in Leith? But the Songs and Ballads, and those modern imitations of them which every Scotsman of genius thinks himself bound to produce, are as thoroughly living as the graver old works in the same tongue are hopelessly dead. Brave youth and fair girlhood kindle at their strain. They make Scotland's fame smell sweet, as the breezes of the Levant smell of the lemon-groves; and embalm her nationality as the honey of the North tastes of heather. Scotland can never become a prosaic country while such a literature survives to keep alive the romance of her reputation. This, indeed, is a feature about the Ballads and their popularity which we should be sorry to see lost sight of by our generation. These Ballads represent feudal Scotland-not the Scotland which the satirists of England have taught us to associate with a too eager pursuit of money and a too keen grip of it -but —but the brave old romantic Scotland of Sir James Douglas, the Admirable Crichton, and the Marquis of Montrose. So long as they are read, or sung, or talked about, so long will young Scotsmen feel that they must not give way entirely to the Utilitarianism in thought and action to which too much in the present national character and position inclines them. For, if it be true, that Scotland retained more of the antique life than most countries, to a later period, it is also true that, once having begun to change, she is changing and has changed more rapidly. One of the most marked characteristics of the ingenia præfervida Scotorum is that they never do things by halves. Their history lies in light and shadow, and is conspicuously picturesque. Froissart, who tells us that the French knights found their poverty of living intolerable, admits that at Otterbourn they won the most brilliant chivalry-fight of the day. At the Reformation, they changed the most aristocratic for the most democratic church in Europe. In the seventeenth century they began the revolt against Charles, and produced the greatest of the Cavaliers at the same time. They had only just abolished heritable jurisdictions, when they inaugurated political economy. And this is the way in which they have gone on down to our own time. The English Church has been vexed by dissent; the Scotch Kirk in the disruption was torn in half by it. A Montgomery holds a tournament, and a Napier sits for Southwark. Accused of drinking too much whisky, they pass an Act to check it, which in London would cause a revolution. Nor let it be thought an extravagant supposition that the unusual beauty of their ballad poetry, infusing its influence from childhood, should have power to stand against a tendency to deify material prosperity which threatens to abolish all respect for antiquity and all romance of sentiment throughout their land. Luckily, the smoke from their chimneys has not yet blotted out the whole sky. Bonny Scotland' Old Scotland'-still whispers to the hearts of her children through her song; and the notes of her songs can be traced upwards in time, till they are lost like those of a skylark in the distance. Of all branches of literature, this is the least capable of satisfactory treatment from a merely aesthetic point of view. Though there is plenty to be said in the way of criticism proper about the ballads, the interest attached to the fact that they exist takes precedence of the interest which belongs to showing what their beauties are. They are the literature of a pre-literary period-the voices of forgotten ages, and of a society that has passed away. And this fact constitutes more of their charm than people generally think. He who should prove any one of the the best ballads modern would destroy-not its literary meritbut more than half the pleasure with which it is read. Once, in a country village, the neighbourhood used to assemble to hear a particularly sweet-singing nightingale. Presently it appeared that the supposed bird was a very skilful musician, who hid himself in the tree and amused himself by the imitation. Why did this destroy the choicest part of the pleasure of his hearers? The singing was no worse because the fact was known. No-but the associations were destroyed; and if these are analysed, the most important will be found to be that we are secretly affected by the unconsciousness which we attribute to the bird of its power of pleasing us. Now, this is what the old ballad has-what the new ballad imitates—and it induces us to give to the historical associations of minstrelsy precedence over all the other points of view from which it may be regarded. Let us glance at the literary history of our subject, therefore, which has thus the first claim on our attention. Definition is dangerous; but if asked to define Minstrelsy, we should call it the Poetry of Feudalism. It rose under that system -it clung to it for its protection, like the creepers along castle walls, and it has waned as that form of life has waned. The fragments which still exist, and which have been gathered by antiquaries, from nooks and corners-sometimes in a fossil state, from MS.--sometimes living, in retired districts, from recitation -are the only relics of feudal literature which an age like ours can enjoy. Chronicles and romances may be read from curiosity -ballads and songs alone are read for pleasure. Nor, have they always enjoyed the degree of vitality which they do now. They were for a long time quite out of fashion, and waned before such influences as the classics, the Reformation, and the social changes accompanying these. If they never died out altogether, this is partly because the learning which was one cause of their obsoleteness kindly took them by the hand and helped them to flourish again. Very patronising was the manner in which Learning assisted Minstrelsy; but Minstrelsy, by giving a new inspiration to modern poetry, has most generously paid her back. The old ballads and songs, we say, went out of fashionsuffered an eclipse in fact which lasted from the time of the Reformation down to the end of the seventeenth century. This phenomenon was common to England and Scotland, but in Scotland it was more marked, because of the terrible severity which the Reformation assumed in that country. Scottish development at all times has had an abrupt character-has not presented tha beautifully gradual appearance, that tranquil air of growth, which belongs to the history of civilization in England. So the Vol. 105.-No. 210. Y Scottish 6 6 Scottish Reformation destroyed wholesale, and the Scottish reformers treated Sport not as a folly but as a crime. Knox, for instance, speaks of the dancing and music at Queen Mary's court in much the same tone in which a Hebrew prophet speaks of idolatry. The raschall multitude,' says he, once (a mode of speaking which ought to puzzle those who fancy that John was a democrat), was stirred up to mak a Robin Hude!' or in other words, the populace loved the amusements of their ancestors, and the Kirk was determined to put them down. The Kirk did put them down, and has thus affected the whole character of the nation since. For the songs, proverbs, traditions, amusements of the Scottish people indicate that they are a naturally humorous and genial people. Scotland has produced the standard British translation of Rabelais for example, a very significant fact. Her subterranean literature atones for its coarseness by as much fun as that which half excuses the epigrams of Martial. And yet, probably, no southern crosses the Border without feeling for a time that he has got amongst a rigid and severe-minded population. Sydney Smith would only admit that they had wut he did not allow them wit-a curious result of the influence of Presbyterian manners on one far too shrewd not to know that real wit must have flowed in the blood of a race represented at different periods by such men as Scott, Jeffrey, Wilson, Galt, Lockhart, Burns, Wedderburn, Smollett, Henry Erskine, Sir Thomas Urquhart, Archibald Pitcairne, and George Buchanan, Whatever there is of undue harshness in Presbyterianism at this moment is chiefly shown by that part the nation which is under the influence of the dissenting portion of the Presbyterian body. A milder, more genial and humane, and truly liberal way of looking at life prevails in that venerable establishment, which was graced at one time by the presidency in her Assembly of Buchanan, and at another time by that of Robertson. This feature of her character confirms to her the loyalty of men of letters, who, in another generation, would probably (like so many of their predecessors) have been compelled to look for sympathy in the associations of Jacobitism and Episcopacy. The application of these remarks to our immediate subject is obvious. The decline of the Scottish feudal poetry was accelerated-was in part directly caused by the severity of the Presbyterianism. But in Scotland, as in England, the new learning had much to do with the neglect of the old traditions. Everywhere, for a time, the scholar seems to have taken precedence of the man of genius; and to this day we know ten times as much of the lives and characters of the Casaubons, Scaligers, and Lipsiuses, of Lipsiuses, as we do of those of the Shakspeares, Spensers, and Cervanteses. No one could wish to disparage the memories of those giants of erudition, to whose labours among the ruins of antiquity we owe so much. We note the fact simply for its significance in literary history; and it is a curious reflection that Casaubon must often have passed bookstalls in London containing the last traces of old poems in a language which he never cared to learnpoems destined to be praised by future scholars for sparks of a genius almost Homeric! Sir Philip Sidney would not have had to apologise for liking Chevy Chase' if he had lived to see the great revival of an interest in feudal subjects which has done so much to re-awaken and enrich the mind and heart of Europe during the last century. To Addison belongs-and it ranks among the pleasantest recollections attached to his memory-the honour of having been the first modern writer who revived the ancient credit of Minstrelsy. In a happy hour, when engaged in his war against false wit, he took up the common vulgar version of Chevy Chase,' and lifted it out of the highways into literature. It must be admitted that he did so with a slight air of patronage, as if the bantling might tumble his ruffles. But it was an act of great courageof a courage as remarkable as the taste which it indicated. "Had this old song,' says he, in 'Spectator' No. 74, 'been filled with epigrammatical turns and points of wit, it might perhaps have pleased the wrong taste of some readers, but it would never have become the delight of the common people, nor have warmed the heart of Sir Philip Sidney like the sound of a trumpet. It is only nature that can have this effect.' To estimate the courage required to devote two Spectators to an 'old song,' let us now turn to Johnson's 'Life of Addison' (written, let it be observed, years after the publication of Percy's 'Reliques'), and see how the great Doctor characterises this criticism. "He descended,' says Johnson, 'now and then to lower disquisitions, and by a serious display of the beauties of "Chevy Chase" exposed himself to the ridicule of Wagstaff, who bestowed a like pompous character on "Tom Thumb," and to the contempt of Dennis,' &c. The ridicule of Wagstaff,' however, has passed away as completely as the contempt of Dennis.' But the passage illustrates the rooted and dogmatic classicism which Dr. Johnson represented-great and genial as he was-and shows us what a battle the restorers of ballad literature had to fight. There can be no doubt that Allan Ramsay read the 'Spectator,' and it may not unreasonably be presumed that Nos. 70 and 74 were among the inspirations which made him collect and publish some of the ancient minstrelsy of his own land. England and Scotland have |