- ⚫ some

as France possesses in Beranger. Scotland has had numbers of them. For the peculiar chord of slight, and yet thrilling pathos -that string so lightly touched, so sweet in its low and tender cadence which exquisitely characterises Beranger, was more or less commanded by many an unknown Scottish votary of the Jacobite muse. No English political ballad, to our recollection, gives out the faintest echo of it. But were not these men poets, in the truest sense of the word? Are we never to dissociate the idea of poetry from those of elaborate imagery, and culled, affected diction, and gorgeous ornament, and far-fetched ideas, and the still more far-fetched use of common words in artificial senses? Are we to repeat, generation after generation, the old mistake-that error which the innate critical faculty so constantly corrects, and refutes, but ever in vain and abandon the true and the simple for the fantastic, until we create anew what has been so often created before wholly false class or school of poetry, of which the fashionable critics, and the young and sentimental, and 'persons of quality,' will continue to exalt the merits long after the general public have ceased to care about or understand it, and which must collapse at last into oblivion? Sure we are, that after many a fashionable poetical reputation of this day is extinct, men will turn to the best of the old Scottish ballads; aye, and to the productions of their oldest imitators, true poets all, Burns, and Scott, and Hogg, and Cunningham; with as much zest as their most loyal lovers do now. Sappho has been made immortal by four lyric stanzas; the singer of Helen of Kirk Connell,' by scarcely half a dozen. Goëthe has left a very perfect miniature poem, consisting of twenty-four words only. And has not Captain Ogilvie, of the 'House of Inverquharity, who was with King James at the battle of the Boyne, and afterwards fell in an engagement on 'the Rhine,' a rightful claim to a seat in the ranks of the inspired, if he was the real author of the following song, adapted, as our readers may remember, but not improved, by Scott in his 'Rokeby.'

'It was a' for our rightful king
We left fair Scotland's strand;
It was a' for our rightful king

We e'er saw Irish land, my dear,
We e'er saw Irish land.

Now all is done that men could do,
And all is done in vain,

My love, my native land, adieu,

For I maun cross the main, my dear,

For I maun cross the main.

'He turn'd him right and round again,
Upon the Irish shore,

He

gave

his bridle-reins a shake,

Said, Adieu for evermore, my dear,

Adieu, for evermore.

'The soldier frae the wars returns,
The sailor frae the main,
But I have parted from my love,
Never to meet again, my dear,
Never to meet again.

When day is gone, and night is come,
And a' folk bound to sleep,

I think on him that's far away

The lee-lang night and weep, my dear,
The lee-lang night and weep.'

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that this vein of tender and melancholy enthusiasm - however characteristic of the native Scottish music in general is common in the majority of the genuine Jacobite songs; and it must be owned that several of the very happiest efforts in this line, including some of those well known to us by the beautiful music to which they have been married, are modern inventions, concerning which we shall have a word to say presently.

Many more of these songs are sarcastic, bitter, or sportful, than pathetic, as Dr. Mackay very justly points out: although we are not sure that we fully comprehend him when he denies them wit as a general characteristic, and allows them humour. Certainly in the occasional mixture of fun and ferocity, whether the former be more properly termed wit or humour, the Jacobite ballads are quite unrivalled. We have all of us, in our time, melted under the influence of the pathos and sensibility which the female voice can throw into many a sweet lyric, bewailing the mishaps of Charlie; but to hear an old Scottish lawyer, after his second bottle of port, pour forth the whole savageness of his soul in Cumberland's descent to Hell,' of which Hogg says in his odd way, of all songs in the world 'this is the first: it is at once so horrible and so irresistibly 'ludicrous;' this is, or was, for are there any such men left? --something still more characteristic, national, and exciting.

-

Unfortunately at least for those who cannot enjoy their wine without being satisfied of its origin as well as its flavour the question of the genuineness of many of our most favourite Jacobite songs is either unsolved, or solved, to all appearance, in an adverse sense. They differ from the English political ballads, such as those collected by Mr. Wilkins, in this: that

while the latter were all written down soon after composition, and most of them (except the very scandalous) written for the press, the Scottish were, in general, committed to memory, and long preserved by memory only. They owe their existence to tradition, in the strict sense of the word. Now Walter Scott has remarked, with very great truth, that

Tradition, generally speaking, is a sort of perverted alchemy which converts gold into lead. All that is abstractedly poetical, all that is above the comprehension of the merest peasant, is apt to escape in frequent recitation; and the lacunæ thus created are filled up either by lines from other ditties, or from the mother wit of the reciter or singer. The injury, in either case, is obvious and irreparable.'

The first stage of a popular ballad, preserved by memory, is therefore one of degeneracy. The second stage, which almost inevitably follows if the piece is worth preserving at all, is one of patching up, or rifaccimento,' when the clever restorer endeavours to reproduce what he may fancy its original beauties. And between the two processes, but little of the genuine is ultimately left. Mr. Robert Chambers, in one of his popular publications, lately endeavoured, with much ingenuity, to fix the authorship of several of the most classical among the reputed ancient ballads of Scotland-Sir Patrick Spens and Gil Morrice included-on Elizabeth, Lady Wardlaw of Pitcairn, who lived in the last century. We are not persuaded by the reasoning on which he grounds this particular conclusion: and still believe those poems to be substantially of very remote antiquity; but no cautious man will venture to affirm how far they may have been gradually tampered with, before they assumed their present shape. The Jacobite ballads, being much more modern, are not open to the same extent to this remark; but little real reliance can be placed on the absolute authenticity of each verse and expression. The text of such of these compositions as for want of a better phrase we must term authentic, must be taken, we suppose, to be that included in a fragmentary way in Johnson's 'Museum,' at the end of the last century. Add to these a few which appeared in earlier collections, and a very few subsequently edited and guaranteed by respectable authority, such as that of Walter Scott, and we have the whole corpus of these poetæ minores which can be relied on. The residue, and unfortunately it comprises many of the primest favourites,—is not only of unproved, but really very doubtful, authenticity. For the compilers to whose exertions we owe them, have been guilty in some instances not only of carelessness, but dishonesty.

The foremost of these offenders was the Ettrick Shepherd,

whose two volumes of Jacobite Relics' are to this day too commonly received for what they very falsely purport to be. They are, in truth, a jumble of ancient and modern, genuine and interpolated, or spurious, Whig and Tory, Scotch and English, put together not quite at random, but with an evident wilful pleasure in hoaxing the innocent reader. To a thorough appreciation of the qualities of the old ballads, Hogg joined a remarkable power of imitation, and real poetical genius of his own. And thus all was grist,' as Dr. Mackay observes, that 'came to the Shepherd's mill.' Sometimes he exulted (we are told) in his bold fabrications; as in the instance of Donald 'Macgillivray.' Dr. Mackay entitles this song by the Ettrick 'Shepherd: but dishonestly described by him as "a capital old "song, and very popular." Hogg afterwards avowed

'the fraud, and gloried in it.' Now, with this case as a test before us —and there are other cases which internal evidence shows to be quite equally gross-it is impossible not to suspect a vast deal of fraud, or at least of unauthorised piecing and restoration, which has remained undetected simply because no critic of the German type has hitherto dared to touch these hallowed relics too roughly.

An instance or two will express our meaning. The only Jacobite ballad inserted by Mr. Wilkins in his volumes (as a specimen of the class) is that spirited rant entitled 'Queen Anne, or the Auld Gray Mare:' and most readers will agree that in point of raciness and humour, as well as metrical flow, it beats almost every English piece in the collection. But we know not (in the absence of all cited authority) from whence Mr. Wilkins has taken it. If from 'Hogg's Relics,' the authority is naught. Hogg simply styles it a song of the period,' without a syllable of farther authentication. Now we know such a certificate from him to be simply and absolutely worthless. And, capital as it. is, it contains lines marked by that modern and Hoggish air which it is impossible for us to describe — we must ask our readers to judge for themselves. From internal evidence alone, our verdict would be against it. We suspect the Shepherd very grievously.

To take an example of a different kind. Some of Hogg's relics are headed Translations from the Gaelic,'—a title suggestive in itself of mystification. Where these have not been marred by the ill taste of the translator,' says Dr. Mackay, ‘in rendering them into the broken and imperfect jargon of a 'Highlander's first attempts to speak English, they are creditable to the passion of the Celtic muse.' We suspect the 'credit' is somewhat imaginary. We have no doubt that the

particular instance the Doctor had in his mind, in this passage, was that exquisite piece of 'riddling rhyme,' of which the very words are music-Prince Charles and Flora Macdonald's Welcome to Skye':

6

'Come along, come along, with your boatie and your song,
My twa pretty maidens, my three pretty maidens,

For the night it is dark and the redcoat is gone,
And ye are bravely welcome to Skye again.'

This the Shepherd in his Relics heads with said to be from 'the Gaelic.' And he then proceeds to print it in that conventional broken English which Highlanders are facetiously supposed to speak: a proceeding about as consequent as if some one were to translate, for the benefit of the French public, Rule Britannia' into that dialect of French which is put into the mouths of dramatic Englishmen on the minor Paris theatres. This is suspicious enough in itself. But, in addition, is it credible that a poem so entirely free from the stiffness of a translation, with such perfect simplicity of language, such a close similarity to the character of lowland song, is really a translation, or even an adaptation, from the rude and figurative Gaelic at all? And if not, can any one but Hogg have been the probable author? We are sorry for this result it is an illusion the less but we suspect the paternity to be pretty clearly deducible.

We do not for a moment impute to Dr. Mackay any attempt or connivance at falsification. He is in general only over-scrupulous in his attempts to divaricate the true from the spurious. But in this and some other instances he has committed an oversight, or he has some reason, which we cannot perceive, for believing in the originality of these interesting compositions. We lay down Dr. Mackay's volume with the feeling of gratitude which is due to the author of a very pleasant as well as useful little compilation, bringing many of our old favourites before us in a more compact and manageable form, with less of unnecessary addition or omission than any former collection. But at the same time he has only strengthened our conviction that (if the subject be worth the trouble), the Jacobite poetry requires a good deal more of critical sifting before the genuine residuum is fairly obtained.