FIELD OF BANNOCKBURN.

"On Bannock-field what thoughts arouse

The swain whom Burns's song inspires?

Beat not his Caledonian veins,

As o'er the heroic turf he ploughs,

With all the spirit of his sires,

And all their scorn of death and chains ?"-CAMPBELL.

THESE lines most expressively justify the selection of the Field of Bannockburn as a scene in the “Land of Burns." His genius has, indeed, by deepening the feeling with which his countrymen regard the spot, presented an indisputable claim to be for ever associated with it.

The foreground of the print is about three miles almost directly south from Stirling. That ancient burgh, and its castle, are seen on the middle-ground, near the left side of the picture. Beyond them rise Demyat and the rest of the Ochils, beneath which runs the Devon, a stream celebrated in two of the lyrics of the Ayrshire bard. Some of the links of the Forth are seen in the middle-ground, near the centre of the picture; but it has been found impossible, at such a distance, to convey any adequate impression of the beauty of that singular river and its banks. The industrious villages of Bannockburn, Miltown, and St Ninians, are nearer the position of the spectator, but concealed by some high ground, which rises about a mile in front of the Gillies' Hill. The spectator looks towards the north-east, and the back-ground is occupied by the distant hills of Fife.

The battle of Bannockburn was fought (Monday, June 24, 1314,) on the part of the low ground where the principal light falls, in front of the Gillies' Hill. The Scottish army, thirty thousand in number, was drawn up in three divisions, in a direction from southeast to north-west, the right division being placed on the skirts of the Gillies' Hill, with its right flank resting on the natural defences of the rugged channel of the Bannock, while the centre occupied the low ground immediately to the east of the Gillies' Hill, with a morass in front, and the left division was placed on the eastern slope of Cockshot Hill, seen in the print swelling a little into light. The gillies (servant lads) belonging to the army, fifteen thousand in number, were placed behind the hill which still bears their name; and on the Caldam Hill, in front of the army, the Scottish king had planted his standard in a mass of granite, still called, from that circumstance, the Bored Stone. Thus posted, as a cover for Stirling Castle, the army of Bruce received the attack of an English host, said to have been nearly a hundred thousand strong, commanded by Edward II. in person. The English were at the very first thrown into difficulties by a series of small concealed pits which the Scotch had dug in their path; and when hard fighting was making them waver, their overthrow was accomplished by the sudden appearance, over the neighbouring hill, of a new and unexpected host, composed of the gillies who had been stationed in the rear, but who, becoming impatient, had resolved to advance into the conflict. The result was the permanent assertion of the independence of Scotland.

There is a Jacobite song (to be found in the first volume of Mr Hogg's Collection) consisting of a few rude, but animated stanzas, of which the following are specimens:

"Here's to the King, sir,

Ye ken wha I mean, sir,
And to every honest man,
That will do't again.

Fill, fill your bumpers high,

We'll drink a' your barrels dry;

Out upon them, fie, O fie!

That winna do't again.

Here's to the chieftains

Of the Scots Highland clans,

They have done it mair than ance,
And will do't again.

When you hear the trumpet sound
Tuttie taittie to the drum,

Up claymore, and down wi' gun,
And to the rogues again."

From an allusion, in a subsequent verse, to the proposal of the eccentric king of Sweden, to aid in raising a new Stuart insurrection in Scotland, it may be supposed that this song was written about the year 1717. The tune to which it is sung is called Tuttie Taittie, apparently in consequence of the introduction of those words into one of the stanzas, words seemingly designed to express the sound of the trumpet. If these surmises be correct, the reader will see how little probability there is in the tradition, which Burns says he had heard in various parts of Scotland, that the air of Tuttie Taittie was that to which the Scottish army marched at Bannockburn. Upon many other grounds, the fact that that air was played by the Scots on that eventful morning, appears doubtful. Frazer's hautboy, of whose magic we ourselves well recollect the impression, had often caused this tune to draw tears from the eyes of Burns. He probably entertained little doubt of the truth of the tradition. He gloried in the memory of Bruce, and in the recollection of his country's independence and liberties. "Independent of my enthusiasm as a Scotsman," he says, in a letter enclosing Bruce's address to the Earl of Buchan, “I have rarely met with anything in history which interests my feelings as a man equally with the story of Bannockburn. On the one hand, a cruel but able (?) usurper, leading on the first army in Europe, to extinguish the last spark of freedom among a greatly daring and greatly injured people; on the other hand, the desperate relics of a gallant nation devoting themselves to rescue their bleeding country, or to perish with her.-Liberty! thou art a prize truly and indeed invaluable! for never canst thou be too dearly bought!" These thoughts, with some others on events of recent occurrence, working in the mind of the poet, led to the commencement of the composition of his immortal lyric during a stormy ride with Mr Syme of Ryedale, among the wilds between Glenken and Gatehouse, in Galloway, at the close of July 1793.

It is a curious fact in the history of this poem-for it is a poem which may well have a history—that, when submitted to Mr George Thomson, the proposal to attach it to Tuttie

Taittie was unhesitatingly condemned by that learned and really skillful person, to whose mind, probably from the influence of association, this air appeared utterly contemptible. Mr Thomson proposed Lewie Gordon instead, and the lyric was actually for some years generally sung to that comparatively tame air, till at length the feeling of the nation restored Tuttie Taittie, and justified the taste of Burns. It is another remarkable circumstance in the history of this poem, that both Wordsworth and Mrs Hemans have confessed themselves unable to perceive genuine poetry in it. Wordsworth's declaration, somewhere recorded, is, that it is mere trash. The language of the most exalted passion, under the most exciting of circumstances, appears, we suspect, to many minds of the present day, as not poetry, if it want metaphor and glitter-as if anything but the most direct and energetic phraseology were ever heard in nature, on occasions of fervid emergency, like that of Bannockburn.

THE BANKS OF DOON.

LANDSCAPE-PAINTING has few more difficult tasks than that of conveying an idea of the character of the banks of a famed river, especially if these banks, as so often happens in Scotland, be confined and bosky, and liable, along a certain extent, to considerable variation. The artist is then apt to find that what charms every one in the course of a short walk, becomes no proper subject for his pencil, and simply because he has to limit himself to a certain point, which may or may not be characteristic of the whole, and at the best is but a part of the scene he is called upon to represent. These difficulties are peculiarly besetting on the banks of the Doon, which, within a few miles of the bridges at Alloway, has almost as many various aspects as the burn so graphically described in "Halloween,”

By taking his station at a point in the grounds of Doonside where the river makes a bend, the artist has contrived to introduce two considerable reaches of this celebrated stream, comprehending some of its most remarkable characteristics, particularly the steepness of its banks at certain places, and the sylvan beauty which marks all the lower part of its course. The steeples of Ayr, the kirk, monument, and old bridge of Alloway, and the sea and the peaks of Arran, have also been introduced, and lend additional character to the picture. Altogether, it may be admitted that the best has here been made of a very difficult subject.