Many Roman Catholic chants became the property of the secular Muse; and such airs as "John, come kiss me now," "Auld lang syne," "John Anderson my Jo," and "We're a' noddin," which belonged to the cathedral service of both countries, were appropriated to profane purposes and indecent parodies, and sung sometimes in ridicule of that Church from which they had been taken, and sometimes to words of the most objectionable character.

Scottish music was, however, but little known to the world until Allan Ramsay, in the year 1724, collected the melodies of his country. His "Tea-Table Miscellany" was the first successful attempt to give them a local habitation. Without him they would have died, as many old English melodies have unfortunately done; but honest Allan gave little account of them; indeed, he could not tell what he did not know, for "although," as Mr. Robert Chambers says, "the Scottish people are more proud of their songs and music than of any other branch of literature, they can tell very little regarding the origin and early history of these endeared national treasures." But Allan Ramsay, though certainly the most valuable of the early labourers in the field, was not the first. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century Scottish music began to be spoken of in England, and from that period to the reign of Queen Anne became so fashionable as to be imitated by English musicians. English song-writers, of the class of D'Urfey and others, also began to imitate the Scottish manner, and produced some very barbarous songs, as distasteful to Scotchmen as they were incomprehensible to Englishmen. But in Scotland itself at this time the current music was purely traditional and popular; and the first music-book printed north of the Tweed, the book of Andro Hart, of which we have already made mention, con

tained no Scottish melodies whatsoever, but tunes that were notoriously and avowedly English.

Nevertheless, the national music continued to flourish in Scotland; and if not to decline in England, to be banished almost entirely from the higher circles of the nobility and the Court. Scotland was peculiarly fortunate in this respect. It never became the fashion to deny the existence of her national melodies, whether of her own or of English growth; and zealous collectors appeared from time to time to preserve both her songs and her music. Allan Ramsay, who not only preserved the ancient lyrics of his country, and improved them by many masterly touches of his own, but enriched its literature by many beautiful original compositions, which he adapted to the old tunes, was followed, after a short interval, by David Herd, an investigator of great industry, as well as judgment and taste. To him, though not indebted for much of the ancient music, Scotland owes the preservation of many admirable old songs and ballads, abounding either with its characteristic tenderness or with its no less characteristic humour. Johnson's "Musical Museum,"* the first number of which appeared in 1787, was an effort both to preserve and to improve the songs and music of Scotland- an effort in which the publisher and editor was admirably assisted by Robert Burns, a writer then but little known, but whose fame is now as wide as the two hemispheres, and penetrates as far as the influence of the English language and the pastures or farm-steadings of our colonies. Burns wrote some songs for this work, and brought from obscurity, by the easy light of his genius, a still greater

The imprint of this volume states it to have been sold by "James Johnson, Engraver, Bell's Wynd, Edinburgh;" and that it was sold" by T. Kay and Co., 332 Strand; and by Longman and Brodripp, 26 Cheapside, London." No. 332 Strand is the present office of the Morning Chronicle.

number, that in their old shape were either too uncouth or too indecent for introduction into refined and moral company. A greater than Johnson shortly afterwards appeared in the person of the late George Thomson of Edinburgh. Mr. Thomson availed himself of the same renowned and happy pen; and with this assistance did more than any previous collector had done to give Scottish music the world-wide celebrity and favour which it now enjoys.

Burns created no new taste among his countrymen. He but developed, extended, and improved that which he found already existing; and hence his immediate and long-continued popularity. The Muse of Scotland is a pastoral fair one,-a beautiful bare-footed lassie, "with her loose robes" and "her yellow hair" floating in the wind; with blue eyes full of passion, romance, and tenderness; with a quaint, yet pleasing and highly-melodious expression on her tongue; with a heart as prone to be fanatical in religion as romantic in affection; and above all, with a luxurious sense of physical enjoyment, and with a keen appreciation and taste for the humorous.

The beauty of Scottish song is its truth and simplicity. Burns, as well as his great forerunners, compeers, and successors, always appealed to the heart. Unlike the song

writers of England, whom, with few exceptions, they immeasurably excel, they never wasted their time in mere conceits and prettinesses. What they felt they said, and what they said. they expressed in the pithy language of real emotion, not the less effective because expressed in a provincial dialect. Their tenderness is as manly as their independence; and their wit, if sometimes coarse, is always genial and genuine. Their pictures of rural life are full of charm and of a vivid reality. The landscape, with all its colours and sounds, exists in their lays.

It may be doubted whether the song-writers of any other

people ever depicted youthful passion in all its varieties of joy and sorrow with more heart-felt fervour and irresistible fascination. These bards, many of them nameless, make no pretence to be refined; yet amidst their rudest snatches we often light upon the happiest thoughts, expressed in the happiest manner, and with refinement that no poets in any age have excelled. The stream of their song is a true Pactolus. There may be small flowers and weeds upon its banks; but it runs over golden sands, and abounds in treasures that may be had for the seeking, even when the current appears most turbid and least promising.

We may sum up its characteristics in one word,— earnestness. Scottish song is earnest in love and friendship, earnest in war, earnest in patriotism, and earnest even in drinking. Though the moralist might wish that, in the latter respect, the Scottish bards were not quite so emphatic, we must take the defects with the virtues, and be thankful that we have a literature with so few faults and so many beauties, and, above all, with so much heart in it, as they have given to us.

In a collection limited to one volume it is manifestly impossible that we could have included more than "the cream". perhaps we might say, "the cream of the cream "—of such vast stores of song as have been accumulating for the last three centuries. We think, however, that it will be found, even by those readers the best acquainted with the subject, that this volume contains all, or nearly all, the most celebrated, beautiful, and characteristic of the Scottish songs, whether pastoral, amatory, patriotic, convivial, or Jacobite, and that the selections under each of these heads are as copious as is consistent with the design. We have been reluctantly compelled to omit the songs of living writers, not from any unwillingness on the part of the most distinguished among them to allow their composi

tions to appear in these pages, but from the utter impossibility of conveying in the small space to which we have restricted ourselves any thing like an adequate view of a department of modern literature so extensive and so varied. The name of these writers is indeed "legion;" for the popular ear is so susceptible

to the sweet sounds of the national melodies, and the dialect of Scotland lends itself so naturally and so easily to song, that the feelings of the illiterate, as well as of the educated, seem to flow more copiously into lyrical expression than is the case in other countries. Not only the scholar in his study, and the professed rhymers and authors, but the tradesman behind his counter, the weaver at the mill, the ploughman in the field, and the fisher