Locksley Hall, when the heroine has degraded herself in the eyes of her lover, like the Amy of Tennyson's poem, by bartering for wealth the treasure of her young love. The manliest, if not the absolutely best, of Hector Macneill's songs, Come under my Plaidie, bears none of the polished sentiment or language of academic culture, by which the poem of the Laureate is distinguished; it takes no reflective flight into the imaginary future of a progressive world, to find there an ideal consolation for the real wrongs of the present: it is simply the unreserved, straightforward, strong-if you will, coarse— utterance of a homely mind, smarting under the endurance of a wrong which crops out in all societies, savage and civilized alike. As in Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch, the "Johnnie" of this is simply the typical Scottish peasant-lover. Marion has gone out Marion has gone out one evening to meet him at their trysting-place, when she encounters “auld Donald," who wooes her with the powerful inducements which a rich suitor, though old, is always in a position to ply; and the opening of the song, which describes this scene with capital humour, will repay a fresh perusal. The suit is successful; and Johnnie, who has arrived at the spot unobserved, endures the mortification of seeing and hearing her consent to come under the plaidie" of a lover whom she is glad to find not over "threescore and twa." "She crap in ayont him, beside the stane wa’, "He wandered hame wearie, the nicht it was drearie, And, thowless, he tint his gate 'mang the deep snaw: The howlet was screamin', while Johnnie cried, 'Women Wad marry auld Nick if he'd keep them aye braw! "O the deil's in the lasses! they gang now sae braw, They'll lie down wi' auld men o' fourscore and twa ; The haill o' their marriage is gowd and a carriage, Plain love is the cauldest blast now that can blaw.'" The reader who is curious to know the most passionate utterances of the jilted lover's indignation, may turn up for himself the concluding verse. Songs of this class form an apt transition to those of a more purely comic character. For several of these lyrics of disappointed love reveal a strong, even if it be at times a somewhat rough, nature, not bursting into the earnest indignation of Come under my Plaidie, but playfully turning the disappointment into a source of healthy mirth. There is an old fragment, indeed, preserved by Herd, which is developed by Mr. James Tytler-Balloon Tytler, as he was nicknamed from his aëronautic celebrity-into his I hae laid a Herrin in Saut, in which the wooer informs his mistress, in a style of very straightforward business, that if she loves him she must tell him at once, for he canna come ilka day to woo." Allan Ramsay also has given us a couple of songs, which may be regarded as expressing the pure joy of loving, without being so absorbed in one sweetheart that another could not afford equal scope for the gratification of the passion. Bessie Bell and Mary Gray and the less popular Gentle Tibby and Sonsy Nelly present exquisite delineations of the amusing swither into which a lover is thrown by the equally irresistible charms of two beauties, between whom he seems as incapable of making a choice as Joannes Buridanus supposed his famous ass would be if placed between two equally attractive bundles of hay. This heart-whole independence of the lover, before the disposition of the fair one is known, appears also in some songs as retained even after disappointment. It infuses a spirit, for example, into Burns' happy song, O Tibbie, I hae seen the Day. "O Tibbie, I hae seen the day "Yestreen I met you on the moor, "I doubt na, lass, but ye may think, "But, Tibbie, lass, tak my advice, Were it not that the Tibbie of this song seems to be identified with one of the numerous objects that attracted the poet's more transient affections,1 it might have been supposed that the name was suggested by Tibbie Fowler o' the Glen, who is the Scots lyrical representative of the character which Burns intended to ridicule. From a reference in Ramsay's "Tea-Table Miscellany" we gather that there must have been a very old song, with the title Tibbie Fowler o' the Glen: it is probably a fragment of this which is preserved by Herd, while a development of it, which first appeared in Johnson's "Museum," is now to be found in most of the more recent collections. The extravagance in the description of the multitudinous suitors by whom the heroine is mobbed is irresistibly laughable; and it may be questioned whether the vulgar attractiveness of a well-dowered maiden has ever been more pithily expressed than in one of the verses of this song : "Tibbie Fowler o' the Glen, There's ower mony wooin' at her; Tibbie Fowler o' the Glen, There's ower mony wooin' at her. Courtin' her, and canna get her; Filthy elf, it's for her pelf, That a' the lads are wooin' at her. "Ten cam east, and ten cam west; Ten cam rowin' ower the water; 1 See Chambers' "Life and Works of Burns," vol. i. p. 44. "There's seven but, and seven ben, Seven in the pantry wi' her; Twenty head about the door: There's ane and forty wooin' at her! "Be a lassie e'er sae black, Gin she hae the penny siller, Set her up on Tintock tap, The wind will blaw a man till her."1 It is due, however, to the Scottish song-writers to notice that they do not represent this heart-whole independence as all on one side; full justice is rendered to the weaker sex in a song mentioned above, My Heart's my ain. This old song surpasses those just described in its perfect good-humour; while I have never met anything to equal the cheerful womanly self-respect, made so thoroughly real by the slightest flavour of vanity, from which the song derives a peculiar zest. In every line there smiles a perfectly healthy maiden's soul. It is provoking that we do not know to whom we must accord the honour of this fine lyric; it appears for the first time anonymously in Herd's collection. It deserves to be quoted entire : "'Tis nae very lang sinsyne, That I had a lad o' my ain ; But now he's awa' to anither, 1 It appears that, in this capital verse, the writer has simply adapted a popular Lanarkshire rhyme. See Chambers' "Popular Rhymes of Scot land," p. 392. |