|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Book, page 12 / 131 birthplace of Robert Burns. I passed a whole morning about "the banks and braes of bonnie Doon," with his tender little love verses running in my head. I found a poor Scotch carpenter at work among the ruins of Kirk Alloway, which was to be converted into a school-house. Finding the purpose of my visit, he left his work, sat down with me on a grassy grave, close by where Burns' father was buried, and talked of the poet, whom he had known personally. He said his songs were familiar to the poorest and most illiterate of the country folk, "_and it seemed to him as if the country had grown more beautiful, since Burns had written his bonnie little songs about it._" I found Scott was quite an enthusiast on the subject of the popular songs of his country, and he seemed gratified to find me so alive to them. Their effect in calling up in my mind the recollections of early times and scenes in which I had first heard them, reminded him, he said, of the lines of his poor Mend, Leyden, to the Scottish muse: "In youth's first morn, alert and gay, Ere rolling years had passed away, Remembered like a morning dream, I heard the dulcet measures float, In many a liquid winding note, Along the bank of Teviot's stream. "Sweet sounds! that oft have soothed to rest The sorrows of my guileless breast, And charmed away mine infant tears; Fond memory shall your strains repeat, Like distant echoes, doubly sweet, That on the wild the traveller hears." Scott went on to expatiate on the popular songs of Scotland. "They are a part of our national inheritance," said he, "and something that we may truly call our own. They have no foreign taint; they have the pure breath of the heather and the mountain breeze. All genuine legitimate races that have descended from the ancient Britons; such as the Scotch, the Welsh, and the Irish, have national airs. The English have none, because they are not natives of the soil, or, at least, are mongrels. Their music is all made up of foreign scraps, like a harlequin jacket, or a piece of mosaic. Even in Scotland, we have comparatively few
|
Knowledgerush Search
|
|
Contact Us
| Privacy Statement & Terms of Use
|