OBSERVATIONS ON THE SCOTTISH MUSIC AND NATIONAL SONGS. [From Dr. Currie's Edition of the Works of Burns.] WHEN the Reformation was established in Scotland, instrumen tal music was banished from the churches, as savouring too much of "profane minstrelsy." Instead of being regulated by an instrument, the voices of the congregation are led and directed by a person under the name of a precentor, and the people are all expected to join in the tune which he chuses for the psalm which is to be sung. Church music is therefore a part of the education of the peasantry of Scotland, in which they are usually instructed in the long winter-nights by the parish schoolmaster, who is generally the precentor, or by itinerant teachers more celebrated for their powers of voice. This branch of education had, in the last reign, fallen into some neglect, but was revived about thirty or forty years ago, when the music itself was reformed and improved. The Scottish system of psalmody is however radically bad. Destitute of taste or harmony, it forms a striking contrast with the delicacy and pathos of the profane airs. Our poet, it will be found, was taught church-music, in which, however, he made little proficiency. That dancing should also be very generally a part of the education of the Scottish peasantry, will surprize those who have only seen this description of men; and still more those who reflect on the rigid spirit of Calvinism with which that nation is so deeply affected, and to which the recreation is strongly abhorrent. The winter is also the season when they acquire dancing, and indeed almost all their other instruction.-They are taught to dance by persons, generally of their own number, many of whom work at daily labour during the summer months. The school is usually a barn, and the arena for the performers is generally a clay floor. The dome is lighted by candles stuck in one end of a cloven stick, the other end of which is stuck into the wall. Reels, Strathspeys, country dances, and hornpipes, are here practised. The jig, so much in favour among the English peasantry, has no place among them. The attachment of the people of Scotland of every rank, and particularly of the peasantry, to this amusement is very great. After the labours of the day are over, young men and women walk many miles in the cold and dreary nights of winter, to these country dancing schools; and the instant that the violin sounds a Scottish air, fatigue seems to vanish, the toil bent rustic becomes erect, his features brighten with sympathy; every nerve seems to thrill with sensation, and every artery to vibrate with life. These rustic performers are indeed less to be admired for grace than agility and animation, and their accurate observance of time. Their modes of dancing as well as their tunes, are com mon mon to every rank in Scotland, and are now generally known. In our own day they have penetrated into England, and have established themselves even in the circle of royalty. In another generation they will be naturalized in every part of the island.* The prevalence of this taste, or rather passion, for dancing, among a people so deeply tinctured with the spirit and doctrines of Calvin, is one of those contradictions which the philosophic observer so often finds in the national character and manners. It is probably to be ascribed to the Scottish music, which throughout all its varieties, is so full of sensibility, and which, in its livelier strains, awakes those vivid emotions that find in dancing their natural solace and relief. This triumph of the music of Scotland over the spirit of the established religion, has not however been obtained without long continued and obstinate struggles. The numerous sectaries who dissent from the establishment on account of the relaxation which they perceive, or think they perceive, in the church, from her original doctrines and discipline, universally condemn the practice of dancing, and the schools where it is taught: and the more elderly and serious part of the people of every persuasion, tolerate rather than approve these meetings of the young of both sexes, where dancing is practised to their spirit-stirring music, where care is dispelled, toil is forgotten, and prudence itself is sometimes lulled to sleep. The Reformation, which proved fatal to the rise of the other fine arts in Scotland, probably impeded, but could not obstruct the progress of its music; a circumstance that will convince the impartial inquirer, that this music not only existed previously to the æra, but had taken a firm hold of the nation; thus affording a proof of its antiquity stronger than any produced by the researches of our antiquaries. The impression which the Scottish music has made on the people, is deepened by its union with the national songs, of which various collections of unequal merit are before the public. These songs, like those of other nations, are many of them humourous, but they chiefly treat of love, war, and drinking. Love is the subject of the greater proportion. Without displaying the higher powers of imagination, they exhibit a perfect knowledge of the human heart, and breathe a spirit of affection, and sometimes of delicate and romantic tenderness, not to be surpassed in modern poetry, and which the more polished strains of antiquity have seldom possessed. *At the fete given by her Royal Highness the Duchess of York, at Oatlands, on the 30th of May, the dances were as follows:-1. Ramah Droog. 2. Miss Murray, of Auchtertyre. 3. The Tartan Plaidie. 4. Lady Harriet Hope's reel. And, lastly, the enchanting tune of Mrs. Gordon, of Troupe's Strathspey, was called for by the Princess Augusta, and danced twice over by all the set. Between the second and third dance, their Majesties desiring to see the Highland Reel in all its purity, it was danced by the Marquis of Huntley and Lady Georgina Gordon, Colonel Erskine and Lady Charlotte Durham, with all the elastic motion, hereditary character, and boundless variety of the Scottish dance. 5 The The origin of this amatory character in the rustic muse of Scotland, or of the greater number of these love-songs themselves, it would be difficult to trace; they have accumulated in the silent lapse of time, and it is now perhaps impossible to give an arrangement of them in the order of their date, valuable as such a record of taste and manners would be. Their present influence on the character of the nation is however great and striking. To them we must attribute in a great measure the romantic passion which so often characterizes the attachments of the humblest of the people of Scotland, to a degree, that if we mistake not, is seldom found in the same rank of society in other countries. The pictures of love and happiness exhibited in their rural songs, are early impressed on the mind of the peasant, and are rendered more attractive from the music with which they are united. They associate themselves with his own youthful emotions; they elevate the object as well as the nature of his attachment; and give to the impressions of sense, the beautiful colours of imagination. Hence, in the course of his passion, a Scottish peasant often exerts a spirit of adventure, of which a Spanish cavalier need not be ashamed. After the labours of the day are over, he sets out for the habitation of his mistress, perhaps at many miles distance, regardless of the length or the dreariness of the way. He approaches her in secrecy, under the disguise of night. A signal at the door or window, perhaps agreed on, and understood by none but her, gives information of his arrival, and sometimes it is repeated again and again, before the capricious fair one will obey the summons. But if she favours his addresses, she escapes unobserved, and receives the vows of her lover under the gloom of twilight, or the deeper shade of night. Interviews of this kind are the subjects of many of the Scottish songs, some of the most beautiful of which Burns has imitated or improved. In the art which they celebrate he was perfectly skilled; he knew and had practised all its mysteries. Intercourse of this sort is indeed universal even in the humblest condition of man in every region of the earth. But it is not unnatural to suppose, that it may exist in a greater degree and in a more romantic form, among the peasantry of a country who are supposed to be more than commonly instructed, who find in their rural songs expression for their youthful emotions, and in whom the embers of passion are continually fanned by the breathings of a music full of tenderness and sensibility. The direct influence of physical causes on the attachment between the sexes, is comparatively small, but it is modified by moral causes beyond any other affection of the mind; of these music and poetry are the chief. Among the snows of Lapland, and under the burning sun of Angola, the savage is seen hastening to his mistress, every where he beguiles the weariness of his journey with poetry and song." * *The North American Indians, among whom the attachment between the sexes is said to be weak, and love, in the purer sense of the word unknown, seem nearly unacquainted with the charms of poetry and music. CURIOUS CURIOUS SPECULATIONS. How widely different the speculations of men from the realities of life! Even Lord Bacon gave up his time and labour to invent what he was pleased to call Methusalem Water; yet he could not extend his own life beyond the common boundary of mortality. Des Cartes pretended to possess a secret for prolonging human life, and modestly told Sir Kehelm Digby, that though to render a man immortal was what he could not venture to promise, yet he was very sure it was possible to lengthen out his life to the period of the patriarchs. While he was composing a short system of medicines, containing a discovery of this grand arcanum, Death, that great confounder of human devices, seized him when he was yet but four and fifty years old, and put a speedy end to all his hopes. Among the learned notes on Hudibras is the following account of a curious attempt to ascertain a universal measure. Hudibras, threatening Sydrophel, and his man Whachum, for robbing him, says: "Upon the bench I will so handle 'em, Shall make all taylors' yards of one "This device of the vibration of a pendulum, (says the commentator) was intended to settle a certain measure of ells and yards, &c. (that should have its foundation in nature) all the world over. For by swinging a weight at the end of a string, and calculating (by the motion of the sun, or any star) how long the vibration would last, in proportion to the length of the string and weight of the pendulum they thought to reduce it back again, and from any part of time compute the exact length of any string that must necessarily vibrate into so much space of time. So that if a man should ask in China for a quarter of an hour of sattin or taffata, they would know perfectly what it meant ; and all mankind learn a new way to measure things, no more by the yard, foot, or inch, but by the hour, quarter, or minute." ANECDOTE OF MR. HORNE. MR. HORNE, the father of the celebrated Dr. Horne, bishop of Norwich, was of so quiet and mild a temper, that he studiously avoided giving trouble upon any occasion. This he carried so far, that when his son George (afterwards the bishop) was an infant, he used to wake him with playing upon a flute; that the change from sleeping to awaking might be gradual and pleasant, and not produce any outcry. What impression this early custom made upon his temper we cannot say: but certainly he was remarkable, as he grew up, for a tender feeling of music, especially that of the church. -Jones's Life of Dr. Horne. GLEANINGS. THE PLAGUE. Nisi utile est quod facimus, stulta est gloria. (A. R. Sc. Lisb.) THE following short directions for the cure and prevention of the plague are compiled from a small pamphlet in the Italian language, Lately published by Count Berchtold at Vienna, 1797, one copy of which is in possession of the royal academy of sciences of Lisbon, to whom it was presented by his Excellency Mr. Pinto, her Majesty's Secretary of State, &c. The academy has ordered translations to be made into Arabic, French, and Portuguese; and this extract in English is particularly intended for the use of the numerous bodies of British subjects at present employed on their country's service in this part of Europe; as the garrison of Gibraltar; the fleet at sea; the troops on shore. in Portugal; and the masters of British vessels in its harbours. The compiler has no other information concerning it whatever than that contained in the pamphlet, nor does he know if any thing upon the subject has yet been published in England. He leaves the reader to believe or reject, according to his judgment; heartily wishing there may never be a necessity for putting it to the trial. Count Berchtold says, that the method was first proposed by George Baldwin, esq. his Britannic Majesty's agent and consulgeneral at Alexandria in Egypt, who during a long residence in that country, after much thought and observation was induced to believe that the use of sweet olive oil, applied to the skin, might prove beneficial in the treatment of this dreadful and hitherto incurable malady. Mr. Baldwin communicated his ideas to the Reverend Lewis de de Pavia, chaplain and agent to the hospital (called St. Anthony's) at Smyrna;-who after five year's experience, pronounces it to be the most efficacious remedy hitherto made use of, for the space of twenty-seven years that the hospital had been under his management. He acquainted Count Berchtold with the success and the mode of application; and from his communications the pamphlet seems principally to have been composed. ⚫ Count Berchtold further says, that it is Mr. Baldwin's intention to publish a more full and philosophical relation of his observations and experiments; that he favoured the Count with the perusal of the manuscript, and permitted him to transcribe any part of it; and he apologizes to the world and to Mr. Baldwin for this seeming anticipation of the work, at the same time observing, that he feels it an indispensable, a sacred duty to lose no time in making known a discovery of such importance, particularly to those countries that are nearer, and have more frequent commerce with the Barbary states and the ports of the Turkish empire. The directions are simply these: immediately that a person is perceived to be infected with the Plague, he must be taken into a VOL. 2. No. 8. P close |