The Press. — London, England, 1858-07-24 00:00:00

762 littraturt. yr *Ol4 ,_sl.lp The Ballads of Scotland. Edited by William FAlmondstoune Aytoun, D.C.L. Two Vols. London : Illackwoods. ONE of the most interesting chapters in the history of our English Literature is to be found in the manner in which it has been influenced by Scotch talent and by Scottish associations. Ilume's history was written under the impress of strong Scottish prej udices ; and some of its blemishes are confessedly traceable to the natural bias of its author, who saw political events through the spectacles of a metaphysical Jacobite. Adam Smith's " Wealth of Nations " produced a series of financial revolutions, and the establishment of the Edinburgh Review was the immediate pre cursor of great changes in the critical department of Belles Lettres. But still greater effects re sulted from the songs of Burns, and the extra ordinary triumphs of Sir Walter Scott. While the songs of Burns were still in their first fresh ness, Scott published his " Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," and that work exercised much influence on the reading public. Ile has himself recorded, in his edition of 1830, that much of its great success was to be attributed to the time of its publication, when international feuds were allayed, and the antipathies of the two countries greatly subdued. That work was accepted as an interesting sequel to " -•.- " and the English '- ballads • I'ercy's Reliques, anti- sentiments in some of the Scottish . were overlooked. Various other collections of Scottish ballads have been succes sively published by Jamieson, Finlay, Kinloch, Maidment, Sharpe, and Motherwell, and now Professor Aytoun comes with a collated edition of the Scottish ballads, which has many distinctive features investing it with special claims to notice. This edition of the Scottish ballads is corn prised in two handsome pocket volumes, which contain one hundred and thirty-nine ballads, to which critical notes are appended. Their merit, in an editorial point of view, is the great care with which the task of comparing the various versions has been performed by Professor Aytoun. He is admirably qualified for the purpose of an editor of Scottish ballads, as he unites the accom plishments of a philologist with the expe riences of a successful poet. He has another advantage, also, in being so effective a reciter of Scotch poetry, as some of our readers may have perceived from his lectures at Willis's-rooms in 1853. We never heard Scotch poetry so well recited by any one, and we can easily understand that the ballads of his country must have a. great charm for the learned Professor. His reasons for engaging in the present publication are thus given : From my earliest years I have been familiar with the traditionary poetry of my country ; and I cannot say with truth that subsequent study, or an acquaintance with those compositions which rank as classics, has in any way lessened my admiration for those simple but impassioned strains. They have become, to a certain extent, the first lings of my memory; and verses or snatches of them occur to me more readily for illustration than lines of Horace, which are commonly cited by Parliamentary speakers, or even the epigrammatic and antithetical couplets of the poets of the age of Queen Anne. Such being the case, without arguing any point of tune which might arise from that confession, I may at least plead early familiarity with the subject as an excuse for my present attempt ; and I may further add, that the idea of collating and restoring, in so far as that was possible, the scattered fragments of the Scottish ballad-poetry, in a complete form, has long been present in my mind, and has at various times, when leisure permitted, occupied much of my attention. Before my attention was drawn to active literary pursuits, almost all the floating minstrelsy which time had spared had been collected by able, industrious, and venerable hands—drawn front the great current, and piled in separate heaps—but not, as it appeared to me, properly assorted or arranged. I saw that a good deal of this material was being quietly pilfered for the purposes of transmogrification, and that various old favourities of wine had been furbished, dressed up, and exhibited to the public, with applause, as novelties ; and knowing well the value of much that remained, I was not without apprehen sion that in the course of time the whole stock would be absorbed, to reappear in modern glitter and resonance, just as if • hidden treasure of unicorns, bonnetpieces, and Jacobuses, were to be discovered by a sly appropriator, and by him to be recast as medals bearing his own name and legend. Such always must be the case in the absence of a complete collection. Ido not presume to blame the practice. The artist into whose hands an antique cameo may fall, may undoubtedly take a hint from its tracery. All I contend for is the preservation and collection of the riginals. THE P AIE SS, JUL' 24, 1858. Literature always has had its particular "schools," and Professor Aytoun is the living representative of the Scotch school of poetry. He is not partial to the style of poetry which is now cultivated by those who woo the Muse in England. " Modern glitter and resonance," of which Professor Aytoun speaks in the foregoing passage, are rather dis tasteful to him. His taste is for Doric, not Com posite art ; and the strains of the Laureate may probably seem too artificial, too sensuous in imagery, too over-laboured in diction. Force, simplicity, action, are demanded by the taste of Professor Aytoun, and it is possible that he over rates the rank of mere ballad poetry. That question we shall not now discuss, but we must remark that the study of ballad poetry is still continued vigorously amongst us. The Scandinavian ballads have, especially, in late years, attracted great attention in our literary circles, and much critical research has been em ployed on Danish and Swedish ballads. Minds addicted to dramatic reading, and those that love seeing the passions of the human heart depicted in a close form, complain that ballad poetry is apt to tire. They say that it is flat, reiterative, and insipid. On the other hand, there are many intellects who complain that the dramas for the closet are like philosophic disquisitions in verse ; that the ear is not captivated with the tone of metrical language; and that dramatic poetry tends to the metaphysical. No critical canon can be applied to solve questions of individual taste and prepossession. We have ourselves been struck with the fact that critical ballad readers will linger lovingly enough over a second-rate ballad, but that readers of the drama will scarcely peruse with pleasure an inferior play. The lovers of ballad poetry arc, we think, rather apt to be too exclusively attached to the one school of poetry which pleases them most. Fully admitting the great importance of ballad literature, and confessing our own pleasure in the perusal of that particular form of poetical expres sion, we think that quite enough of admiration has been bestowed on ballad poetry, and we could desire that the poetical mind of Scotland were turned in some direction in which the national Muse might gain fresh laurels. The impulse given by " Percy's Reliques," the in fluence of Scott's poems, and the feelings awakened by various editions of old ballads, have all done their work, and it would be well if a new current of poetical thought were discovered. Professor Aytoun is a poet and a man of genius, from whom we have high expectations. Emi nently successful in his poetical enterprizes, we think that he would soar still higher if he took another model for his compositions than that on which he has worked hitherto. Some of us south of the Tweed think that he is too sectional in his taste, and that he sets too great a value on these " firstlings of his memory," as he calls these ballads. It is well to recollect that the form of the ballad gives it only a limited power. Sir Walter Scott has admitted " the flatness and insipidity " which are the great imperfections of ballad " poetry ;" and the same high authority has also alluded to " the tenuity of thought and poverty " of expression by which old ballads are too often " distinguished " (Introduction to Minstrelsy of Scottish Border). The "tenuity of thought" there mentioned by Sir Walter Scott is the great defect in ballad literature. it was said of Cowper's poetry by an able critic, that it will be always popular with women and young persons ; and the same might be affirmed of ballads. Learned for the first time in a parent's home, and associated for many a year with the affecting recollections of early lite, ballad poetry has many extraneous charms. Scotchruen, especially, join these ballads before us with the nationality of their country, so that there is a tendency, per haps, to overrate the poetical value of their pieces. On their historical and antiquarian value there can be no difference of opinion. But without going further into the discussion of this subject, we shall allow Professor Aytoun, in his own words, to give his opinion as to the literary origin of these ballads:— Their number, as we have them now, without attempting to estimate the many which must have disappeared iu the course of time, is a clear proof that they were not composed casually or from the caprice of the writers, but were the production of minstrels, who, in remoter times, followed their craft as a regular profession or means of livelihood —though the emoluments may have been but scanty, and the social position of the professors not very exalted. It is no shortsighted policy which suggests that the recre tions of a people should be attended to a t w e lt as th:i physical wants ; for man is a complex animal, and in t h absence of all amusement to relieve the severity o f h i daily toil, he is apt to become sullen and morose, if no positively dangerous. The homely phrase, " All work end no play," implies a condition unwholesome alike for in. dividuels and societies, and decidedly unfavourable to the development of the better propensities of our natu re Some modern philanthropists, who are entitled to credit for their zeal and cerity, though we may be allowed t o doubt the soundness of their philosophy and the extent of their discretion, have opined that the best mode of reereet• ing the people and refreshing their spirits, lies in th e alternation of severe mental and bodily exercise ; the hours of leisure being devoted to study, as diligently as those of labour are dedicated to the needful exercise of a handicraft. Experience, not less than common sense, is opposed ~ such preposterous notions ; and it' there is one lesson inure easily deducible from the pages of history than another, it is this—that the happiness of a people is best consulted, and their contentment most easily secured, by giving them every facility for innocent and pleasant pastime. I eo n " help thinking that the severe measures of the Scottish Legislature, about the middle of the sixteenth century, fur checking and even suppressing the sports of the com monalty, contributed largely in engendering that spirit of abarchv, disaffection, and turbulence, which for a long series of years; gave Scotland the unenviable character of being the rudest country of Christendom. We could have wished that Professor Aytoun had entered deeper in his preliminary disserta tion on the question of the status held by the ballad-minstrels in the Middle Ages. If Bishop Percy exaggerated the rank of the minstrels, it is, we think, now admitted that Ritson estimated them too low in a social point of view, and some of the bitterest comments from Ritson's mordant pen were in his strictures on the views put for ward on this point in Bishop Percy's famous " Reliques." Professor Aytoun's conclusion on that point is as follows : I do not regard as mere casual compositions, dictated by the fancy of individuals who had a natural taste for poetry, or an ambition for making themselves known as men of superior capacity in a small and obscure circle, but as pro- fessional works, undertaken both for livelihood and time, which must ever have some connection. Be it remembered that, before the invention of printing, fame was a herb. hood. Posthumous renown, the comfort of modern appointed poetasters, was then a thing undiscovered. The poet had then a living, sentient, and sensitive audience to address ; and if he could not stir, influence, nr inspire them, there was not even a phantom of a tribunal to which he could carry his appeal. _ _ This subject of critical controversy may be solved in a manner to reconcile both views. We take it that the rank of minstrels depended much on their personal character, manners, and abilities. Their rank was, probably, indeterminate. In " Waverley," after the hero of the novel is intro du:ed in the feast at Glennaquoil, Fergus Allvor asks, " Where is the song hidden, my friends, that M'Murrough cannot find it ?" and we have then a vivid description of the family bard's song, composed in Gaelic, of which Flora Mqvor renders the spirited version -.+, There is mist in the nsithntaln, and night in the vale, But more dsrk is the sleep of the sons of the Gael. Sc. --- --- And the description by the master-novelist of the way in which M'Murrough recited his verses, and their effect on the chieftain's followers, is most striking. We refer to it particularly as illustrating to some extent the opinion offered by I'rofessor Aytoun in the foregoing extract; for Scott goes on to say of M'Alurrough's re wards : Flora was so mach beloved by the peasantry that when M'Murrough composed a song, in which he enumerated all the beauties .if the district, and intimated her snperio• rity by concluding " that the fairest apple hung on tha highest bough," he received in donations, from the indi viduals of the clan, more seed•barley than would haus solved his Highland Parnassus," the Bard's Croft," as it was called, ten tunes over. This passage is, we think, "founded on fact," and of course the occupation of the minstrel grew higher in proportion to the rank of the family. But we want space to discuss this sub ject at length. In these volumes all the standard ballads of Scotland, if we may use the expression, will be found. We allude to such as " Sir Patrick Spens," " The Battle of Otterburn," " Edom o' Gordon," " Annie of Lochroyan," " Gil Morice, "Waly, Waly," "Donald of the Isles," Scc. Mingled with them are others less known in Eng land. Thus " llelen of Kirkeonnell " will be new to many of our readers, for, although printed by Scott m " The Border Minstrelsy," it is not as much known in England as it deserves. The ballad recites a real incident : A lady of the name of Helen Irving, or Bell (for t 1 1 .4 is disputed by the two clans ), daughter of the laird of hirk•