No More Learning

Oldys, who deserved a better fate, spent a large
part of his life in hack-work for booksellers. To the edition of
.
Ralegh’s History of the World, edited by him in 1736, he prefixed
an elaborate life of the author, perhaps his most important work.
The British Librarian, which he issued in six monthly numbers,
in 1737, is merely an analytical contents of a selection of books,
new and old; but his annotations in copies of various books,
especially Langbaine's Dramatic Poets-, have been largely used
by later commentators.
About the year 1572 there had been founded in London, chiefly
through the instrumentality of archbishop Parker, a Society of
Antiquaries. For nearly twenty years, this society met at the
house of Sir Robert Cotton ; but, on the accession of James I, it
was, for some not very apparent reason, suppressed. It seems to
have been fully a century later before there was any revival of
such reunions ; but in 1707 a few persons "curious in their re-
searches in antiquity' arranged to meet weekly for the discussion
of such subjects, and, after ten years of these more or less informal
1 As to Langbaine, cf. ante, chap. v.


## p. 358 (#382) ############################################

358
Scholars and Antiquaries
meetings, the present Society of Antiquaries was regularly con-
stituted in January 1717—18, with Peter Le Neve as president, and
Dr Stukeley as secretary. The list of founders included Roger
and Samuel Gale, Humfrey Wanley, Browne Willis, and other
wellknown names. In 1770, the society began to print selections
from its papers under the title of Archaeologia. This publication
formed a convenient repository for minor studies, a function which
had previously been performed to some extent by the Philosophical
Transactions, which the Royal society, instituted in 1660, began
to issue five years later.
A period of new activities like that under review is scarcely
expected to be productive of definitive work, and few, if any, of
the books that have been named in this section attained the
degree of exhaustiveness and niceness of accuracy demanded in
the present age of work in the same field. Much, however, was
done, by collecting data, examining material and making in-
ventorial records, to prepare the way for succeeding workers; and
the general results of this period are well summed up in the words
of Tanner, which, written in 1695, are applicable with even more
force at the close of the time covered by this brief survey.
The advances, that all parts of Learning have within these few
years made in England, are very obvious; but the progress is visible in
nothing more, than in the illustrations of our own History and Antiquities.
To which end we have had our ancient Records and Annals published from
the Originals, the Chorographical Description of these Kingdoms very much
improved, and some attempts made toward a just body of English History.
For those also that are more particularly curious, we have had not only
the Histories both Natural and Civil of several Counties, the descriptions of
Cities, and the Monuments and Antiquities of Cathedral Churches accurately
collected; but even the memoirs of private Families, Villages, and Houses,
compiled and published 1.
1 Notitia Monastica, preface.


## p. 359 (#383) ############################################

CHAPTER XIV
SCOTTISH POPULAR POETRY BEFORE BURNS
DURING a large portion of the sixteenth, and nearly the whole
of the seventeenth century a blight had fallen on secular verse in
Scotland ; so great a blight that very little of the best and most
characteristic verse of the 'makaris' would have come down to us
but for its preservation in MSS. One or two pieces by Henryson
and Dunbar were printed at Edinburgh by Chepman and Myllar
in 1508; Henryson's irreproachable Morall Fables were printed
by Lekprevick at St Andrews in 1570; but it was in London, and
after his death, that even the Vergil of Gavin Douglas appeared in
1553 and his Palice of Honour in 1579. Lyndsay's poems, printed
in London and elsewhere before the reformation, were probably
circulated privately in Scotland, where, after the reformation,
many editions were published; and they retained their excep-
tional popularity during the seventeenth century. But, Lyndsay
excepted, the old 'makaris' were never much known outside the
circle of the court or the learned classes; and, though James VI
himself wrote verse and patronised Montgomerie and other poets,
the old poetic succession virtually perished with the advent of
Knox.
Although, however, the age had become inimical to art of every
kind, it is very difficult to tell what was the actual effect of the kirk's
repressive rule on the manners, morals, habits and ancient predi-
lections of the people, or how far the hymnary of The Gude and
Godly Ballatis great as may have been the immediate vogue of
the anti-papal portion of it-superseded the old songs which
many of them parodied. While the relentless rigidity of the new
ecclesiasticism is sufficiently disclosed in its official standards and
its enactments, tractates, contemporary histories and session and
presbytery records, the actual efficacy of its discipline is another
matter. It had to deal with a very stubborn, selfwilled and
retentive people, and there is at least evidence that the old songs, if


## p. 360 (#384) ############################################

360 Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns
their popularity was, for a time, impaired, were by no means killed.
Doubtless, many were certain, in any case, to lose their vogue and be
gradually forgotten; but there is apparent evidence of the survival
in Scotland of some verses which were parodied in The Gude and
Godly Ballatis. How old are various songs in Ramsay's Tea-Table
Miscellany (1724, etc. ), marked by him as 'ancient'-such as
Muirland Willie, Scornfu' Nansie, Maggie's Tocher, My Jocky
blyth, Jocky said to Jeany, The Auld Guidman, In January last,
John Ochiltree, Todlen Butt and Todlen Ben and Jocky met with
Jenny fair—there is no definite means of knowing, though Fient
a crum of thee she faws is a semi-modernisation of Alexander
Scott's When his Wife Left him, and may serve as a specimen of
the liberties Ramsay took with the songs he termed 'ancient'
Probably, however, most of them belong to the seventeenth
century, and it may be that few are so old as The Auld Wife
ayont the Fire, Jocky Fou and Jenny Fain, Jeany where has
thou been and Auld Rob Morrig-which Ramsay terms old songs
with additions, the addition, sometimes, absorbing all the old song
except fragments of stanzas or the chorus-nor so old as others for
which he substituted an entirely new song under the old title. Next
to Ramsay's--and better in several respects than Ramsay's—is the
collection of David Herd, who, having amassed old songs from
broadsides, and written down fragments of others from recital,
without any attempt to alter or add to them, published a selection
of them in 1769, an enlarged edition in two volumes appearing in
1776, and the remainder of the songs in his MSS, edited by Hans
Hecht, in 1904. Some of these songs had been utilised by Burns,
who sent others, modified by himself, to Johnson's Scots Musical
Museum (1787–1803): and various old songs, of an improper
kind, are preserved with more modern ones in The Merry Muses,
of the original and authentic edition of which only one or two
copies now survive.
From the accession of James VI to the English throne, the
rigidity of the kirk's authority was coming to be more and more
undermined; and, especially among the better classes, the puritan
tendencies, never, in most cases, very deep, began to be greatly
modified. It is to this class we evidently owe many of the old songs
preserved by Ramsay. None of the old lyrical verse, though it has,
and especially to us of a later generation, a popular aspect, is really
of popular origin. When closely examined, it gives evidence of
some cultured art; though exceedingly outspoken, it is never
vulgar; nor is its standpoint that of the people, but similar, as


## p. 361 (#385) ############################################

Relations between English and Scottish Song 361
its tone, with a difference, is similar, to that of the 'makaris':
for example, to that of the author of The Wife of Auchter-
mychty and Rob's Jok cam to woo our Jenny, preserved in the
Bannatyne Ms. But, while also intensely Scottish in tone and
tenor, many of these songs are yet, in metre and style, largely
modelled upon the forms of English verse, which, from the time
of Alexander Scott, had begun to modify the old Scottish dialect
and the medieval staves. The language of most of them is only
semi-Scots, as is also most of the lyric verse of Scotland from
Ramsay onwards.
The relations between English and Scottish popular music and
song were, even at an early period, somewhat intimate, and there
was a specially close connection between southern Scotland and
the north of England, the people on both sides of the Borders
being largely of the same race and speaking the same northern
dialect of Early English. Chappell, in his Popular Music of the
olden Time, and in notes to the earlier volumes of the Roxburghe
Ballads, Ebsworth, in his notes to the later Roxburghe and other
ballads, and Furnivall, in introductions to various publications,
have pointed out the trespasses of various Scottish editors such as
Ramsay, Thomson (Orpheus Caledonius 1725), Oswald (Scots Airs
1740) and Stenhouse (Notes to Johnson's Scots Musical Museum
1853)-in rapaciously appropriating for Scotland various old popular
English tunes and songs; but, on the other hand, the case against
the Scottish origin of certain tunes and songs is not so clear as
these editors sometimes endeavour to make out; and, in not a few
instances, they can be proved to be in error. Several tunes and
songs had an international vogue at so early a period that it is
really impossible to determine their origin; moreover, the Scottish
court, especially during the reign of the five kings of the name of
James, was a great centre of all kinds of artistic culture, and
probably, through its musicians and bards, exercised considerable
influence on music and song in the north of England.
That various English tunes are included in the Scottish MS
collections of the seventeenth century is undeniable: they merely
represent tunes, Scots or English, that came to be popular in
Scotland, but a large number, even of the doubtful variety, may
well have been of Scots origin; and, in any case, the titles of many
indicate that they had become wedded to Scottish words. Chappell
has affirmed that the religious parodies, such as Ane Compendious
Booke of Godly and Spirituall Songs, are commonly upon English
songs and ballads. Now, when the book was first published--and,
>


## p. 362 (#386) ############################################

362 Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns
since an edition so early as 1567 survives, there is reason to
suppose that it was first published between 1542 and 1546—this
was not at all likely, for it immediately succeeded what may be
called the golden age of old Scottish verse, and, at the date of its
publication, Scottish verse was little, if at all, affected by the
new school of English poetry. Indeed, English songs, at least
those not in the northern dialect, could hardly, before this, have
had any popular vogue in Scotland; but it should be observed
that Chappell did not know of the early date of the book, and
supposed it not to have appeared till 1590. Thus, after printing
the air ‘Go from my Window,' he adds that, on 4 March 1587—8,
John Wolfe had licence to print a ballad called 'Goe from the
window,' which ‘may be the original'; and he then proceeds
gravely to tell us: 'It is one of the ballads that were parodied
in Ane Compendious Booke of Godly and Spirituall Songs. .
printed in Edinburgh in 1590 and 1621'; whereas, if Wolfe's be
the original English ballad, then 'Go from my Window' must be
of Scottish origin—though whether it is or not is uncertain.
Similarly, Chappell was unaware that the compendium was a
much earlier authority for John come kisse me than any cited
by him; and the fact that there is an answer to it in Scots in the
same measure-preserved in a Dublin university MS-favours the
supposition that the original song was in Scots; while an actual
verse of the song may very well be that published by Herd in 1769
along with the original chorus. Again, with regard to The Wind
Blaws Cauld, Hay Now the Day daws and The Hunt's Up, it
would be easy to point out earlier Scottish than English references
to them. Later, it is also indisputable that, while Ramsay and
others were indebted to English broadsides for suggestions and,
sometimes, for more, various English broadsides are mere travesties,
and others reminiscent, or more than reminiscent, of old Scottish
songs. Chappell's theory that the original name for the tunes to
which some of these ballads were set was 'northern'- synonym,
in his opinion, for ‘rustic'—and that, after the accession of
Charles II, such tunes were gradually denominated 'Scotch,' while
it is the only theory consistent with his conclusions, is not in
itself a very feasible one, and, besides, the evidence such as
exists—is all against it. Shakespeare likens wooing to a 'Scotch
jig,' 'hot and hasty' and 'full as fantastical'; Dryden compares
Chaucer's tales for their rude sweetness' to a 'Scotch tune'; and
Shadwell, in The Scowrers, makes Clara describe'a Scotch song'as
‘more hideous and barbarous than an Irish cronan. No one can


## p. 363 (#387) ############################################

Original Scots Songs 363
credit that the jigs, tunes and songs thus referred to were really
not 'Scotch’ but ‘northern,' or 'rustic’; but, unless we interpret
Scotch' in the very special sense that Chappell would attach to it
from the time of Charles II in its relation with broadside tunes and
ballads, we can arrive at no other conclusion than that tunes and
songs recognised to be 'Scotch' in the usual sense of that term
were well known in London from at least the time of Shakespeare.
Moreover, since we find ballads of the early seventeenth century
written to tunes which are described as 'Scotch,' we must suppose
that these and subsequent ballad-writers, whether they were under
a delusion or not, really supposed that the tunes to which they
referred were 'Scotch'; and we must assume that the reason for
the hypothesis was that they knew them as sung to 'Scotch'
words. In several instances, also, internal evidence clearly shows
the dependence of the Anglo-Scots version on a Scots original. It
is very manifest in D'Urfey's Scotch Wedding, where ‘Scotch' can
scarcely stand for 'rustic, since the piece is merely an amazing
version of The Blythesome Bridal. Then, what but a Scots
original could have suggested ballads with such titles as Johny's
Escape from Bonny Dundee or 'Twas within a Furlong of
Edinburgh Town, or The Bonny Scotch Lad and the Yielding
Lass, set to the tune of The Liggan Waters, i. e. Logan Water (an
old air well known to Burns, the original words of which are
evidently those partly preserved in the Herd MS and, with a
difference, in The Merry Muses); or The Northern Lass 'to a
pleasant Scotch tune called the Broome of Cowden Knowes';
or, indeed, any other broadside ballads concerned with Scottish
themes or incidents ? Even in cases where a modern Scottish
adaptation of an old song may be later than an English broadside
on the same theme, we cannot always be certain that it is borrowed
from the broadside. Thus, the English broadside Jenny, Jenny
bears both external and internal evidence of being founded on an
old Scots original, whether or not this original was known to
Ramsay. Again, Ramsay's Nanny O is later than the broadside
Scotch Wooing of Willy and Nanny, and may have been sug-
gested by it, for it has a very similar chorus; but Chappell has
been proved wrong in his statement that the tune to which the
broadside is set is English, and the Scots original may well have
been, with differences caused by recitation, the version in the
Herd MS, A8 I came in by Edinburgh town, a line of which was
possibly in the mind of Claverhouse, when he declared his willing-
ness to take ‘in her smoak’ the lady he afterwards married. In


## p. 364 (#388) ############################################

364 Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns
some instances where the English broadside may be the original,
there is, it must be admitted, a striking superiority in the Scottish
version. This is very marked, for example, in The Jolly Beggar
and Helen of Kirkconnel; but, occasionally, as in Robin's Courtship,
which is merely a Scottish reading of The Wooing of Robin and
Joan—but not, of course, the work of Herd or any co-conspirator
of his, as Ebsworth vehemently supposed--there is deterioration;
and, indeed, many vulgar Scottish chapbook songs are mere Scottish
perversions of English broadsides.
A lyric in The Tea-Table Miscellany of outstanding excellence
and entirely Scottish in sentiment and style, Were na my Heart
licht, was written by Lady Grizel Baillie, who also is known to have
written various other songs, though none have been recovered
except the mournfully beautiful fragment The Ewe-buchtin's
bonnie, which may have been suggested by the peril of her
father- Patrick Hume, afterwards earl of Marchmont-when in
hiding, in 1684, in the vault of Polwarth because of implication in
the Rye house plot. Lady Wardlaw is now known to be the author
of the ballads Hardyknute and Gilderoy. Willie was a Wanton
Wag-suggested by the English O Willy was 80 blythe a Lad in
Playford's Choice Ayres (1650), but a sparkling, humorous and
original sketch of a Scottish gallant-was sent by William Hamilton
of Gilbertfield to Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany; and the lyrics
now mentioned with those of Ramsay himself, and others consisting
of new-and mostly English-words by different hands, whose
identity, with few exceptions, cannot now be determined, are the
first indication, now visible to us, of the new popular lyrical revival
in Scotland; though mention may here be made of the Delectable
New ballad, intituled Leader-Haughs and Yarrow (c. 1690), the
work, according to a line of the ballad, of 'Minstrel Burn,' which
seems to have set the fashion for later Yarrow ballads and songs,
and was republished by Ramsay in his Miscellany.
Meanwhile, the old poetic methods of the 'makaris' had been
preserved or revived by Robert Sempill, of Beltrees, Renfrewshire,
in his eulogy of the village piper of Kilbarchan, Habbie Simson.
Sempill has also been speculatively credited with the authorship
of Maggie Lauder, on account of its mention of Habbie, but
nothing is known of the song previous to its preservation by
Herd, and it might just as well have been the work of Hamilton of
Gilbertfield, the scene of whose Bonnie Heck, like that of Maggie
Lauder, is laid in Fife. More probable is Sempill's authorship
of The Blythesome Bridal, which has also been attributed


## p. 365 (#389) ############################################

Habbie Simson
365
to his son Francis Sempill, author of a vernacular piece of no
great merit, in the French octave, The Banishment of Povertie.
The Blythesome Bridal, though a little rancid in its humour, is the
cleverest of those seventeenth century pieces with the exception of
Maggie Lauder. Its portrayal of the village worthies who went
to the bridal, if more cynical than flattering, is terse and realistic:
but the simple, semi-humorous, semi-pathetic eulogy of the piper
was to exercise a much more pregnant and permanent influence on
the future of Scottish verse. Ramsay, in one of his poetical epistles,
refers to it as 'Standard Habbie,' and with even greater reason
than it was possible for him to know, though he could hardly
exaggerate what he himself owed to it as an exemplar for some
of his most characteristic verse. It is written in a six-line stave in
rime couée, built on two rimes, which can be traced back to the
French troubadours, and was common in England in the thirteenth,
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The stave appears anonymously
in the Bannatyne MS, but, possibly, was introduced into Scotland,
not from France, at an early, but from England at a comparatively
late, period, for Sir David Lyndsay is the earliest of the 'makaris'
who is known to have made use of it, though, after him, Montgomerie,
Scott and Sir Richard Maitland all had recourse to it Since it is
the stave of one of the Gude and Godly Ballatis, and appeared,
also, in Sir David Lyndsay's Pleasant Satyre, Sempill's knowledge
of it is easy to explain; but it had never previously been employed
for elegies, and to have recourse to it for this purpose was, on his
part, if not an inspiration of genius, at least a very happy thought.
If The Life and Death of Habbie Simson is but a moderately
good achievement, it is hardly exaggeration to affirm that, but for
it, the course of Scottish vernacular verse would, in certain almost
cardinal respects, have been widely different from what it turned
out to be. It set a fashion which was to dominate, in quite a
singular way, its whole future. Not only were most future ver-
nacular elegies beginning with the epitaph of Sanny Briggs, the
butler of the Sempills and Habbie's nephew, which was either by
Robert Sempill or his son Francis-modelled on it, generally down
to the adoption of the refrain ending in 'dead'; but the stave,
which almost writes itself, proved peculiarly adapted for the Scoto-
English which had become the prevailing speech in Scotland, and
suitable for the expression of almost any variety of sentiment, from
homely and familiar humour, the prevailing mood of the vernacular
muse, to cutting satire, delicate, tender or highwrought emotion,
graphic and impressive description, or moving appeal.


## p. 366 (#390) ############################################

366 Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns
Habbie Simson, already well known as a broadside, was included
in Watson's Choice Collection, together with an anonymous epitaph
in the same stave and manner on the famous traveller William
Lithgow, and a variation, The Last Dying Words of Bonnie Heck,
by William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, on which Ramsay modelled
his Lucky Spence's Last Advice, and The Last Speech of a Wretched
Miser, and which, though not in the same stave, suggested Burns's
Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie. Hamilton and Ramsay
also set another fashion for the use of the stave by utilising it for
a series of poetical epistles that passed between them. Other
modern pieces in Watson's Collection were The Blythesome Bridal,
The Banishment of Povertie, The Speech of a Fife Laird and The
Mare of Collington. The most notable of the old pieces were Christis
Kirk and Montgomerie's The Cherrie and the Slae, both of which
had long previously appeared in printl; and it is worthy of note
that it was in the staves of Habbie and these two poems that
the most characteristically Scottish non-lyrical verse found expres-
sion. The lyrical verse of the revival was not so uniformly Scottish
as the other, and much of that which was truly Scottish in tone and
method was not so consistently vernacular in its language. In the
non-lyrical verse, the influence of the old 'makaris' is predominant.
The outstanding figure of the vernacular revival was Allan
Ramsay, who was an unknown journeyman wigmaker, when, in 1706,
Watson published his Choice Collection. The greatness of Ramsay's
pioneer work it is difficult for us to appreciate; and, if his early cir-
cumstances be considered, a parallel to his strenuous and successful
literary career in very unpromising surroundings would be hard to
find. Though of gentle descent, he was, through the early deaths of
his father (a manager of lead-mines at Leadhills, Lanarkshire) and
mother, left wholly dependent on his own exertions for a living.
At the age of fourteen, he became apprentice to a wigmaker in
Edinburgh, and, in the year after the appearance of Watson's
Collection, he opened a shop of his own. If we are to credit his
own account, in one of his epistles to Hamilton, it was the perusal
of the poet's Bonnie Heck that 'pierced' him with poetic emula-
tion; and his earlier pieces were written in the stave of it and
Habbie, and were elegiac—some, half-humorous half-pathetic,
others, wholly satirical-in aim. They began with an elegy on
Maggie Johnstone, who had a small farm and there sold ale to
the golfers on Bruntsfield-links, a similar elegy on Lucky Wood,
the landlady of a Canongate alehouse, and one on Pat Birnie, the
Cf. , as to these, ante, vol. II, pp. 130 and 135—6.
! !
1


## p. 367 (#391) ############################################

Allan Ramsay
367
fiddler of Kinghorn in Fife. Almost purely satirical are those on
John Cowper or, rather, on his office of kirk-treasurer's man, or
tyrant of the cutty-stool, the disreputable Lucky Simpson's Last
Advice and The Last Speech of a Wretched Miser. This series of
mock-elegies, with those by Alexander Pennecuick, are unique in
Scottish, and, perhaps, in any, literature. From the nature of the
subjects, the humour is broader and more incisive than that of
their elegiac predecessors in Watson's Collection, and some of the
more caustically satirical pieces more than foreshadow those of
Burns. With other pieces in similar vein, on street characters
and incidents, they were sold as halfpenny or penny broadsides,
and those now preserved form together a wonderfully realistic
representation of some of the outstanding characteristics of a
certain phase of Edinburgh life in the eighteenth century.
But, by his two cantos added to Christis Kirk, one to an
edition which he published in 1716 and the other to a second
edition in 1718, Ramsay claimed much more serious attention as
a vernacular bard. There was a certain presumption in his thus
seeking to link his name with this fine old classic, and the experi-
ment was not justified by the character of his success ; for neither
was his poetic training nor genius, if genius, as Burns affirmed, he
had, akin to that of the author—the supposed royal author of the
ancient poem, nor was the Edinburgh or Scotland of Ramsay's day
precisely similar to the rude undisciplined Scotland of the fifteenth
century; but, nevertheless, his descriptions have the merit of being
graphically and literally representative of the tone and manners of
the common people of his own time; and the constant play of
humour that pervades them partly atones for their excessive
squalidity. In several of his fables and tales, he further showed
himself master of a lighter, and, generally, quite irreproachable,
vein of comic humour, and The Monk and the Miller's Wife is a
wonderfully good modern travesty of The Freiris of Berwick.
Whether or not he had any similar antique original for The Vision,
his own description of it—as 'compylit in Latin by a most lernit
clerk in Tyme of our Hairship and oppression, anno 1300, and
translatit in 1524'-is, manifestly, fictitious. It seems rather to be
a kind of Jacobite effusion, voicing the general discontent at the
union and its consequences. Written in the stave of The Cherrie
and the Slae, it also gives evidence of the results of Ramsay's fuller
acquaintance with the works of the old 'makaris’ through the
perusal of them in the Bannatyne MS, and, here and there, they
seem to have inspired him with the courage to attempt poetic


## p. 368 (#392) ############################################

368 Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns
flights rather beyond the common scope of his vernacular muse,
although his low comedy genius occasionally plays havoc with his
more ambitiously imaginative descriptions.
But Ramsay's crowning poetical achievement is, probably, the
pastoral drama entitled The Gentle Shepherd. Here, his comic
vein is generally restrained within the bounds of propriety, the
pervading tone of the poem being lightly humorous. Yet, not-
withstanding a certain stilted artificiality borrowed from English
eighteenth century models, nature and reality on the whole
triumph, and, if he depicts rustic life robbed of its harshness and
of many of its more vulgar and grosser features, his idealisation is
of a kind quite legitimate in art.
As a lyrist, his actual achievements are a little difficult to
appraise, for it is impossible to know precisely how much of the
several songs he contributed to The Miscellany was his own, how
much that of the original author's ; but, from what we do know of
certain of them, it is plain that he had no claim whatever to gifts
as an amender or transformer bearing any distant similarity to
those of Burns. In fact, in 'purifying' the old songs, he generally
transmuted them into very homely and ordinary productions ; and,
while preserving some of the original spirit of the more humorous
among them, the more romantic and emotional appear to have
suffered not a little from his lack of ardent feeling and high poetic
fancy. This, for example, is very evident in his transmutation of
the pathetic ballad of Bessy Bell and Marie Gray into a very
commonplace semi-sentimental, semi-comic song, as thus :
Dear Bessy Bell and Mary Gray,
Ye unco sair oppress us:
Our fancies gae between you twae,
Ye are sic bonney lasses.
Commonplace, truth to tell, is the dominating note of all his songs,
though, in the best of them, My Peggy is a young thing, it
appears, by some happy chance, in a guise of tender simplicity that
completely captivates. He never did anything in lyric verse to
compare with it. True, Lochaber no more may be instanced as, at
least in parts, much superior to this simple ditty ; but it is by
no means so faultless ; indeed, it seems to deteriorate with each
succeeding stanza, and the peculiar pathetic beauty that gleams
through its defects it may owe to an original now lost; while it is
at least worth mention that, in a note on Lochaber in Johnson's
Museum, captain Riddell states : The words here given to Lochaber
were composed by an unfortunate fugitive on account of being


## p. 369 (#393) ############################################

182
Ramsay's Literary and Patriotic Services 369
de concerned in the affair of 1715'; and, if the song be by Ramsay,
the could hardly have hit on such a theme without some special
poetic suggestion. The more purely English lyrics attained to
great vogue in ‘Mary'bone' gardens and similar haunts; and he
was one of the most popular song-writers of his day in England
as well as Scotland. His more ambitious English verse cannot
be said to merit much attention. While the mere versification
hai is fluent and faultless, he has succeeded in aping rather the
El poetic offences than the excellences of his eighteenth century
models. Even his satires, when he had recourse to English, almost
lost their sting. His Scribblers lashed, for example, is a very poor
imitation of Pope. Again, his elegies on the great, throughout in
stately English, are woefully stilted productions and compare badly
with his robust and animated vernacular productions, as witness
that on Lady Margaret Anstruther, which begins thus :
All in her bloom, the graceful fair
Lucinda leaves this mortal round.
Ramsay's strong devotion to literature and his increasing poetic
repute, combined with the acquaintance he had formed in the Easy
club-access to which he owed, presumably, rather to his 'auld
descent' than to his business prosperity, but of which he was,
later, chosen poet-laureate with various learned and intellectual
Edinburgh citizens, suggested to him, in 1719, to abandon the wig-
making trade for that of a bookseller. He also started a circulating
a
library, lending out books at a penny a night: not the old theo
logical treatises which had hitherto formed the main intellectual
pabulum of the burgher Scot, but what Wodrow, in a woeful
private lament, terms, 'all the villainous, profane and obscene
books as printed in London. ' Ramsay, certainly, was not squeamish
in his tastes; but, by his courageous defiance of the narrow
puritanism of his time, he effectually removed the old Scottish ban
on secular English literature and did more, perhaps, than any other
man to further the intellectual revival of which, towards the close
of the century, Edinburgh became the centre. Apart from this,
by the publication of his own verse, of The Tea-Table Miscellany
(1724—32), and of The Evergreen (1724) a selection of the
verse of the old 'makaris' obtained chiefly from the Bannatyne
MS—he disseminated a love of song and verse among the people,
both high and low, which, consummated by the advent of Burns,
still remains a marked characteristic of Scotland. How utterly
the good old bards of Scotland,' as Ramsay terms them, had been
forgotten, is witnessed in his introduction to The Evergreen.
24
6
E. L. IX.
CH. XIV.


## p. 370 (#394) ############################################

370 Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns
>
Writing of them as if they had belonged to a remote age or a
distant foreign land, he says: 'It was intended that an account of
the authors of the following collection should be given, but not
being furnished with such distinct information as could be wished
for that end, at present, the design is delayed,' etc. To have been
the first to seek to do justice to these forgotten masters in verse is
a sufficient title on Ramsay's part to the permanent gratitude of
his countrymen ; but, in addition, his work as a literary pioneer in
the combined capacity of writer, editor, publisher and librarian
was, largely because of the literary dearth of the preceding century
in Scotland, of far greater importance than that of many with whose
literary achievements his own can bear no comparison.
A contemporary and a kind of poetic rival of Ramsay was
Alexander Pennecuick (d. 1730), the thriftless, drunken and down-
at-heel nephew of Dr Alexander Pennecuik (1652—1722) of
Romanno, author of a Description of Tweeddale and other English
verse, published posthumously in 1817. The vernacular verses of
the nephew, who is often confounded with his uncle, appeared, like
the early experiments of Ramsay, as penny broadsides, and, like
Ramsay, he also essayed verse in stilted English, publishing, in
1713, Britannia Triumphans, in 1720, Streams from Helicon
and, in 1726, Flowers from Parnassus. If, in low humour, he
is not quite so affluent as Ramsay, he, in The Merry Wives of
Musselburgh at their meeting together to welcom Meg Dickson
after her loup from the Ladder (1724), (Meg, a Musselburgh fish-
wife, had escaped execution through the breaking of the rope),
depicts the incidents of the semi-grotesque semi-awesome occasion
with a grim and graphic satiric mirth rather beyond him. Other
vernacular achievements of Pennecuick are Rome's Legacy to the
Church of Scotland, a satire on the kirk's cutty-stool in heroic
couplets, an Elegy on Robert Forbes, a kirk-treasurer's man like
Ramsay's John Cowper, and The Presbyterian Pope, in the form
of a dialogue between the kirk-treasurer's man and his female
informant, Meg. In his descriptions, Pennecuick shows greater
aptitude for individual portraiture and for the realisation of
definite scenes than does Ramsay, whose John Cowper might be
any kirk-treasurer's man. Pennecuick shows us the 'pawky face'
of Robert Forbes 'keeking thro' close-heads' to catch a brace of
lovers in confabulation, or piously shaking his head when he hears
the tune of Chevy Chace, and, with his ‘Judas face,' repeating
preachings and saying grace.
Robert Crawford, son of the laird of Drumsoy, Renfrewshire,
6


## p. 371 (#395) ############################################

William Hamilton. George Halkett 371
contributed a good many songs to The Miscellany. His Bush
Aboon Traquair has one or two excellent lines and semi-stanzas,
the best being, probably, that beginning "That day she smiled and
made me glad’; but it evidently owes its repute mainly to its
title, and is not by any means so happy an effort as the more
vernacular, and really excellent, Down the Burn Davie ; while
Allan Water and Tweedside are more or less spoiled by the intro-
duction of the current artificialities of the English eighteenth
century muse.
Another contributor to The Miscellany was William Hamilton of
Bangour, whose one notable composition is the imposingly melodious
Braes of Yarrow, beginning ‘Busk ye, busk ye, my bony bride,' which,
written in 1724, and circulated for some time in MS, appeared
uninitialled at the close of the second volume of The Miscellany.
It is probably a kind of fantasia on a fragmentary traditional
ballad and may even have been suggested by the anonymous Rare
Willie drowned in Yarrow, which appeared in the fourth volume
of The Miscellany, and, consisting of only four stanzas, is by far
the finest commemoration of the supposed Yarrow tragedy. If
Hamilton wrote both of them, it is all the more regrettable that
he mainly confined his poetic efforts to the celebration, in bombastic
conventional form, of the charms of fashionable ladies. In the
'45, he followed prince Charlie, and he wrote a Jacobite Ode to
the battle of Gladsmuir, which was set to music by the Edinburgh
musician, M'Gibbon.
Sir John Clerk, of Penicuik, is the reputed author of Merry
may the Maid be that Marries the Miller, which first appeared
in 1752 in The Charmer, a volume of partly Scots and partly
English verse, edited by I. Gair, the first edition of which appeared
in 1749. George Halkett, schoolmaster of Rathen, Aberdeenshire,
is credited by Peter Buchan with the authorship of Logie O'Buchan,
which appeared, c. 1730, in a broadside, and a Jacobite ballad
Wherry Whigs Awa, included in Hogg's Jacobite Relics, but
termed by Hogg a confused ballad, the greater part of the twenty
copies in his possession being quite different from one another,
and visibly 'composed at different periods and by different hands. '
Halkett, it is also supposed, may have been the author of the
Dialogue between the Devil and George II, which caused the
duke of Cumberland, in 1746, to offer a reward of £100 for the
author, living or dead. Halkett's Occasional Poems on Various
Subjects, published in 1727, strongly militate against Buchan's
statements, even if Wherry Whigs Awa, in the extended fashion
6
24-2


## p. 372 (#396) ############################################

372 Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns
printed by Hogg, existed in the time of Halkett. Logie O'Buchan
may well, however, have been a veiled Jacobite ballad, lamenting
the fortunes of the old pretender.
Alexander Ross, a graduate of Aberdeen university, who became
schoolmaster at Lochlee in Forfarshire, acquired much fame in
the northern counties by his pastoral Helenore or the Fortunate
Shepherdess, which, with a few of his songs, was published at
Aberdeen, in 1768, a revised edition appearing in 1778. Linguisti-
cally, it is of special interest as a specimen of the Aberdeenshire
dialect; but it is a rather wearisome production, and cannot com-
pare with Ramsay's pastoral, on which it is largely modelled,
though the plot is of quite a different and much more romantic
character. Its prosy commonplace strikingly contrasts with the
wit and vivacity of Ross's songs, such as The Rock and the Wee
Pickle Tow, Wooed and Married and a' and The Bridal O't,
which, apart from lyric effectiveness, are really admirable sketches
of Scottish peasant life in the olden time. Quite the equal, and,
indeed, the superior, of Ross, as a song-writer, was John Skinner,
episcopalian minister of Longside, Aberdeenshire, the irresistible
sprightly cheerfulness of whose Tullochgorum so captivated Burns
that he pronounced it to be the best Scots song Scotland ever
saw. ' In much the same vein are Tune your Fiddle and Old Age;
but a much finer achievement than any of these is the Ewie wi
the Crookit Horn. Though suggested by the older elegies of
Sempill and Hamilton, it is in a different stanza, one of three lines
riming together, with a refrain ending in ‘a'' throughout the poem,
and it altogether surpasses them in pathetic humour. To it, Burns
owed more than the suggestion for Poor Mailie's Elegy, following
not merely its general drift but partly parodying its expressions,
more particularly those in the last stanza, beginning 'O all ye
bards benorth Kinghorn. '
Alexander Geddes, an accomplished catholic priest—who con-
tributed a Scots translation of the first eclogue of Vergil and the
first idyll of Theocritus to the transactions of the Scottish Society
of Antiquaries and wrote in English Linton, a Tweedside Pastoral,
and a rimed translation of the first book of The Iliad-is one
of the few known authors of contemporary Jacobite songs. His
Lewie Gordon, under the title The Charming Highlandman, first
appeared in the second edition of The Scots Nightingale, 1779:
and he is also credited with the inimitably droll Wee Wifukie,
relating the experiences of a rustic Aberdeenshire dame on her
way homewards from the fair, after she had got 'a wee bit
-


## p. 373 (#397) ############################################

Graham. Mrs Cockburn and Jane Elliot 373
a
'?
a
drappukie. ' Murdoch MÄLennan, minister of Crathie, Aberdeen-
shire, narrated the affair of Sheriffmuir in the clever but absolutely
impartial Race of Sheriffmuir, with the refrain, “and we ran and
they ran awa man. ' John Barclay celebrated the same engagement
in the versified Dialogue betwixt William Lickladle and Thomas
Cleancogue, modelled upon the anonymous ballad of Killiecrankie ;
and a similar ballad, Tranent Muir, on the battle of Prestonpans,
is attributed to Adam Skirving. Skirving has, also, been usually
credited with the authorship of the song Johnnie Cope; but a
manuscript note by Burns in an interleaved copy of Johnson's
Museum seems to indicate that the song, as published there, is
by Burns : ‘the air,' he says, 'was the tune of an old song, of
which I have heard some verses, but now only remember the title
which was: “Will ye go to the coals in the morning ? ”. Two sets
are published in Hogg's Relics, from Gilchrist's Collection.
Dougal Graham, a wandering chapman who followed the army
of prince Charlie and afterwards became bellman and town crier
of Glasgow, wrote, in doggerel rime, A full and Particular Account
of the Rebellion of 1745–6, to the tune of The Gallant Grahams;
he is credited with a rather witty skit The Turnpike, expressing, in
Highland Scots, the mingled contempt and wonder with which the
roads of general Wade were regarded by the unsophisticated Celt,
and his objection to the imposition of tolls ; and he wrote and sold
various more or less racy and absurd prose chapbooks, as, for
example, The History of Buchhaven, jocosely imaginary, Jocky
and Maggie's Courtship, a skit on the cutty-stool, The Comical
Transactions of Lothian Tam, etc.
Mrs Cockburn, a relative of Sir Walter Scott, wrote, besides
other songs which have not attained to popularity, a version of The
Flowers of the Forest ('I have seen the Smiling'), which appeared
in The Lark in 1765, and was, as she herself states, sung'at wells? '
to the old tune. A more vernacular version, 'I've heard them
Lilting at the Ewe Miking'-which includes the first line and the
burden of the old song now lost—by Jane Elliot, third daughter of
Sir Gilbert Elliot, of Minto, was used by Herd for a version made
up from various copies of the old ballad collated; but an authentic
copy was obtained by Scott for The Border Minstrelsy. Miss Elliot's
brother, Sir Gilbert Elliot, was the author of My Apron Dearie
in Johnson's Museum.
Of a considerable number of songs of the eighteenth century,
the authorship is either doubtful or quite unknown. There's nae
1 I. e. in watering places.
6


## p. 374 (#398) ############################################

374 Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns
luck aboot the Hooge has been attributed both to William Julius
Mickle, author of the ballad of Cumnor Hall, and to Jean Adams
of Greenock, authoress of a book of religious verse ; but Burns
states that it first came on the streets as a ballad in 1771 or 1772,
and it may not be by either of them. Two verses were added to it
by James Beattie, author of The Minstrel, who confined himself
almost wholly to English verse, but wrote a rather clever riming
epistle, in the Habbie Simson stave, To Mr Alexander Ross, whose
‘hamely auld-warld muse,' he said, had provoked him to ape'in
verse and style,' our 'guid plain country folks. ' The song ( weel
may the Boatie Row was attributed by Burns to John Ewen, an
Aberdeen merchant; but, in any case, it appears to have been
suggested by some old fisher chorus.
Excellent anonymous songs--all probably, and some certainly,
not of earlier date than the eighteenth century-are Ettrick Banks,
Here awa there awa, Saw ye my Father, The Lowlands of
Holland, Bess the Gawkie, I had a horse and I had nae mair,
Hooly and Fairly, Willie's gane to Melville Castle and O'er the
Moor amang the Heather (which Burns said he wrote down from
the singing of a disreputable female tramp, Jean Glover, and
which, if not largely by Burns, is not all by Jean, and is probably
in part founded on an old song).
Towards the later half of the eighteenth century and during it,
various anonymous songs, more or less indelicate in tone, found
their way into broadsides. Some were preserved by Herd, either
from recitation or from print, and several are included, in whole
or in part, in his 1769 and 1776 editions; others, too liberal in
their humour for general reading, are, with quite unobjectionable
songs, included in the limited edition of Songs from David Herd's
Manuscript, edited by Hans Hecht, 1904. Of these, a few have
not appeared at all in other collections, and the others only in a
garbled form. Neither the MS collection of Peter Buchan nor his
Gleanings of Scotch, English and Irish Ballads (1825), nor Robert
Hartley Cromek’s Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song
(1810), can be regarded as trustworthy authorities in regard either
to texts or sources. Rare copies of broadsides occur containing
songs of a certain literary merit and interesting for their glimpses
of the characteristics of rustic life in the eighteenth century ; but
several are not likely ever to be included in collections. Thus, by a
careful examination of existing broadsides, much that, for various
reasons, deserves preservation might be found ; and, in any case,
i See, as to Beattie, vol, x, post.


## p. 375 (#399) ############################################

Jacobite Songs and James Hogg 375
since of certain songs which are known to have first appeared
in broadsides no copies in that form exist, not a few songs
of some merit are likely to have perished with the broadsides
containing them.
For Jacobite songs, the main published authority is still James
Hogg's Jacobite Relics of Scotland, 1819–21, a work as to which
it would be hard to decide whether its merits or its defects are the
more intrinsic characteristic. On its preparation, he evidently
bestowed immense labour, and he had the cooperation of many
enthusiasts, including Scott, in supplying him with copies both in
broadsides and manuscript. Indeed, he tells us that he obtained
so many copies of the same ballad and, also, of different ballads-
that he actually grew terrified' when he ‘heard of a MS volume
of Jacobite songs. ' His critical notes are, sometimes, inimitable,
as, for example, this on Perfidious Britain :
I do not always understand what the bard means, but as he seems to have
been an ingenious, though passionate writer, I took it for granted that he
knew perfectly well himself what he would have been at, so I have not
altered a word in the manuscript, which is in the handwriting of an
amanuensis of Mr Scott's, the most incorrect transcriber, perhaps, that ever
tried the business;
lipiec
mi
1
or the following on My Laddie :
This is rather a good song, I am sure the bard who composed it thought it so,
and believed that he had produced some of the most sublime verses that had
ever been sung from the days of Homer.
The notes also contain much information conveyed in the sprightly
and irresponsible manner of which Hogg was a master. Yet,
though a diligent, more than clever and, after a fashion, even
learned, editor, he is hardly an ideal one. He cannot be trusted ;
he lacks balance; he has little method; and he allows himself to
become the sport of temporary moods, while quite careless in
regard to his sources and authorities. As to the actual genuine-
ness of many of the songs, we may judge from his own statement:
*I have in no instance puzzled myself in deciding which reading in
each song is the most genuine and original, but have constantly
taken the one that I thought best'; and this must be further
modified by the statement: 'I have not always taken the best, but
the best verses of each. ' In fact, Hogg edited the Jacobite Relics
very much after the fashion in which Scott had edited The Border
Minstrelsy; and he confesses that, in some instances, he had
practically rewritten the song. While, also, he expresses his inten-
tion to include only the Jacobite songs which were of Scottish


## p. 376 (#400) ############################################

376 Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns
origin, this was a rule which, from the nature of the case, he could
not absolutely observe; and, in fact, he broke it whenever he had
a mind to do so. Thus, he observes as to The Devil o'er Stirling :
This ballad appears from its style to be of English original: the air is
decidedly so, but as I got it among a Scots gentleman's MSS and found that
it had merit, I did not choose to exclude it on bare suspicion of its illegality.
Of another, Freedom's Farewell—surely English—he gravely says,
without a word about its nativity, that he inserted it, on account
of its stupendous absurdity’; and various others, as to his authority
for which he tells us nothing, he could hardly have believed to be
of Scottish authorship. Further, while his avowed intention was
to include only contemporary Jacobite songs, many to which he
gave admission were of later origin. In some instances, he did so
owing to imperfect information. He could not know, for example,
.
that Ye Jacobites by Name, which he got from Johnson's Museum,
was largely the work of Burns. But he was not particular in his
enquiries. Thus, of It was a' for our Rightfu' King—which, as
he did not know, was partly an arrangement by Burns from non-
Jacobite verses, with a suggestion from a semi-Jacobite Maly
Stewart—he is content to write: This song is traditionally said
to have been written by a Captain Ogilvy related to the house of
Inverquharity'; though the tradition could not possibly have been
of long standing, and, from the exceptional excellence of the song,
was, in itself, very unlikely. Then, he gives us Charlie is my
Darling from The Museum as original. ' This is so far excusable,
in that he did not know any other original, and that it was a
'vamp' by Burns; but it was a mistaken, though shrewd, shot at
a venture. O'er the Water to Charlie, which is mainly by Burns,
he inserted with an additional stanza, doubtless lured, as in the
former case, by the excellence of the song. No early printed
version of it, in the form in which it appears in The Museum, is
known to exist, though Hogg, who possessed a copy of the rare
True Loyalist of 1779, must have known of the two versions in it
which have the Museum chorus; but he remarks: 'I do not know
if the last two stanzas have been printed though they have often
been sung. ' One of the stanzas must have often been sung, having
appeared in The Museum with the preceding stanzas-about which
he says nothing; the other, we must suppose, had never been sung
by anyone but Hogg himself, except in the modified form in which
it was included in an old traditional non-Jacobite ballad, whence,
it would seem, Hogg, consciously or unconsciously, had transferred
it. Of Killiecrankie, he says: “It is given in Johnson's Museum,


## p. 377 (#401) ############################################

9
ܕܐ
Hogg's Vagaries
377
as an old song, with alterations’; but an additional verse and
chorus, of the source of which he tells us nothing, are included in
his own version, and, presumably, were written by himself. Simi-
larly, he tells us that he copied Carle an' the King come from
a certain MS; but it is identical with the song sent by Burns to
Johnson's Museum, except for two additional stanzas, by no means
harmonising with the older in style. Of Cock up your Bonnet, he
tells us that there are various sets and that Johnson has left out
whatever might be misconstrued ; but, evidently, the first part in
Johnson was an adaptation by Burns, and Hogg says nothing as to
his authority for his additions. In an appendix, he prints The
Chevalier's Lament, and Strathallan's Lament, simply dubbing
them 'modern,' though he ought to have known that they were by
Burns; but, of There'll Never be Peace till Jamie comes Hame,
though he inserted it, he remarks, with admirable discernment:
'It is very like Burns,' and of The Lovely Lass of Inverness he
says : ‘Who can doubt that it is by Burns ? ' but he could not
resist inserting it. Further, he printed The wee, wee German
Lairdie, to a tune of his own, without any suspicion that the song
was modern and by Allan Cunningham? He states that he copied
it from Cromek, all but three lines taken from an older collection;
but why he should copy from Cromek when he had an older
collection he does not explain, and the 'collection' must be taken
cum grano salis ; but, though he also includes The Waes of
Scotland, Lochmaben Gate and Hame, Hame, Hame from Cromek,
he shrewdly remarks in his note to the last : 'Sore do I suspect
that we are obliged to the same master's hand’ (Cunningham's)
'for it and the two preceding ones. ' Of The Sun rises Bright in
France, he says: 'I got some stanzas from Surtees of Mainsforth,
but those printed are from Cromek. ' He was wise in not accepting
the stanzas from Surtees ; not so wise in inserting those from
Cromek; but perfectly correct in his remark: 'It is uncertain to
what period the song refers'; and he showed a return to discern-
ment when he wrote of The Old Man's Lament—which, however,
he inserted—' It is very like what my friend Allan Cunninghame
might write at a venture. ' Last, to name no more, his remark on
Will he no come back again, which is by Lady Nairn, is merely:
*This song was never published till of late years. '
Apart from Hogg's translations from the Gaelic, and pieces
by known authors, few of either the Scottish or of the English
Jacobite songs possess much merit. Awa Whigs Awa is, however,
1 See Notes and Queries, § 11, vol. II, pp. 286, 354, 430.
6
a


## p. 378 (#402) ############################################

378 Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns
picturesquely vigorous, and the various diatribes on king 'Geordie'
are not lacking in rude wit. The Whigs of Fife—which county
was notable for its anti-Jacobitism—is characterised by an in-
ordinate strain of abusive vituperation : and The Piper o' Dundee
abounds in rollicking gaiety. Wha wadna fecht for Charlie has
spirit and fire; and The Battle of Falkirk Muir makes clever, if
rather rough, fun of general Hawley. Of the more serious, the
best, perhaps, is the unpretending Bonnie Charlie, beginning :
Tho' my fireside, it be but sma’
And bare and comfortless witha'.
Many of the songs—as is usually the case with political songs
are parodies of the popular ditties of the day; and, since many
English songs were popular in Scotland in the eighteenth century,
various Jacobite songs of Scottish origin were parodies of English
songs and sung to English airs. It is thus not always easy to
distinguish between songs of English and songs of Scottish origin,
although the context is an assistance to a decision; and, in the
case of broadsides, there is usually little difficulty. Some interest-
ing broadsides are included in Ebsworth's Roxburghe Ballads, vols.
VII and vint; but a good many are still only to be found in private
or public collections. In regard to those in MS collections, the
apprehensions of Hogg were far from groundless : there is an
embarrassment, and it is not one of riches. The merit of most is
very slight; but an editor of a very patient and laborious tempera-
ment might, under the auspices of some learned society, be able
to collect a considerable number of more or less interest.
a
As for
Hogg's edition, it would be very difficult not to spoil it in any
attempt at re-editing.
The succession of the Scottish bards of the revival anterior to
Burns closes, as it began, with a signal personality, though it is
that of a mere youth. The ill-fated Robert Fergusson died in
a madhouse at the early age of twenty-four. At the age of fifteen,
while a student at St Andrews university—where he was more
prominent for his pranks than for his scholarly bent—his dawning
powers as a vernacular bard were manifested in an elegy, after the
Habbie fashion, on professor David Gregory, which is really a
production of much keener and subtler wit than that of his early
exemplars. The Elegy on John Hogg late Porter in St Andrews
University, besides affording us a curious glimpse of a phase of
university life that has now vanished, is notable for its facile and
rollicking bumour ; but it is of later date. The Death of Scots
Music, a whimsical, exaggerated but sincere lament for the demise


## p. 379 (#403) ############################################

ir:
?
Robert Fergusson
379
of M'Gibbon, the Edinburgh musician, is in a more poetic vein
than either of the elegies just mentioned. It was, like Ramsay, as
the bard of Edinburgh that Fergusson first won fame; but, unlike
Ramsay, his main title to fame is in this capacity. Had he
lived longer, he might have attained to some ease and freedom
in English verse; though, as in the case of Burns, his environ-
ment, the cast of his genius, his latent predilection for the
vernacular, and the foreign character which, to him as to many
Scots of his time, seemed to belong to English speech, militate
against this possibility. Be this as it may, in the short career that
was to be his, he succeeded, like Burns, in depicting the scenes
which he thoroughly knew, and expressing the thoughts and senti-
ments akin to his circumstances and to the life he led. Unlike
Burns, he was, for this reason, an urban, more than a rustic, bard.
The influence of a few months spent by him in early manhood with
a
his uncle in the country is revealed in his odes To the Bee
and The Gowdspink, delicately descriptive, humorous and faintly
didactic, and in The Farmer's Ingle, a picture of a winter evening
in a farmhouse kitchen, sketched with perfect insight into the
character of the life he depicts and with the full human sympathy
essential to true creative art. But it was as the poet of 'Auld
Reekie, wale of ilka town' that he was to make his mark-not
Auld Reekie as represented in its resorts of fashion, but as revealed
in its tavern jollifications, street scenes and popular amusements
on holidays and at fairs and races. The subject is not great or
inspiring, but, such as it is, it is treated with insight and a power
of verisimilitude that brings vividly before our imagination the
modes and manners of the Edinburgh populace in the eighteenth
century. Here, and, indeed, generally, he proved himself, as a
vernacular bard, young though he was and short as was his career,
superior to Ramsay. Fergusson's wit is not so gross and it is more
keenly barbed, his sympathetic appreciation is stronger, his survey
is more comprehensive, his vernacular is racier, he has a better
sense of style, he is more of a creative artist, and he is decidedly
more poetic. He displayed the capacity of the Habbie stave for
a variety of descriptive narrative as well as for elegies and epistles,
and showed a mastery in its use beyond that of his predecessors,
though two of his most racily descriptive and humorous pieces,
Leith Races and The Hallow Fair, are in the stave of Christis
Kirk, with a single refrain ending in 'day. ' Another Hallow Fair,
modelled on Let us a' to the Bridal, signally evinces the hearty
merriment which was one of his inborn traits, though ill-health,
6
Ti
6


## p. 380 (#404) ############################################

380 Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns
irksome taskwork, poverty and irregular living clouded it soon
with hopeless melancholy. The Farmer's Ingle is written in a
nine-line stave, formed by adding a line to the old alternatively
riming octave; and his other staves are the octosyllabic and heroic
couplets, which he also used for English verse. The most notable
of his couplet pieces are Planestanes and Causeway-an imaginary
night dialogue between these two entities, on which Burns modelled
his night dialogue between the new and the old Brigs of Ayr—the
picture of Auld Reekie, and The Bill of Fare, in which he makes
Dr Samuel Johnson the subject of his satire.
The verse of Fergusson is small in bulk; it lacks maturity
of sentiment; here and there it shows patent faults and lapses.
But the genuineness, the cleverness, the racy humour and vivid
truthfulness of his art are beyond question : and his achievement,
so far as concerns the portrayal of the Edinburgh that he knew,
has a certain rounded completeness.


## p. 381 (#405) ############################################

1
!
i
CHAPTER XV
EDUCATION
Two parallel lines of interest may be traced in the history of
English education from the restoration to the end of George II's
reign. One consists of a series of writings by innovators in inten-
tion, some of whom were prominent in the world of letters; the other
is formed by attempts, only partially successful, to readjust ancient
machinery or to create new agents. Thinkers and practical men
alike were stimulated by an evident failure of schools and universi-
ties to meet the new conditions of life which had arisen during the
seventeenth century. Projects of reform took various shapes. Most
of them proposed changes in the plan of work which would recognise
the existence of contemporary culture and the requirements of the
age by introducing ‘modern' studies ; some writers, inspired by
Francis Bacon and Comenius, turned to problems of method, for
whose solution they looked in a fuller and more accurate knowledge
of mental process; a few preached the interest or the duty of the
state to instruct all its members. Incidentally, the story exhibits
the dependence of education upon national life, and the mischief
wrought in the body politic when education is permitted to develop
in a partisan atmosphere.
In the seventeenth century, the accepted educational curriculum
of school and university, as distinct from the professional studies
of divinity, law and medicine, was, in effect, the medieval seven
liberal arts, but with the balance of studies somewhat changed.
Of these, the quadrivium (arithmetic so-called, geometry, music,
astronomy) belonged to the university; the trivium (grammar,
logic, rhetoric) was loosely distributed between schoolboys and
freshmen, the latter being undistinguishable in modern eyes from
the former. Anthony à Wood entered Merton in 1647 at the age of
fifteen; Gibbon, more than a century later, was admittedat Magdalen
before completing his fifteenth year; Bentley was a subsizar at


## p. 382 (#406) ############################################

382
Education
.
St John's college, Cambridge, in 1676, at the age of fourteen.
Whether the story be true or not that Milton was birched by his
tutor at Cambridge, the following passage from Anthony à Wood
seems conclusive that, so late as 1668, the Oxford undergraduates
were liable to that punishment. Four scholars of Christ Church
having broken some windows, the vice-chancellor 'caused them
to repair the breaches, sent them into the country for a while, but
neither expelled them, nor caused them to be whipt? ' Ten years
later, the vice-chancellor ordered that no undergraduate buy or
sell ‘without the approbation of his tutor’any article whose value
exceeded five shillings. The Cambridge undergraduate of the
eighteenth century was not a 'man' but a 'lad,' for himself and
his companions no less than for his elders. The fact is to be
remembered when the reform of university studies in that age is
under discussion.
Of the trivium, 'grammar' meant Latin literature and, more
particularly, its necessary preliminary, Latin grammar, the special
business of schools. Indeed, the seventeenth century school course
may be said to have consisted of Latin, supplemented by Greek;
a few schools added Hebrew, fewer still yet another eastern
tongue. The underlying theory is thus enunciated by Henry
.
Wotton (An Essay on the Education of Children, 1672): Observe
therefore what faculties are strongest in the child and employ and
cherish them; now herein it is agreed that memory and what
logicians call simplex apprehensio are strongest of all. ' He infers
that a child's instruction should begin with Latin, passing to Greek
and Hebrew, since in these three languages are to be found 'both
the fountain of learning as well philology as philosophy and the
principal streams and rivers thereof. ' Wotton's essay is an account
of the method which he employed in teaching his son, William,
(Bentley's comrade in A Tale of a Tub), a child who learned to
read before he was four years old, began Latin without book at
that
age, and at five had already begun Greek and Hebrew. It is
not surprising, therefore, that William Wotton took his B. A. degree
when thirteen (1679); the surprising thing is that he lived to
become the able, judicious and modest collaborator of Bentley in
the controversy of ancients and moderns. But his father had
always refrained from overburdening the child, and the reformer's
note is not entirely absent from his severely classical teaching, for
the boy read English daily; 'the more gracefully he read English,
the more delightfully he read the other languages. '
1 Clark, A. , Life and Times of Anthony Wood, vol. 11, p. 139.
>


## p. 383 (#407) ############################################

The University Degree 383
The official round of study and of exercises for degrees remained
at both universities what they had been in the later middle ages;
this fact reacted upon schools supposed chiefly to prepare for
the universities. The medieval conception of the degree was that
of a licence to teach; the exercises which led to it were, in effect,
trial lessons in disputation or declamation given by novices before
other novices and fully accredited teachers, the topics being
selected from the Aristotelian metaphysics and natural philosophy,
school divinity, or trite literary themes susceptible of rhetorical
handling. At Oxford, the Laudian statutes of 1636 had stereotyped
these exercises, and had given them an appearance of life which
they retained to the close of the commonwealth. Speaking of
that period, Anthony à Wood says, “We had then very good
exercises in all matters performed in the schools; philosophy dis-
putations in Lent time, frequent in the Greek tongue; coursing
very much, ending alwaies in blows? ' The training manifested itself
in much of the controversial divinity of the time; at the Savoy
conference (1661), both sides seemed to enjoy wit combats greatly,
whole pages of Reliquiae Baxterianae being filled with argu-
ments and counter-arguments stated syllogistically. But life and
reality went out of these medieval exercises at the restoration,
and, though they remained part of the apparatus of both univer-
sities, they were regarded throughout the eighteenth century as
forms more or less empty, to be gone through perfunctorily,
mocked or ignored as the fashion of the moment prompted.
During the seventeenth century and long afterwards, neither
school nor university, as distinct from the educational system of
the colleges, took account of that advance in knowledge which
university men were very notably assisting; or attempted to adapt,
for disciplinary purposes, science, modern languages, history or
geography, and the schools neglected mathematics, teaching
arithmetic for purely practical ends. Consequently, educational
reformers were many.
But the enemies of universities were not confined to those
who considered them homes of antiquated knowledge. Through-
out the seventeenth century, Oxford and Cambridge were closely
associated with the national life, frequently to their material
disadvantage, and sometimes to the impairing of their educa-
tional functions. Both universities offered an opposition to
Clark, op. cit. vol. 1, p. 300. •Coursing' (a term not confined to English univer-
sities) was a fashion of disputation in which a team from one college disputed with a
eam from another college; the reason for the usual issue will be appreciated.
be
BRE
11
。
THE


## p. 384 (#408) ############################################

384
Education
parliamentary government, which brought upon them the charge of
disaffection. Under the commonwealth, a desire for the super-
session of universities became evident, which is reflected not only
in the writings of such men as Milton, Harrington and Hobbes,
but, also, in the fatuous tracts written by obscure scribblers like
John Webster.
Apart from the inspiring passages which often occur within
its very brief compass, Milton's tractate, Of Education (1644), is
now chiefly interesting as a criticism of the schools and universities
of its time, and as a statement of its author's notions of reforming
them'. He finds their most patent faults in a premature meddling
with abstract and formal studies, and a neglect of that concrete
knowledge of men and things without which the formal remains
empty or barren. He would therefore introduce a plethora of
matter into the course, most of it dealing with the objects and
processes of nature, but, also, those languages without which
he assumed that Englishmen could make little or no advance in
the kingdoms of science or of grace. Carried away by the faith
in the omnipotence of method which marks most writers on educa-
tional reform in his day, Milton sees no insuperable difficulty in
communicating, to boys between the ages of twelve and twenty-
one, the full round of knowledge and the ability to pursue it in six
foreign languages, of which the only modern tongue is Italian.
Milton's entire dissatisfaction with educational institutions as then
conducted is obvious; it is equally clear that he is wanting in
real appreciation of the new philosophy, and in understanding of
the method by which the new studies should be conducted. As a
consequence, Of Education has not exercised any direct influence
upon educational practice.
But there is more in the tractate than disparagement of an
obsolete system; it is written with a burning indignation against
persons and institutions, of which the universities come first.
Milton would set up in every city of the kingdom an academy,
which, as school and university combined, should conduct the
entire course of education from Lily [i. e. from the beginning of
school attendance to the commencing as they term it Master of
Art. ' The only other educational institutions permissible are
post-graduate professional colleges of law and physic, a con-
cession, perhaps, in deference to the inns of court and the
college of physicians.
6
1 Cf. ante, vol. vii, pp. 100, 123, 127.


## p. 385 (#409) ############################################

Distrust of Universities 385
The same desire to supersede universities and the same
indifference to, or but partial comprehension of, Bacon's teaching,
appear in the anonymous Latin book Nova Solyma (1648). But
the writer has a better notion of what is needed to effect a great
educational reform. He plans a national system including state-
inspected schools to teach religion and morality, reading, writing
and arithmetic, geometry, military drill and handicrafts. A scheme
of exhibitions enables poor boys of good capacity to share the
liberal and religious education offered by academies, and to
follow this in selected cases by a three years' professional study
of divinity, law, medicine or state-craft.
Harrington's distrust of the universities as displayed in The
Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) is based on their predominantly
clerical government and on the determination not to permit the
intrusion of ecclesiastics into political life. In his utopian polity,
for all but a relatively small number of citizens, military service
is the great agent of public instruction. Harrington's ideas
respecting education are purely formal, except on the adminis-
trative side. Oceana has a compulsory system of education, free
to the poor and covering the years from nine to fifteen, conducted
in state-inspected schools, whose management and course of study
are to be everywhere the same. The universities are, mainly,
clerical seminaries and custodians of the national religion, but
expressly forbidden to take part in public affairs, from which the
professional class generally is to be excluded.
In Leviathan, Hobbes has some characteristic references? to
universities, which he elaborated in Behemoth (c. 1668), a tract
surreptitiously printed in faulty copies, 'no book being more
commonly sold by booksellers,' says William Crooke, the printer of
the 1682 edition. According to Behemoth, universities encourage
speculation concerning politics, government and divinity, and so
become hotbeds of civil discord and rebellion.
I despair of any lasting peace till the universities here shall bend and
direct their studies . . . to the teaching of absolute obedience to the laws of
the king and to his public edicts under the Great Seal of England.
For Latin, Greek and Hebrew, it would be better to substitute
French, Dutch and Italian; philosophy and divinity advantage their
professors but make mischief and faction in the state ; natural
philosophy may be studied in the gazettes of Gresham college.
The kind of opposition to learned societies here exhibited by
Hobbes became virulent about 1653, when the fanatics in the
? See chap. xxix.
E. L. IX.
25
CH. XV.


## p. 386 (#410) ############################################

386
Education
Barbones parliament anticipated the measures of the French
convention of September 1793, by debating the 'propriety
of suppressing universities and all schools for learning as un-
necessary. ' The good sense of the majority of the members
refused to concur; but a lively war of pamphlets immediately
ensued, the most notable champions against the universities being
Dell, master of Caius college, and John Webster, 'chaplain in
the army,' and author of Academiarum Examen (1654). These
obscurantists appear to have been more feared than greater men of
a similar way of thinking. Seth Ward, Savilian professor of astro-
nomy, and John Wilkins, warden of Wadham college, men of the
highest distinction at Oxford, condescended to traverse the puerili-
ties of Webster's 'artless Rapsody,' as the author himself styled
his tract. The spirit of this rhapsody is revealed in its statement
that the end of the Gospel is to discover the wisdom of the world
to be mere foolishness. As Ward pointed out, Webster's notion
of reform was a combination of the incompatible methods of
Bacon and Fludd. Nevertheless, Ward devotes the greater part
of his apologia (Vindiciae Academiarum, 1654) to Webster's
Examen. Like Hobbes, Webster is mistaken in attributing to
the universities a blind devotion to Aristotle ; natural science
and all new forms of knowledge are welcomed, mathematics has
been considerably advanced, chemistry and magnetism are studied,
and projects are afoot for establishing a laboratory for chemical,
mechanical and optical researches. Those who cry out upon the
university exercises in the schools close their eyes to the work
done in college halls and in tutors' chambers. Ward's defence
curiously anticipates by nearly half a century that made on a
similar occasion by John Wallis (the Savilian professor who
exposed Hobbes's mathematical pretensions) when writing against
Lewis Maidwell's projected academy? Ward's readiness to answer
a writer like Webster marks a critical stage in the history of
Oxford and Cambridge, whose monopoly, if not existence, was
seriously threatened. A project for a northern university, mooted
in 1604, was revived in 1642 with Manchester and York as rival
claimants for the honour of its seat; in 1652, York petitioned parlia-
ment in that sense. The liberal scheme of foundation enjoyed by
Gresham college confined its operations to the quadrivium and the
three learned professions, but it periodically stimulated the thought
that London should possess a university; and the notion had
been again mooted in 1647. Wilkins, who wrote the preface to
1 See post, p. 397.


## p. 387 (#411) ############################################

The Long Parliament and Education 387
Ward's Vindiciae, is said to have dissuaded his father-in-law,
Oliver Cromwell, from confiscating the rents belonging to the
universities in order to pay the army? Even after the restoration,
there were reverberations of these movements to destroy Oxford
and Cambridge or to establish dangerous rivals. Sprat, in his
History of the Royal Society (1667), while urging the claims of
the new foundation, thought it expedient to explain that its
researches could not conflict with the work of schools or of
universities, and that the Royal society owed its birth to the
labours of university men who had saved the seats of learning
from ruin. But, in July 1669, Evelyn heard Robert South at Oxford
advert in the most public manner to the possible injury which the
Society might inflict upon the universities. So late as 1700, Lewis
Maidwell's proposal for an academy was viewed with some alarm
at Oxford and Cambridge.
But, though drastic reforms or innovations in the universities
were undoubtedly contemplated by responsible men during the
commonwealth, it would be unjust to represent their authors as
hostile to learning or to public education. Throughout its history,
the Long parliament gave occasional attention to the latter;
through Hartlib, some of its members invited Comenius to London,
where he stayed during the months preceding the civil war.