was Edition (1896) that any really serious and scholarly work in connection with the question was done. It Britain that laid the first stone, but it was the Continent and chiefly Germany-that erected the building. The Burns Federation reprint of the Merry Muses, and the late Mr Dick's edition of the original tunes and his Notes on Scottish Song-all of them are of great importance, but the main study of Burns as a song-mender is of continental growth. An immense amount of highly important matter has been discovered during the last fifteen years. Professor Otto Ritter (in the University of Halle) in 1901 published his masterly Quellenstudien zu Robert Burns, 1773-1791 (Study of the Sources of Robert Burns), in the well-known publication of “Palaestra.” It is a very elaborate study of 268 pages, the result of a thorough study of the old chap-books in the British Museum. Two years later the same author published a booklet containing the sources of eight songs (for instance," Open the door to me," "Charlie, he's my darling," "My Nannie's awa'"), and later on he has written some shorter notes on the subject in different philological periodicals. A few years 66 earlier Mr M. Meyerfeld wrote his Robert Burns: Studien zu seiner dichterischen Entwicklung (1899)—(Robert Burns: Studies of his Poetical Growth), and in the same year Mr H. Molenaar published another important book on the Burns sources. Another German, Mr Stewart F. Butchart, has examined the authenticity of "Poem on Pastoral Poetry" and Verses on the Destruction of Drumlanrig Woods," and he very convincingly proves that they are written by Burns. Lastly I may mention Professor L. Morsbach's short essay on the lyrics of Burns (1910), containing a very just appreciation of Burns as a song-writer. The only Danish contribution to the matter is Mrs E. Westergaard's Skotsk Litteratur i det XVII. og XVIII. Aarhundrede (Scottish Literature in the 17th and 18th century), published in 1914-a rather unoriginal production containing no new views of the question, I am sorry to say. I have spoken about all these books because they are forming a literature of their own-a new school of Burns criticism too little known by Burnsians. Certainly they deserve to be read, though with caution. It is not very likely that the second verse of "Of a' the airts" is influenced, or even flüchtig angeregt (slightly suggested), by the lines of Gay : 66 Why ring the woods with warbling throats ? Ye larks, ye linnets, cease your strains; I faintly hear in your soft notes My Chloïs voice." Burns was an ardent song student. He tells us so in several of his letters; and the letters to James Thomson, the song-publisher, especially give evidence of this. He had been very interested in the old Scotch songs in his earlier years, but it was not till the Border tour and the Excise period of his life that he found time for a study of them. So during the Border tour he made a digression of twenty miles in order to see Elibank, because of an old free-spoken song, the burden of which is Elibank and Elibraes,' and "his reason for a detour by Earlston was doubtless his desire to see the much-sung Cowdenknowes (Chambers). Later on he studied all the song-books and chap-books within his reach--for instance, Percy's Reliques, Herd's Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, The Lark, and Ramsay's famous Evergreen and Tea Table Miscellany— and he himself had a collection of unprinted songs or ballads. It is chiefly on account of this song-study that the most of Burns's songs sprang from old refrains and rhymes, ather than from ardent feeling. This, I believe, is true 66 with a few exceptions-for instance, "To Mary in Heaven," "For a' that" (which did not please Burns, though it really is one of his strongest songs), and "Scots wha hae." This especially is true with relation to the love lyrics. Do not think that the love-poetry of Burns was a result of a lot of love affairs! There were many of them, I dare say, but only a few are immortalised by him. Mary, Annie, Bess, Jean, Nannie, etc.—most of them are names only chosen for the rhythm or character of the song in question. Mary is a more sentimental and softer name than Bess, and consequently it is preferred for the most sentimental songs, like Sweet Afton and others. I do not deny, though, that there is a certain direct connection between certain of these names and certain fillettes " of the Poet, but the importance of the real lassie is overrated. Burns himself says in a letter (1794): "I put myself on a regimen of admiring a fine woman; and in proportion of her charms, in proportion you are delighted with my verse," and in an often-quoted letter to James Thomson he tells us how he composed a song. The chief thing was the tune and the refrain of an old song (though he in another place says that he does not like refrains at all). We do not know the heroine of A red, red rose." It is very likely there never was any—or perhaps here, too, Burns put himself on a regimen. 66 no result of a love affair. 66 Certainly it is So I think most critics and biographers have based their estimation of the songs of Burns on wrong ideas. Burns is not the brilliant peasant youth whose songs sprung from life and proved to be fine art-no, he was rather the artist born among the peasants, composing lyrics that proved to be hearty and tender. He was not the parvenu of Parnassus, but a citizen there. Burns the man is often placed more in the foreground than Burns the Poet-and that is wrong. He was the weakest among men; but he was the greatest among poets. The great art of Burns, then, is that he makes songwriting a serious business, i.e., he does not compose merely serious songs, but he composes songs of true sentiment. His art is making people believe that or "Nae other care in life have I, But live, an' love my Nannie, O ̈ "Three blyther hearts, that lee-lang night, We do not think the unknown author of "The Young Man's Farewell" very sincere when he sings "The seas they shall run dry, And rocks melt into sands; Then I love you still, my dear, When all those things are done " But the very same lines in the re-writing of Burns sound quite otherwise : : "Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, This shows that the much-praised sincerity of Burns, a praise originating from Carlyle's Essay, is rather a sincerity of the artist than a sincerity of the man. The art of Burns is sincerity. Part of this sincerity is the simplicity of the verse construction. Those two virtues, so important to the song-writer, are described by Carlyle as two parallel characteristics. Really one is the result of the other. The mystery of Burns's song-mending business essentially is his making the old songs more simple. A good example is "Charlie, he's my darling," which only consists of six verses (the chorus included), while the older version of this song (discovered by Professor Ritter) numbers sixteen verses. Burns knew that a first-rate song had to be short in order not to tire, and really the same thing is told in the six verses as in the sixteen verses, and in a far more dramatic and vivid way. The first stanza of the original "It was on Monday morning, Right early in the year, That Charlie he came to this town is re-written by Burns- 66 'Twas on a Monday morning, Right early in the year, That Charlie came to our town The young Chevalier " is The fact that he was recruiting Grenadiers omitted, as it has nothing to do with the chief matter of Perhaps, though, the version Burns knew had already made this alteration; it is impossible to say anything positive about that. the song. The second stanza, too, is altered : "He spy'd a maid both young and sweet is changed for "O there he spied a bonie lass an immense improvement. The third stanza of Burns's song is not taken from the original. Henley & Henderson quote another, but very doubtful, source for it (see below). In the fourth stanza Burns deviates somewhat from the old song in order to avoid some coarse lines, and he calls the heroine Jenny, while she has no name at all in the original. This is a characteristic trait of Burns. The music of a female name is introduced whenever it is possible to do so. The fifth and last verse of Burns's song corresponds to the seventh and eighth ones of the original "It's up the rosy mountains, And down the scroggy glen, For Charlie and his men!" Burns makes the mountains "heathery a far stronger and more realistic expression. The rest of the old song tells us how the young lassie goes up to Inverness seeking |