Legends and Memories of Scotland. By Cora Kennedy Aitken. (Hodder
and Stoughton.)—There is not much to be said against the attempt to record and invent Scotch legends, and to sing them in Scottish words, but we cannot say that those in the pretty volume before us are a success. From the young lady's preface we learn that she has only resided "a few weeks" in Scotland, but that she "cannot resist using the sweet, picturesque Scotch dialect." It seems to us that she did not master the dialect in those few weeks, but that having probably read Scott and Burns, sho was quick in introducing such forms of our English words with a few Scotch ones as occur very frequently in Scotch authors. These verses, for instance, have not the genuine ring of a Scotch ballad at all :—
.` Culloden Muir was red wi blood, The Highlanders awe' To Moray Frith or to the woods, An' black the nicht did fa'.
31nrdoch.Macrae cam' in wi' lettere Frae Fort Augustus sent ; Ho was a servant o' the Crown
An' English Parliament.
He was an unco' silly postman, For up an' down the town Ile strutted, an' his clappin' tongue Wad never be kept down."
The legends, both repeated and originated, are for the most part tales of death and blood, and they are told in confused language, while the rhythm is very rough and ugly, and the rhymes often bad. Neither themes nor versification attract us at all. The sonnets and verses written in English are no better ; they are very ambitious, the ideas are anything but clear; sometimes they are without sense—we never heard, for instance, of islands being blown to the surface—and the rhymes are forced and sometimes worse than questionable. Winds, for instance, does not rhyme with begins, interrupt with corrupt, dense with monuments, nor tangilde with real, &c. But we will give the first sonnet as a speci- men of Mies Aitken's style, and leave our readers to judge :—
- IN THE HIGHLANDS.
'What lineage need they, the proud Highlanders, Sprung from the rocks, like their own hardy heath ?
They have for brethren, sons, and ancestors, The skies and mountains, rocks and glens beneath:
The wildernesses and the sleeping meets:
The dark lakes softly gathered up between The rugged bills; the pines and birches green ; The storm that darkens and the wind that roars I They own the patent of nobility God gave them when from cloud tossed skies He bent To bless them to proud race and pedigree, To chivalrous, magnificent descent.
A race they are nurtured as Heaven meant To nurture those it destines to be free I"
The subjects of the four photographs—which are themselves excellent— seem to have been selected to give the reader as dreary an impression of Scotland as possible.
Previous page
