BORDER HISTORY AND POETRY.*

VOLTAIRE said, "Pity the man who tries to say everything." This is the peculiar temptation of a man who has made a particu- lar study of an engrossing subject. He presumes on an interest as great as his own, and wearies his readers. Professor Veitch has not thus erred in his History and Poetry of the Scottish Border. It is true that he has carried his inquiries over a wide field, that he lays firm foundations in philological, ethnological, and even geological knowledge, in order clearly to trace up to its fountain- head the distinguishing spirit of the Border poetry ; but he has been wise in affecting no exhaustive description, and in resolutely keeping the science and the history subordinate to the poetry • The History and Poetry of the Scottish Border; their Main Features and Relations By John Veltoli, LL.D., Professor of Logic in the University of Glasgow. Olisgow: Madame.

throughout. His tine poetic spirit, and his keen appreciation or the human and universal elements in the Border poetry, have suffi- ciently prevailed to assure the reader of no more of the " results of dry research" than is absolutely necessary for the main pur- pose. He enriches his pages by vivid description and by bits of attractive local colour. For he is not a closet-student, gaining his inspirations merely from books. He has patiently wandered

over the "haunted ground" of the Border, season after season,— no nook or corner of it but seems to be familiar to him, in its most exceptional features. He loves it with the passion of a true nature-lover, in whom culture has only intensified the perception

of simplicity, and the fresh grace and beauty of outward things, as seen in regions at once so beautiful and so wild. And his devotion has already found fitting, although less ambitious, record in Border poems which have commanded the admiration of those who in such matters are well able to judge. It is only in the natural order of things that the reflective and critical should follow the poetic and creative, though we may be allowed to express the hope that this will not be the permanent and irreversible condition of matters in his case. Criticism and commentary, however good, answer their purpose, and must, in time, yield place to something else, but the faithful word-repre-

sentation of a true and universal emotion is less liable to be superseded. The guarantee of an intense interest in the subject

is found on every page. This History has been, in the true sense, a labour of love. We can trust Professor Veitch when he writes as follows :—

"Many an evening of poring over documents this volume has cost me, and many a day, under lowering as well as sunny skies, have I. spent in seeing for myself the scenes of the historical and traditional incidents. There is thus hardly one name of a place in this volume which is not to me a vivid impression. I cannot expect the majority of readers, or even many of them, to share the intensity of feeling which the associations connected with these names create in my mind; but there is, I trust, enough of the poetry peculiar to the Border Land to enable the reader to follow, with some interest, its life of the past, and to feel the spirit of its song."

On some points, it is not impossible that Professor Veitch may meet with opposition, notably with respect to the weight he would lay on the Scandinavian or Skaldic element in the Ballad poetry ; and to the origin he would find for the " Cymri of the Tweed" in the exiled Celts of Brittany ; but certainly he has- been most careful in his authorities, and has much to say of great weight in support of all the positions he assumes. The ultimate source of several of the ballads would clearly seem to be Norse or Icelandic, though here, as in many other instances, the same story or fable has many variants. Sir Walter Scott and Professor Aytoun did much to trace out the several languages in which versions undoubtedly of one original permanently fixed themselves, "The King Henrie " of Scott's ministrelsy, for ex- ample, being set down as most probably a transformation of "The Marriage of Sir Gawaine," though Scott refers the story ultimately to the Icelandic. One of the most interesting portions of Pro- fessor Veitch's book is that devoted to the tracing of these mani- fold forms to one common source, and we need not say that here he shows special knowledge and great critical acumen.

And certainly Professor Veitch is quite right in the plea he sets forth for the wide and careful study of our ballad literature. It is, above all, objective and full of dramatic fire. It is simple, direct, indulging in no wire-drawn refinements or feverish self-analysis, such as seriously beset our modern poetry. In it may be found a true corrective to a tendency which threatens to weaken and to- limit the range of interest. We can hardly do better than allow Professor Veitch to speak on this point :— "As a distinctive form of poetry, Border song has a permanent place in our national literature. It is simple, outward, direct, not without art, especially in its later forms, yet powerful, mainly because it is true- to feelings of the human heart, which are as universal and permanent as they are pure ; and because it is fresh as the sights and sounds of the varied land of hill and dale, of purple moorland and clear, sparkling streams, which it loves so well. It is a fcrin of poetry with which we can at no time dispense, if we are to keep our literature healthy ; and it is especially needed in these times. For we have abounding morbid introspection and self-analysis ; we have greatly too much of the close, hot atmosphere of our own fancies and feelings. We depend for our- interest in literature too much on the trick of incident or story, too- little on character which embodies primary human emotion. We need, as people did at the commencement of the century, some reminder of the grandeur of a simple life, of the instinctive character of high motives and noble deeds, of the self-satisfying sense of duty done; and the close workshops of our literary manufactures would be all the better for a good breeze from the hills and the holms of the Teviot and the Yarrow."

But it should not be inferred from this that direct imitation is to be recommended." Professor Veitch would himself be the very last to encourage anything of the kind. Before the old ballads

can be imitate], their spirit must be appropriated, and when that has been attained, slavish reproduction of the form could not but be regarded as a foolish waste of time and pains. The effect of a full and generous appreciation of the ballad-spirit could hardly be better seen than in the case of that modern Border-singer,—Thomas Davidson, the "Scottish Probationer." The bulk of his poems are perceptibly coloured by the influence, and yet he is wholly modern in his mode of speech, and nowhere more so than in that exquisite Border poem which Professor Veitch has quoted in his closing chapter. These lines are pervaded by the aroma of the older ballads, yet how unstrained, free, and vigorous they are :-

'-The west wind blows from Liddesdale;

And as I sit between the springs Of Bowmont and of Cayle,

To my half-listening ear it brings

All flouting voices of the hill ; The hum of bees in heather-bells, And bleatings from the distant fells ; The curlew's whistle far and shrill, And babbling of the restless rill, That bastes to leave its lone bill .side, And hurries on to sleep in Till, Or join the tremulous flood of Teviot's sunny tide."

Too often in the attempts at reproducing the old-ballad air and movement there is a sense of inconsistency, as though a man were to hamper himself with pieces of old armour under modern clothes. Alexander Smith said very smartly that Burns wore a Certain Jacobinism, more for ornament than use, like the second jacket of a hussar. These imitators of the old ballads are in pre- cisely similar case, only that the old-world air is assured more for use than ornament, and sometimes imparts a most distraught air. If we except a few specimens of Leyden, Sir Walter Scott., James Hogg, Logan, Miss Elliot's "Flowers of the Forest," one of Principal Shairp's, and another of Professor Veitch's own, which he has modestly refrained from citing here, the Border ballads have greatly suffered through later imitations of them. Principal Shairp's ballad, "The Bush aboon Traquair," is so thoroughly informed by the true spirit that some of the stanzas we could well believe to be old. We thank Professor Veitch for reproducing them, and must quote those we like best :—

"And what saw you there,

At the bush aboon Traquair?

Or what did you hear that was worth your hoed?

I heard the cushie's croon Through the gowden afternoon,

And the Quair burn singin' doon to the Vale o' the Tweed.

And birks saw I three or four, Wi' grey moss bearded ewer, The last that were left o' the birken shaw, Whar mony a simmer e'en Fond lovers did convene, Thee bonny, bonny gloamins that are lang awe'.

Free mony a but and ben, By moorland, holm, and glen, They cam yin hour to spen' on the greenwood award; But lang bee lad and lass

Been lying 'neath the grass,

The green, green grass o' Traquair Kirkyard.

They were blest beyond compare, When they held their trysting there, Amang the greenest hills shone on by the sun ; And there they wan a rest, The lownest and the best, I' Traquair Kirkyard when a' was dune.

Now the birks to dust may rot, Names o 'lavers be forgot,

Nae lads or lasses there ony mair convene ;

But the blithe lilt o' you air Keeps the bush aboon Traquair, And the lure that ance was there, aye fresh and green."

We regard this volume as a worthy contribution to the litera- ture of the Border, a book which, in many respects, supplements and completes the labours of Scott, Aytoun, and Chambers, for Professor Veitch adds to his poetic sympathy and enthusiasm a spirit of patient inquiry and a philosophical and critical discern- ment which have enabled him to perceive some of the points in which his predecessors were weak. Thus he has written a work to which every one who is interested in the developments of literature must turn, and in which, if the reader may find occa- sionally a statement from which he dissents, he will certainly find refreshment, suggestion, and the companionship of a generous spirit.