Robert Burns: How To Know Him Part 7

CHAPTER III

BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG

With song-writing Burns began his poetical career, with song-writing he closed it; and, brilliant as was his achievement in other fields, it is as a song-writer that he ranks highest among his peers, it is through his songs that he has rooted himself most deeply in the hearts of his countrymen.

The most notable and significant fact in connection with his making of songs is their relation to the melodies to which they are sung. In the vast majority of cases these are old Scottish tunes, which were known to Burns before he wrote his songs, and were singing in his ear during the process of composition. The poet was no technical musician.

Murdoch, his first teacher, says that Robert and Gilbert Burns "were left far behind by all the rest of the school" when he tried to teach them a little church music, "Robert's ear, in particular, was remarkably dull, and his voice untunable. It was long before I could get them to distinguish one tune from another." Either Murdoch exaggerated, or the poet's ear developed later (Murdoch is speaking of him between the ages of six and nine); for he learned to fiddle a little, once at least attempted to compose an air, could read music fairly easily, and could write down a melody from memory. His correspondence with Johnson and Thomson shows that he knew a vast number of old tunes and was very sensitive to their individual quality and suggestion.[1] Such a sentence as the following from one of his Commonplace Books shows how important his responsiveness to music was for his poetical composition.

"These old Scottish airs are so n.o.bly sentimental that when one would compose to them, to _south_ the tune, as our Scottish phrase is, over and over, is the readiest way to catch the inspiration and raise the Bard into that glorious enthusiasm so strongly characteristic of our old Scotch Poetry."

[1] The question of the nature and extent of Burns's musical abilities may be summed up in the words of the latest and most thorough student of his melodies:--"His knowledge of music was in fact elemental; his taste lay entirely in melody, without ever reaching an appreciation of contra-puntal or harmonious music. Nor, although in his youth he had learned the grammar of music and become acquainted with clefs, keys, and notes at the rehearsals of church music, which were in his day a practical part of the education of the Scottish peasantry, did he ever arrive at composition, except in the case of one melody which he composed for a song of his own at the age of about twenty-three, and this melody displeased him so much that he destroyed it and never attempted another. In the same way, although he practised the violin, he did not attain to excellence in execution, his playing being confined to strathspeys and other slow airs of the pathetic kind. On the other hand, his perception and his love of music are undeniable.

For example, he possessed copies of the princ.i.p.al collections of Scottish vocal and instrumental music of the eighteenth century, and repeatedly refers to them in the Museum and in his letters. His copy of the _Caledonian Pocket Companion_ (the largest collection of Scottish music), which copy still exists with pencil notes in his handwriting, proves that he was familiar with the whole contents. At intervals in his writings he names at least a dozen different collections to which he refers and from which he quotes with personal knowledge. Also he knew several hundred different airs, not vaguely and in a misty way, but accurately as regards tune, time, and rhythm, so that he could distinguish one from another, and describe minute variations in the several copies of any tune which pa.s.sed through his hands.... Many of the airs he studied and selected for his verses were either pure instrumental tunes, never before set to words, or the airs (from dance books) of lost songs, with the first lines as t.i.tles."--(James C. d.i.c.k, _The Songs of Robert Burns_, 1903, Preface, pp. viii, ix.)

Again, once when Thomson had sent him a tune to be fitted with words, he replied:

"_Laddie lie near me_ must _lie by me_ for some time. I do not know the air; and until I am complete master of a tune in my own singing (such as it is), I never can compose for it. My way is: I consider the poetic sentiment correspondent to my idea of the musical expression; then choose my theme; begin one stanza; when that is composed, which is generally the most difficult part of the business, I walk out, sit down now and then, look out for subjects in nature around me that are in unison and harmony with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom, humming every now and then the air with the verses I have framed. When I feel my muse beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of my study, and then commit my effusion to paper; swinging at intervals on the hindlegs of my elbow chair, by way of calling forth my own critical strictures as my pen goes on. Seriously, this at home is almost invariably my way." [September, 1793.]

His wife, who had a good voice and a wide knowledge of folk-song, seems often to have been of a.s.sistance, and a further interesting detail is given by Sir James Stuart-Menteath from the evidence of a Mrs. Christina Flint.

"When Burns dwelt at Ellisland, he was accustomed, after composing any of his beautiful songs, to pay Kirsty a visit, that he might hear them sung by her. He often stopped her in the course of the singing when he found any word harsh and grating to his ear, and subst.i.tuted one more melodious and pleasing. From Kirsty's extensive acquaintance with the old Scottish airs, she was frequently able to suggest to the poet music more suitable to the song she was singing than that to which he had set it."

Kirsty and Jean were not his only aids in the criticism of the musical quality of his songs. From the time of the Edinburgh visit, at least, he was in the habit of seizing the opportunity afforded by the possession of a harpsichord or a good voice by the daughters of his friends, and in several cases he rewarded his accompanist by making her the heroine of the song. Without drawing on the evidence of parallel phenomena in other ages and literatures, we can be sure enough that this persistent consciousness of the airs to which his songs were to be sung, and this critical observation of their fitness, had much to do with the extraordinary melodiousness of so many of them.

We have seen that Burns received an important impulse to productiveness through his cooperation in the compiling of two national song collections. James Johnson, the editor of the first of these, was an all but illiterate engraver, ill-equipped for such an undertaking; and as the work grew in scale until it reached six volumes, Burns became virtually the editor--even writing the prefaces to several of the volumes. George Thomson, the editor of the other, _A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs_, was a government clerk, an amateur in music, of indifferent taste and with a preference for English to the vernacular. In his collection the airs were harmonized by Pleyel, Kozeluch, Haydn, and Beethoven; and he had the impudence to meddle with the contributions both of Burns and of the eminent composers who arranged the melodies. Nothing is more striking than the patience and modesty of Burns in tolerating the criticism and alterations of Thomson. The main purpose in both _The Scots Musical Museum_ and the _Select Collection_ was the preservation of the national melodies, but when the editors came to seek words to go with them they found themselves confronted with a difficult problem. To understand its nature, it will be necessary to extend our historical survey.

In addition to the effects of the Reformation in Scotland already indicated, there was another even more serious for arts and letters.

The reaction against Catholicism in Scotland was peculiarly violent, and the form of Protestantism which replaced it was extremely puritanical. In the matter of intellectual education, it is true, Knox's ideas and inst.i.tutions were enlightened, and have borne important fruit in making prevail in his country an uncommonly high level of general education and a reverence for learning. But on the artistic side the reformed ministers were the enemies not only of everything that suggested the ornateness of the old religion, but of beauty in every form. Under their influence, an influence extraordinarily pervasive and despotic, art and song were suppressed, and Scotland was left a very mirthless country, absorbed in theological and political discussion, and having little outlet for the instinct of sport except heresy-hunting.

Such at least seemed to be the case on the surface. But human nature is not to be totally changed even by such a force as the Reformation.

Especially among the peasantry occasions recurred--weddings, funerals, harvest-homes, New-Year's Eves, and the like--when, the minister being at a safe distance and whisky having relaxed the awe of the kirk session, the "wee sinfu' fiddle" was produced, and song and the dance broke forth. It was under such clandestine conditions that the traditional songs of Scotland had been handed down for some generations before Burns's day, and the conditions had gravely affected their character. The melodies could not be stained, but the words had degenerated until they had lost most of whatever imaginative quality they had possessed, and had acquired instead only grossness.

Such words, it was clear, Johnson could not use in his _Museum_, and the discovery of Burns was to him the most extraordinary good fortune.

For Burns not only knew, as we have seen, the old songs--words and airs--by the score, but was able to purify, complete, or replace the words according to the degree of their corruption. Various poets have caught up sc.r.a.ps of folk-song and woven them into their verse; but nowhere else has a poet of the people appeared with such a rare combination of original genius and sympathetic feeling for the tone and accent of the popular muse, as enabled Burns to recreate Scottish song. If patriotic Scots wish to justify the achievement of Burns on moral grounds, it is here that their argument lies: for whatever of coa.r.s.eness and license there may have been in his life and writings, it is surely more than counter-balanced by the restoration to his people of the possibility of national music and clean mirth.

One can not cla.s.sify the songs of Burns into two clearly separated groups, original and remodeled, for no hard lines can be drawn. Since he practically always began with the tune, he frequently used the t.i.tle or the first line of the old song. He might do this, yet completely change the idea; or he might retain the idea but use none of the old words. In other cases the first stanza or the chorus is retained; in still others the new song is sprinkled with here a phrase and there an epithet recalling the derelict that gave rise to it. Some are made up of stanzas from several different predecessors, others are almost centos of stock phrases.

The contribution thus made to Johnson's collection, of songs rescued or remade or wholly original, amounted to some one hundred eighty-four; to Thomson's about sixty-four. Some examples will make clear the nature of his services.

_Auld Lang Syne_, perhaps the most wide-spread of all songs among the English-speaking peoples, is in its oldest extant form attributed on uncertain grounds to Francis Sempill of Beltrees or Sir Robert Aytoun.[2] That still older forms had existed appears from its t.i.tle in the broadside in which it is preserved:

"An excellent and proper new ballad, ent.i.tled Old Long Syne. Newly corrected and amended, with a large and new edition [sic] of several excellent love lines."

[2] The melody to which the song is now sung is not that to which Burns wrote it, but was an old strathspey tune. It is possible, however, that he agreed to its adoption by Thomson.

It opens thus:

Should old acquaintance be forgot And never thought upon, The Flames of Love extinguished And freely past and gone?

Is thy kind Heart now grown so cold In that Loving Breast of thine, That thou can'st never once reflect On old-long-syne.

And so on, for eighty lines.

Allan Ramsay rewrote it for his _Tea-Table Miscellany_ (1724), and a specimen stanza will show that it was still going down-hill:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot Tho' they return with scars?

These are the n.o.ble hero's lot, Obtain'd in glorious wars; Welcome, my Varo, to my breast, Thy arms about me twine, And make me once again as blest As I was lang syne.

The remaining four stanzas are worse. Burns may have had further hints to work on which are now lost; but the best, part of the song, stanzas three and four, are certainly his, and it is unlikely that he inherited more than some form of the first verse and the chorus.

AULD LANG SYNE

Should auld acquaintance be forgot [old]

And never brought to min'? [mind]

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And auld lang syne? [long ago]

For auld lang syne, my dear.

For auld lang syne, We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet, For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp, [will pay for]

And surely I'll be mine; And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes, [two have, hillsides]

And pu'd the gowans fine; [pulled, daisies]

But we've wander'd mony a weary foot Sin' auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidled i' the burn, [waded, brook]

From morning sun till dine; [noon]

But seas between us braid hae roar'd [broad]

Sin' auld lang syne.

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere, [comrade]

And gie's a hand o' thine; [give me]

And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught, [draught of good will]

For auld lang syne.

A more remarkable case of patchwork is _A Red, Red Rose_. Antiquarian research has discovered in chap-books and similar sources four songs, from each of which a stanza, in some such form as follows, seems to have proved suggestive to Burns:

(1) Her cheeks are like the Roses That blossom fresh in June, O, she's like a new strung instrument That's newly put in tune.

(2) Altho' I go a thousand miles I vow thy face to see, Altho' I go ten thousand miles I'll come again to thee, dear Love, I'll come again to thee.

(3) The seas they shall run dry, And rocks melt into sands; Then I'll love you still, my dear, When all those things are done.

(4) Fare you well, my own true love, And fare you well for a while, And I will be sure to return back again, If I go ten thousand mile.