Ossian Collection > Gaelic bards

INTRODUCTION. XXV
lyric glory of Caledonia, it is surely time for those who,
happening to have been more favourably circumstanced,
are on this point better instructed, to endeavour to show
their countrymen how much they have been neglecting —
how unfair they have been to the Highlands and their
inhabitants, when they believe on the worst, or on no
authority at all, that the lyric genius, which has made
Scotland so famous, has been bounded by an imaginary
geographical line, and that the descendants of the people
who have given the northern half of the British Isle all
the names by which it ever has been known, have used a
language always unblest by the spoken music of sentiment,
and have done nothing to add to the glory of their land,
except what was reaped on the fields of battle by their
strong arms and their hardy valour. This shows the
folly into which peoj^le will stray, who take upon
themselves to dictate with regard to things they do not
even endeavour to understand. Of the Lowland Scottish
Language, and its claims to be considered something
different from, and higher than the provincial dialects of
the English counties, we have nothing to say at present,
neither does it come in our way to speak of Scottish
Music, or of its origin, Highland or Lowland, Celtic,
Scandinavian, or Saxon, or a union of them all ; but we
make this one remark in passing, that Highland music is
very unfairly characterised when it is termed "rude and
wild," meaning thereby, not that it has never received
any scientific culture, which is quite true, but obviously
that it is destitute of beauty, of natural grace and
artistic feeling, to afiirm anything like which is to assert
something outrageously false. Whatever of tenderness,
of freshness of natural elegance, of depth of sentiment
there is in the Lowland Scotch Music, any one who goes
about such inquiry, in an unprejudiced spirit, will find
in the Highland melodies too, and not in a inferior
degree. I remember hearing a gentleman, himself a
musician, well acquainted with music in its highest and