Blair Collection > Treatise on the language, poetry, and music of the Highland clans

OF THE HIGHLAND CLANS. 149
their jiiipils the sole judges, — laughing or sneering at the ignorance of all who
difler from them : yet the fact is, that the sound of the piano has a regularly
BuU's-run effect on most gentlemen. I have myself no doubt, that horror of
this musical infliction, rather than of the curtain lecture, is at the root of the
distaste for a married life, so apparent at present in gentlemen who have not
attained either a self-sufficient initiation into the science of modern music, or
that position in society where the artificial totally supercedes the natural.
Young ladies may take my word for it, that the music which does not touch
the heart, will never win a heart worth loving.
The Highlanders are much indebted to the Eev. Mr Macdonald, and to
Messrs Gow, Marshall, and others, for having rescued so much of the music of
their ancestors from comparative obscurity ; but they baptized it anew, after
their patrons and patronesses, and have thus made on strangers the impression
that they were the composers of the music which they only copied and
published. I do not think that they intended to do this ; but it was in very
bad taste to give new names to these old tunes and airs, and thus to deprive
them of the signet of antiquity which descended with them from remote ages.
At the same time, they thus left to their musical successors a lesson of snobbery
and servility, which they, in their turn, have not been slow in stamping on the
very forehead of the national music, — a lesson only equalled by the fulsome and
nauseous dedications of the feudal bards of the Lowlands of Scotland and England.
The first verse of the following song, Nighean Donn na Buaile, was quoted
by Logan as one of the specimens by which he illustrated the great variety of
measures of Gaelic poetry. As this song is a fair average specimen of the Gaelic
love song, which was characterized more by a dignified tenderness and a fixed
constancy than by a wayward fervor, I will make it my first specimen of its
class. The melody is, in the Highlands, called " Feil Chill Andraes," (feyl chill
andras) St Andrew's Fair, and has been naturalized in the Lowlands under the
more homely name of " Johnny's Grey Breeks," which, though certainly very
beautiful, is no improvement on the original. I have no wish to detract from
Scottish or Lowland melodies, but must say that the great body of those of them
which have an unquestionably Caledonian or Highland origin, have been any-
thing but improved by their transformation.
NIGHEAN DONN NA BUAILE.*
A nighean donn na buaile, Brown-haired maiden of the fold,
a DÌ'-eu donn ua bu-ayle
Ga bheil an gluasad farasda. Whose movements are so graceful,
ga veyl an glu-as-ad farasda
* For the melody of " Nighean Donn na Buaile," and many others, I am indebted to Mrs Macdonell,
Keppoch, whose exquisite tabte for Gaelic music worthily represents the genius of the House of Keppoch,
which has been so long the residence of music, poetry, and heroism. To Mrs Macdonell and her
daughter Miss Jessie, I am under deep obligations, not only for the number of melodies with which
they have favoured me, but for the unwearied kindness with which they consulted my wishes, and cheer-
fully met the increasing demands their possession of the same sets of the melodies with which I was
acquainted in my youth, made me venture to make on their indulgence ; and I beg their acceptance of
my sincere and grateful thanks.