J. F. Campbell Collection > Selections from the Gaelic bards

121
FUGITIVE SONGS.
Many of the most popular of Gaelic love songs are by unknown
authors, or, as is the case also in Lowland Scotch, by authors who
composed one song and no more. Their distinguishing character-
istics are simplicity, tenderness, and exjiressive sincerity. There
is a great deal of music generally in their language and rhythm,
and such a correspondence with the tune to which they are sung,
as if they were the twin births of the one passionate experience.
This is also the case with their Lowland kindred, which have very
much the same rural grace and freshness, which we discover in
the Highland lyrics. In them music and poetry are truly wedded,
till they become of one sound and nature, and are helps meet for
one another. E.specially is this the case with the chorus and with
one or two verses of the Ijtìc — such as we may suppose might be
struck off in the first heat of emotion. Sometimes, for a few lines,
it would almost appear as if it were difficult to say where the
music begins, or the words end — they blend and fit so curiously
together. This, I suppose, must be partly attributed to the
nature of the Gaelic language, which, without being particularly
soft, is very flexible, and full of vowel sounds. But it must also
be attributed, in a certain degree, to the musical genius of the
people, which I look upon as decidedly evident, and one of their
prominent characteristics ; though, of course, existing as yet in a
very uncultured state.
The Highland melodies are often of the most touching beauty —
sometimes wildly melancholy, sometimes exuberantly gay. They
remind one more than anj-thing else of what Mr. Carlyle says so
happily of Burns' songs, when he calls them "fitful gushes;
warblings not of the voice only, but of the whole mind." Spring-
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