Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Scottish songs > Volume 1

xlvii
and might speak volumes to the rural divinity whose
charms were the burden of its lay ; but it was all as
nought to the man of refinement, whose evenings were
spent in the mysteries of fugue and canon. At length,
however, the upper classes became alive to the beau-
ties of what they had so long neglected ; and before
the end of the seventeenth century, not only were the
Scottish airs introduced into places of public amuse-
ment at London, but the best English composers
thought proper to imitate them. That singular ge-
nius, Tom D'Urfey, and other Grubstreeters of the
day, exerted themselves to fit the airs thus imported
from the north with appropriate verses ; for the original
Scotch songs seem to have been found quite inadmissi-
ble into genteel company. Their efforts were attended
with execrable results, as may be instanced in a note
found attached in this collection to the song of " Ka-
therine Ogie." But, nevertheless, the fact that they
did so is gratifying, as a proof that at least the native
music of Scotland was then found worthy of the ap-
probation of lords and ladies gay. The number of
Scottish airs, and imitations of such, in Tom D'Ur-
fey 's grand collection, called " Pills to Purge Melan-
choly, 1719," is very considerable; and if they had
had no real charms to recommend them to the notice
of the public, they must have now been sufficiently con-
spicuous, for Tom's six successive volumes, although
full of all kinds of filth, were dedicated to the highest
people in England, and became the bosom books of
high and low. What was then fashionable in England,
must, of course, have been also fashionable in Scot-
land. Accordingly, we find Scottish music and song
so much in vogue among the upper ranks in their na-
tive country, that Ramsay, only a few years after, de-
dicated his collection, entitled the Tea-Table Miscel-
lany, to both extremes of society —
To ilka lovely British lass,
Frae Ladies Charlotte^ Anne, and Jean,