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

Iviii
me ; 'Twas within a furlong of Edinburgh town, [cm
English imitation.']
That this was, indeed, the golden age of Scottish
music and song is abundantly clear. How else should
we find men and women of fashion exerting them-
selves to imitate and rival the poetic productions of the
swains? How else should Ramsay's volume have
been intended, as he himself says, to " steal itself into
the ladies bosoms?" How else should he have said of
his book,
" The wanton wee thing will rejoice.
When tented by a sparkling ee,
The spinnet tinkling to her voice.
It lying on her lovely knee !"
But, among the many facts which go to prove this,
perhaps the most conclusive is the publication, in 1725,
of a collection of Scottish songs and airs, called " The
Orpheus Caledonius," which appeared at London, and
which its editor, William Thompson, professes to
have designed for the use of persons of quality, and
dedicates to the Princess of Wales.*
While the Scotch airs were in this high and palmy
state, the simple singing of Scotch songs, without any
accompaniment whatever, was one of the chief amuse-
ments resorted to by the best society in Edinburgh, at
those delightful assemblages, then so fashionable, but
now so exploded, called evening parties. Ramsay's
Collection might truly be called the Tea-Table Mis-
cellany, for, according to the recollection of all aged
persons of condition with whom I have conversed, the
DeiVs Buke itself f found some difficulty in keeping
its ground against it at the tea-table, and nothing was
then hailed with such rapture as Lady 's or Mr
• 's song. I have heard one express tradition,
which gives local and personal certainty to this fact.
Early in the last century, there was scarcely a more
• Consort of George II., and afterwards Queen Caroline,
t Cards.