Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Songs of Scotland prior to Burns

INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH.
FOR the heart to break forth in song, whether to express love,
merriment, or national and political sentiment, is so natural,
that we may safely contemplate song as one of the earliest
forms of literary composition in all countries. As far as Scotland is
concerned — we find that the death of Alexander III. (1286 a. d.)
was bewailed in a popular song ; that the Scots had satirical songs
on Edward I. and admiring ditties regarding Sir William Wallace ;
and that the triumph over the English at Bannoekburn was
hailed in an outburst of rude, but joyful verse. We find various
allusions to popular songs in the histories of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, and in such poems of those ages as have
survived, a whole catalogue of such ditties being given in the
comic piece called CocJcilby's Sow, which appears to have been
composed in the middle of the fifteenth century. Only names,
however, or at the utmost odd lines and verses of these early
canticles, have been preserved ; and, on the whole, they give us
little insight into the general condition of song literature in
those days. The utmost that we can be said to learn from them
is, that there were songs in Scotland during the Bruce and early
Stuart reigns — a fact of which a general knowledge of human
nature would have assured us, even had not a trace of such
compositions survived.
Another fact — a negative one, but of considerable importance —
is revealed to us by the time we arrive at the middle of the
sixteenth century. Scotland could then boast of a brilliant series
of regular poets, all existing within the preceding eighty years —