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

INTRODUCTION. xv
the serious objection that the upland Muse was of upland
manners and upland dress. Although the ladies and gentlemen
of that day were not by any means what we should now call
overrefined, still they were on a different level from the lads
and lasses of the farmer's hall. It became necessary for the
reception of the melodies, many of which were of the highest
beauty, that they should be adapted to songs of a pure, or
comparatively pure character. Accordingly, the era of Anne
and George I. is marked by a large fresh growth of Scottish
song, mostly by persons of condition, as Robert Crawford,
William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, Lady Grizel Baillie, &c. — but,
in a greater measure, by Allan Ramsay, who further pronroted
the cause by his collection of songs styled The Tea-table Mis-
cellany, which began to be published in 1 724. Under this new
flush of song literature, the old popular ditties fell like weeds
before a garden culture, to the loss, no doubt, of much we should
now wish to possess, for its power of illustrating the history of
the national intellect, but as undoubtedly to the benefit of the
public taste and morality. Then it was that such polite society
as assembled for the winter in Edinburgh permitted, for the
first time, of the singing of Scotch songs at their tea-parties,
or other meetings, with the accompaniment, it might be,
of the spinnet or lute, but more generally without any
such aid, and still more rarely with a second or third voice.
Allan Ramsay assisted to make this a favourite amusement by
publishing, in connection with Ms Tea-table Miscellany, a small
collection of Scottish airs, the title-page of which, representing
a lady at the spiimet and a gentleman with a violoncello, is
here reproduced as a sort of glimpse of the musical enjoyments
of the period. Nearly about the same time, an instructed
musician, named William Thomson, produced a handsome
Widow, my Laddie ; If Love is the cause of my Mourning ; The Birks of
Abergeldie ; For old long syne, my Jo; Widow, gin thou be waking ;
Alas, my heart, that we should sunder ; The Lass of Livingstone ;
The Deil stick the Minister. — See Additional Illustrations to Johnson's
Museum, by Mr D. Laing, xc.