Glen Collection of printed music > Printed music > Jacobite relics of Scotland > [First series]

xiv INTKODUCTION.
fain have had a larger portion of them, as a counterpart to the
others; but it is impossible to preserve that which is not. Though
the government and revolutionary principles of the house of
Hanover have always been popular in the Lowlands of Scotland,
yet the Caledonian Muse, with a romantic attachment, has all
along clung to exiled royalty, and kindled at the injuries sus-
tained by the sufferers, and their heroical deportment, in its
cause ; at the same time loading the inflictors of these sufferings
with every opprobrium that bitterness of soul could suggest.
Whoever is versant in the national poetry of Scotland will readily
subscribe to this position. The generosity displayed by these un-
fortunate men will always be remembered to the honour of the
nation, and it even powerfully interested those who were adverse
to their cause. The national feeling was strongly roused, and its
bards partook of the common sympathy. It would therefore have
been doing injustice to our country, to its heroes as well as its
poets, to have suffered these effusions to have perished. To offer
any apology now for their publication, would only be to insult
those who might be expected to require it. The rival claims of
Stuart and Brunswick are not more to the present generation
than those of Bruce and Baliol, or York and Lancaster. The
question of rigJit has been submitted to the arbitration of the
sword, and is now invariably decided. But neither that decision,
nor any other motive, should deter the historian from doing
justice to the character of those men who fell in a cause which
they at least judged to be right, and which others, perhaps, only
thought wrong as it proved unsuccessful.
" Treason does never prosper. What's the reason ?
For if it prosper none dare call it treason."