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

282 NOTES.
capable and mindful of business are few in number, and tbe rest
mind nothing at all. Wlien there's a party job to be done, they'll
attend, and make a hideous noise like Bedlamites ; but if the
house is to enter on business, such as giving of money or making
of public laws, they converse so loud with one another in private
knots, that nobody can know what is doing except a very few,
who for that purpose sit near the clerk's table ; or they leave the
house, and the men of business, as they call them, to mind such
matters."
SONG LXIII.
|J)erfiDiou0 Britain,
Is a middling good old song, and one, among many others, that
I got among Mr Scott's original papers. I do not always under-
stand what the bard means ; but as he seems to have been an
ingenious though passionate writer, I take it for granted that he
knew perfectly well himself what he would have been at, so I
have not altered a word from the manuscript, which is in the
hand-writing of an amanuensis of Mr Scott's, the most incorrect
transcriber, perhaps, that ever tried the business.
SONG LXIV.
'€\)z Cl)istJe of ^cotranB,
This is a modern song, and the only one that is in the volume,
to my knowledge. It had no right to be here, for it is a national,
not a Jacobite song : but I inserted it out of a whim, to vary the
theme a little. It is an excellent song, though professedly an
imitation ; and, when tolerably sung, never misses of having a
good effect among a company of Scots people. It has been pub-
lished as mine in several collections ; I wish it were : but I am
told that it was written by Mr Sutherland, landsurveyor, a
gentleman of whom I know nothing, save that he is the author
of some other popular songs.