The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume 4. / The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century

Lithographed for the Modern Scottish Minstrel, by Schenck & M c Farlane.
IN SIX VOLUMES;
VOL. IV.
EDINBURGH: ADAM & CHARLES BLACK, NORTH BRIDGE, BOOKSELLERS AND PUBLISHERS TO HER MAJESTY.
M.DCCC.LVI.
EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY, PAUL'S WORK.
TO FRANCIS BENNOCH, ESQ., F.S.A., ONE OF THE MOST ACCOMPLISHED OF LIVING SCOTTISH SONG-WRITERS, AND THE MUNIFICENT PATRON OF MEN OF LETTERS, THIS FOURTH VOLUME OF The Modern Scottish Minstrel IS DEDICATED, WITH SINCERE REGARD AND ESTEEM, BY HIS VERY FAITHFUL SERVANT, CHARLES ROGERS.

It is exceedingly difficult to settle the exact place of, as well as to compute the varied influences wielded by, a great original genius. Every such mind borrows so much from his age and from the past, as well as communicates so much from his own native stores, that it is difficult to determine whether he be more the creature or the creator of his period. But, ere determining the influence exerted by Burns on Scottish song and poetry, it is necessary first to inquire what he owed to his predecessors in the art, as well as to the general Scottish atmosphere of thought, feeling, scenery and manners.
First of all, Burns felt, in common with his forbears in the genealogy of Scottish song, the inspiring influences breathing from our mountain-land, and from the peculiar habits and customs of a people dwelling alone, and not reckoned among the nations. He was not born in a district peculiarly distinguished for romantic beauty—we mean, in comparison with some other regions of Scotland. The whole course of the Ayr, as Currie remarks, is beautiful; and beautiful exceedingly the Brig of Doon, especially as it now shines through the magic of the Master's poetry. But it yields to many other parts of Scotland, some of which Burns indeed afterwards saw, although his matured genius was not much profited by the sight. Ayrshire—even with the peaks of Arran bounding the view seaward—cannot vie with the scenery around Edinburgh; with Stirling—its links and blue mountains; with Gowrie's Carse, beloved of Ceres, and Clydesdale to Pomona dear; with Straths Tay and Earn, with their two fine rivers flowing from finer lakes, through corn-fields, woods, and rocks, to melt into each other's arms in music, near the fair city of Perth; with the wilder and stormier courses of the Spey, the Findhorn, and the Dee; with the romantic and song-consecrated precincts of the Border; with the bonnie hills o' Gallowa and Dumfriesshire; or with that transcendent mountain region stretching up along Lochs Linnhe, Etive, and Leven—between the wild, torn ridges of Morven and Appin—uniting Ben Cruachan to Ben Nevis, and including in its sweep the lonely and magnificent Glencoe—a region unparalleled in wide Britain for its quantity and variety of desolate grandeur, where every shape is bold, every shape blasted, but all blasted at such different angles as to produce endless diversity, and yet where the whole seems twisted into a certain terrible harmony; not to speak of the glorious isles