THE TUNE.
“When, marshalled on the mighty plain” has a choral set to it in the Methodist Hymnal—credited to Thos. Harris, and entitled “Crimea”—which divides the three stanzas into six, and 421 / 367 breaks the continuity of the hymn. Better sing it in its original form—long metre double—to the dear old melody of “Bonny Doon.” The voices of Scotland, England and America are blended in it.
The origin of this Caledonian air, though sometimes fancifully traced to an Irish harper and sometimes to a wandering piper of the Isle of Man, is probably lost in antiquity. Burns, however, whose name is linked with it, tells this whimsical story of it, though giving no date save “a good many years ago,”—(apparently about 1753). A virtuoso, Mr. James Millar, he writes, wishing he were able to compose a Scottish tune, was told by a musical friend to sit down to his harpsichord and make a rhythm of some kind solely on the black keys, and he would surely turn out a Scotch tune. The musical friend, pleased at the result of his jest, caught the string of plaintive sounds made by Millar, and fashioned it into “Bonny Doon.”