Studies in Folk-Song and Popular Poetry

by Alfred M. Williams

To the land o' the leal.

Now fare-ye-weel, my ain John,

The world's cares are vain, John,

We 'll meet and will be fain

In the land o' the leal.

The fame of the authoress, so far as she can be said to have any of her own individual personality, rests upon this song, and sufficiently, while the English language shall last, but it was not the solitary example of her genius, and her poetical work, although not great in hulk, contains other lyrics of a very high quality, with a wide range from high martial spirit and homely pathos to gay and frolicsome humor, and instinct with the vital and living element of song. Lady Nairne was almost morbidly anxious to retain her incognito as a writer during her life, so that her own husband and nearest relatives were not in the secret, and those who surmised or guessed it hardly dared to allude to it in her presence, and the veil has rested over her personality to a great degree in comparison with the flood of light poured over the words and actions of her great contemporaries, Scott and Burns, and many lesser figures in Scotch provincial literature like Professor Wilson and Hogg. Nevertheless, since her death at a very advanced age in 1846, her songs have been collected and published under her own name, and enough has been made known concerning her life and character to give to her poetry an individuality, and reveal a very gracious, noble and engaging figure.

Carolina Oliphant was born in "the auld house of Gask," in Perthshire, on the 16th of August, 1766, six years later than Robert Burns. She came of stanch Jacobite stock on both sides, her father, Laurence Oliphant, a name since made familiar by the singular and notable career of the accomplished writer, traveler, and scholar, who puzzled the world not less by his naïve religious aberrations than by his accomplishments, took up arms for the Stuarts in "the Forty-five," and suffered attainder and temporary banishment in company with his father, who had also been "out" in the Earl of Mar's rebellion in "the Fifteen." Young Laurence Oliphant, while in exile at Versailles, married his cousin, Margaret Robertson, daughter of Duncan Robertson of Strowan, chief of the clan Dorrochy. The Robertsons had also been ardent Jacobites, and suffered in purse and person for their loyalty. The grandfather, Duncan Robertson, was notable in character and personality as well in adventure and misfortune, and had his portrait painted in immortal colors by Scott as the Baron of Bradwardine. Carolina, baptized after the exiled prince, spent her infancy and early childhood on the Continent in France and Belgium, under the care of her grandmother, her parents being in feeble health, and then returned with them to the old home at Gask, where she spent her happy, healthy, and gay youth and young womanhood. From a feeble and delicate child she had grown into a strong, vigorous, and beautiful young woman, the beauty of the country-side, called "the Flower of Strathearn" and "the lovely Car," and her life was of a kind to strengthen her ardent patriotism and cultivate her fondness for the native music, poetry, and song of which Scotland was full, but whose transcendent merits were unknown and unappreciated by the literary world until they were illuminated by the light of the genius of Burns a few years later. The anecdotes of her life give a very charming picture of innocent gayety, family affection, and friendship. She played the Jacobite airs for her aged grandfather, as she afterward wrote Jacobite songs for his pleasure, and with a skill and feeling which won the difficult approval of the famous Neil Gow, the wandering fiddler, whose skill on his instrument was like that of Scott's "Wandering Willie," and whose presence at a laird's house would draw all the young people for miles around to dance to the winged notes of his strathspeys and hornpipes. She was foremost in all scenes of gayety, and is said to have taken a carriage at midnight and driven several miles to bring one of her young lady friends out of bed for a party where partners were scarce. In the simple social pleasures of the local aristocracy, the county balls and meetings, and the gatherings of the tenantry, "the Flower of Strathearn" was a conspicuous figure, while her keen eyes were taking in the queer figures that appeared later in all the glow of bright humor in The Laird of Cockpen, The County Meeting, and Jamie, the Laird. Her first verses, The Ploughman, were written for a harvest home dinner, and were read by her brother as a contribution by an unknown author. About this time the first poems of Burns made their appearance, and stirred the heart of Scotland not less by their original genius than by the revivification of the old airs and scraps of songs, finished and cleansed of their coarseness, and made to speak to the hearts of the people in the drawing-room as well as in the peasant's cottage and the taproom of the country alehouse. It was the first acknowledgment, if not the beginning, of that appreciation of the wealth of pathos and humor in the peasant poetry of Scotland, among the cultivated classes, and drew that attention and emulation to which all there is of value in modern Scotch poetry is due. It was the inspiration of the genius of Carolina Oliphant, and from this time she began to write the new verses to the old airs, and to replace the imperfect, unworthy, and sometimes coarse and vulgar scraps of songs with the beautiful ones of her own, equally Scotch and racy of the soil, and full of the thoughts and sentiments as well as the dialect of the people. The old grandfather, worn with disease and living in the past light of fervid days, heard his favorite airs of welcome, gathering, and victory, for the Young Chevalier sung to new and glowing words, and the young ladies laughed at the funny lilts in which were drawn the queer figures of the dullards and provincial fops, without knowing to whose keen pen they were indebted. The Land o' the Leal was written for Mrs. Archibald Campbell Colquhoun, a dear friend of Miss Oliphant, upon the death of an infant daughter, and to one other only was the secret of its authorship ever definitely disclosed, although its aurora, more or less mysteriously, finally settled around the head of Lady Nairne. Mrs. Colquhoun was born Mary Anne Erskine, and was the sister of that William Erskine afterward Lord Kinedder who was the dearest friend and associate of Walter Scott in his early Edinburgh days, and the sister, who kept the house for her brother until her marriage with Mr. Colquhoun, was the earliest and deepest love of Scott.

Somewhat late in life Carolina Oliphant married her cousin, Major William Nairne, the heir to the forfeited Barony of Nairne, Assistant Inspector General of Barracks in Scotland, and with him removed to Edinburgh, where she occupied for a time a cottage at Portobello and afterward official quarters in Holyrood place. The impulse given by Burns to the cultivation of native Scotch poetry still continued, and was being strengthened by his contributions of songs for the music of the old airs in Johnson's Museum, and a coterie of the literary ladies of Edinburgh established the Scotch Minstrel for the same purpose. To this Mrs. Nairne became a contributor, with a single friend for a confidant, under the name of "Mrs. Bogan of Bogan," with other pseudonyms, a disguised handwriting and other elaborate precautions for concealment. There was, of course, a keen curiosity to discover the author of these beautiful songs, but the secret was well guarded, and not even the husband was aware of it. "I dare not even tell William"— Mrs. Nairne wrote to her friend—"lest he blab." She and her friend at one time cherished the purpose of "cleansing and moralizing" the songs of Burns, as he had done those of his unknown predecessors, but a wiser second thought restrained them. Miss Oliphant had been "converted," as the phrase goes, when a young woman on a visit to England, and her piety and religious feeling deepened with her years, until it took on completely the rigid, depressing, and dismal forms of Scotch denominationalism, and her genius for poetry shriveled under it. During the visit of George the Fourth to Edinburgh he signalized his theatrical clemency by a restoration of the forfeited titles of the Jacobite nobility, and Major Nairne became Baron Nairne. Lord Nairne survived his restoration but a few years, and died in 1829, leaving his widow with an only son. To his education she devoted herself, residing for a time in Bath, afterward in Ireland, and traveling on the Continent for the health of the young lord, who was of feeble constitution, and who died at Brussels in 1837. It is painful to read of the narrow bigotry and theological gloom which enveloped the joyous and healthy spirit of Lady Nairne. She would not allow her son to be taught to dance, and regarded her poetry as the somewhat flagitious exercise of a worldly spirit, and spent her days in the doubt and self-affliction of a harsh creed and in the petty interests of a narrow church. She was deeply interested in the hopeless task of "converting" the Catholics of Ireland and the Jews to Scotch Presbyterianism, and was the mentor of her relatives after the fashion of Mrs. Hannah More, the patroness of bazaars, and at one time with her sister was expelled from an Italian town for distributing Protestant Bibles to the people. But her native nobleness of character shone through the theological clouds. She was regarded with affection as well as reverence by her younger relatives and her servants, and impressed all who came in contact with her by the cordial grace of her manners, and the aristocratic and highly marked contour of her features, which in the bloom of youth had made her "the Flower of Strathearn." Her benevolence was unceasing and self-sacrificing, if not always wisely directed, and at one time she had all her family plate sold and the proceeds sent to Dr. Chalmers for the support of an industrial school for the poor. She lived during her later years at the old house of Gask, the honored guest of her nephew and his wife, and died in 1845 at the advanced age of seventy-one, in peace and tranquillity, and with only the gentle decay of her mental faculties and bodily forces. The year after her death her poems were collected and published under her own name, and the world for the first time knew to whom it was indebted for the songs which had impressed themselves upon the popular heart and become a distinct and notable part of the lyric poetry of Scotland.

As has been said, The Land o' the Leal reaches the highest note in its inspiration, perfection, and completeness, within the limits of its purpose, not only of Lady Nairne's work, but of all the lyric poetry of Scotland, but it was not the solitary example of a genius which had much of the versatility, if not the fecundity and strength, of Burns, in interpreting the emotions and the thoughts, the passions and the humors, of the Scotch people. Lady Nairne's poetical genius was entirely lyric. There was no Cotter's Saturday Night, much less any scene from Poosey Nancy's alehouse, or witch's gathering at Kirk Alloway, in her interpretation of Scotch life, and her voice was only the pure lilt of Scotch song, grave or gay. Without determined literary ambition and the responsibility of a known name, the stimulus of production was not absorbing and lasting, and a good deal of her work was simply occasional, careless, and imperfect. The best, that which will live as long as Scotch song, could be comprised within the limits of a dozen pages. But its quality is of the very highest in inspiration and execution, the pure voice of the lark lilting beneath the blue cloud, the mourning of the croodlin' doo, and the gay warble of the cheery thrush.

Almost as famous in its own and very different way as The Land o' the Leal, and almost as perfect in its execution, the limitation of the true lyric to the simplest and most absolute words, and the complete interpretation of its spirit in the melody, is The Laird of Cockpen. It was written, it is said, to supply proper words to the gay old air of When She cam ben, She bobbit, which being interpreted, means that when she came into the front of the house, she curtsied, and of which the first verse of the imperfect and rather vulgar old song is—