“The cow-bailie blew a particular note on his whistle which signified to the maid-servants in the house below when the little boy wished to be carried home again.”
“Every sheep and lamb by head-mark;”—that is our first lesson; not an easy one, you will find it, if you try the flock of such a farm. Only yesterday (12th July, 1873,) I saw the dairy of one half filled with the ‘berry-bread’ (large flat-baked cakes enclosing layers of gooseberries) prepared by its mistress for her shearers;—the flock being some six or seven hundred, on Coniston Fells.
That is our first lesson, then, very utterly learned ‘by heart.’ This is our second, (marginal note on Sir Walter’s copy of Allan Ramsay’s Tea-table Miscellany, ed. 1724): “This book belonged to my grandfather, Robert Scott, and out of it I was taught ‘Hardiknute’ by heart before I could read the ballad myself. It was the first poem I ever learnt, the last I shall ever forget.”[11] He repeated a great part of it, in the forests of La Cava, in the spring of the year in which he died; and above the lake Avernus, a piece of the song of the ewe-milkers:—
“Up the craggy mountain, and down the mossy glen,
We canna’ go a-milking, for Charlie and his men.”
These I say, then, are to be your first lessons. The love, and care, of simplest living creatures; and the remembrance and honour of the dead, with the workmanship for them of fair tombs of song.
The Border district of Scotland was at this time, of all districts of the inhabited world, pre-eminently the singing country,—that which most naturally expressed its noble thoughts and passions in song.
The easily traceable reasons for this character are, I think, the following; (many exist, of course, untraceably).
First, distinctly pastoral life, giving the kind of leisure which, in all ages and countries, solaces itself with simple music, if other circumstances are favourable,—that is to say, if the summer air is mild enough to allow repose, and the race has imagination enough to give motive to verse.
The Scottish Lowland air is, in summer, of exquisite clearness and softness,—the heat never so great as to destroy energy, and the shepherd’s labour not severe enough to occupy wholly either mind or body. A Swiss herd may have to climb a hot ravine for thousands of feet, or cross a difficult piece of ice, to rescue a lamb, or lead his flock to an isolated pasture. But the borderer’s sheep-path on the heath is, to his strong frame, utterly without labour or danger; he is free-hearted and free-footed all the summer day long; in winter darkness and snow finding yet enough to make him grave and stout of heart.