ALLAN RAMSAY'S HOUSE
In the end of his life, when the author of The Gentle Shepherd by all his trades, both as poet and shopkeeper, had amassed a fortune, he built himself a house in the most glorious position which poet could have chosen. It is on the crest of the hill, a little way below the castle, and is still to be seen from Princes Street—a distinct feature in the picturesque and varied line of building. He is said, though on what authority we are not told, to have applied to the Crown for ground enough to build a cage for his burd, meaning his wife: which is supposed to be the reason why he built his house in an octagonal shape like a cage: his wife, however, did not live long enough to inhabit it. Additions and emendations have been made, so that there is no great peculiarity in the form of the old square house on the summit of the green slope, just clear of the rocks of the castle, as it is visible to-day. When it was built the new town of Edinburgh was not yet dreamed of, and nothing disturbed the panorama of green fields that lay between Edinburgh and the Firth. The town wall was falling into ruin, yet still existed in fragmentary towers and ramparts here and there, and low down in the depths of the descent, which was not so precipitous there as under the castle, the high houses and green braes were reflected in the quiet waters of the North Loch. From thence the fields and scattered farmhouses, the Calton Hill in unadorned greenness, a church spire and a cluster of village roofs here and there, led the eye to the shining of the Scottish Sea, the great water with its islands, the coast of Fife with its dotted line of little fishing towns, the two green Lomonds standing softly distinct against the misty line of more distant hills. It was the same view that moved Fitz-Eustace to ecstasy, still but little changed in the eighteenth century from what it had been in the sixteenth. And picturesque as Edinburgh still continues to be in spite of many modern disadvantages, it was no doubt infinitely more picturesque then, crowning the rocky ridge, with straggling lanes and wynds dropping steeply down into the valley—opening here and there a glimpse of the green country and the shimmer of the Firth—while on the edge of the hill, from all the high windows, the wide landscape softened into distance on every side, into the far-off broken ranges of mountains and cloudy rolling vapours, and the far-retiring sweep of a horizon traversed by all the lights and all the storms—a wide world of air and space and infinite variety. The life of our busy modern world had scarcely yet invaded that city on the hill. It stood isolated on the height of its rock, reigning from that domination over all the tranquil country: while within its lines still thronged and clamoured an active noisy population cooped up and packed together as if it were still unsafe to stray away out of shelter of the walls, all the faculties and trades, all the wit and the wealth, one above another, with the concentration, the picturesqueness, the universal acquaintance and familiarity of a mediæval town. And beautiful as the prospect must have been from those high-built houses, it could scarcely have exceeded the sight of the old Edinburgh of the kings from without, standing high above the level of the soil, with the open crown of St. Giles's rising over its grey heights, its walls broken down by careless peace and wellbeing, its tall tenements standing up like a line of castles. And in the night with its glimmer of household lights at every window hanging high in mid air, repeated with a gleam in the waters beneath and in the stars above, which sparkled keen out of the northern blue, and the mist of habitation, the smoke of the fires and the lamps hanging over all—confusing outlines, yet revealing all the more brightly a higher and a higher altitude of human lights—what a wonderful sight rising sheer out of the green and silent champaign below!
Such was royal Edinburgh still, when the shopkeeper-poet, with his jokes and his quips, and his good-humoured self-esteem, and certainty of his own power, settled down in Ramsay Lodge. It would be well if all poets had as prosperous and as fair a retirement for their old age. He lived for some time in his quaint self-contained (according to the equally quaint Scotch phraseology) birdcage upon the top of the hill, and enjoyed his celebrity and his ease and the pleasant conviction that "I the best and fairest please." His only son, the second Allan Ramsay, was a painter of some reputation, and he had daughters to care for him and keep his home cheerful as long as he lived. A man more satisfied with his lot could not be. His chirrup of self-satisfaction, the flattery, yet familiarity, of his address to all the noble lords and lairds, the judges and advocates, his laugh of jovial optimism and personal content, belong perfectly to the character of the comfortable citizen, "in fair round belly with good capon lined," and the shopkeeper's rather than the poet's desire to please. One can better fancy him at the door of his shop looking down the High Street jocose and beaming, with a joke for the Lord President and for the Cadie alike, hand in glove with all the Town Council, with a compliment for every fair lady or smiling lass that tripped by under her tartan screen, delighted with himself and all around him—than retired in his garden on the Castle Hill, though with all the variations of the heavens and magnificence of the landscape before his eyes. He had no doubt the admiration of that landscape which is never wanting to an Edinburgh citizen, a part of the creed to which he is born; but the homely limits of the green glens and knowes, the wimpling burn, the washing-green, the laird's hospitable house behind, were more in Allan's way when he wanted any relaxation from the even more attractive town. The High Street and Habbie's Howe are the true centres of his soul.
It would be wrong not to note the collections of songs which made his name dear to all the pleasant singers both of drawing-room and cottage. It is a strange peculiarity in a nation possessing a characteristic and melodious popular music of its own like Scotland, to find how little place music as a science, or even in its more serious developments, has ever had in the country. Nothing can be more sweet, more touching, more tender, than the native growth of Scottish song—nothing more full of fun and spirit than the brilliant dance music which, like the song, seems to have sprung spontaneous from the soil. And no country has ever more loved both songs and strathspeys, or clung to them with greater devotion. It would be perhaps impossible for the most learned to decide between the rival claims of Scotland and Ireland in respect to the airs which seem native to both; but Ireland has always laboured under the disadvantage of being far less homogeneous than Scotland, and certainly, before the time of Moore at least, her native songs did not belong to all classes as in the sister country. And Scotland has always through all ages (previous to the present age) preferred her own songs to every other. During the eighteenth century, when Edinburgh was almost more completely the centre of society than ever before, the old tunes were sung by ladies as much as by maid-servants, and the delicate old spinets performed a soft accompaniment to ballads of the "Ewebuchting" and of the "Corn Rigs," and prolonged the pathetic notes of "Waly, waly" and the trembling wail of the "Flowers of the Forest" in the finest houses as in the humblest. Music, more properly so called, the art which has gradually made its way from being a modest handmaiden of poetry to full rivalship, if not a half-implied superiority, was already a scientific pursuit in England; and though the Italian opera aroused a violent opposition, and Tweedledum and Tweedledee called forth the gibes of the wits, there existed a vigorous English school of learned musicians, and Handel and Haydn found an audience not incapable of appreciating their best works. But while this development went on in London, Scotland still sang her ancient simple melodies, and contemned everything else with that audacious superiority which is born of ignorance. One might almost imagine that this was the penalty of a national inheritance so ample and so sweet, and that the comparative absence of traditionary music in England opened the heart of the country to strains more ambitious and classical. However it came about, there is no denying that so it was. If there was any Scottish composer at all, his productions were only imitations or modifications of the old airs. Music continued to be represented by the songs of immemorial attraction, the woodnotes wild of nameless minstrels, pure utterance of the soil. Perhaps the absence of music, except in the kindred shape of psalm tunes, which was but another form of popular song, in the Church, was one great prevailing cause of the national insensibility to all more lavish and elaborate strains. But this peculiarity and insensibility had at least one advantage—they kept in constant cultivation a distinct branch of national literature, and one that is always attractive and delightful. I do not think it is too strong an utterance of national partiality to say that the songwriters of Scotland are beyond comparison with those of either of the other united kingdoms. The simplest of the old ditties brought out of the ancient poets contain a grace of genuine poetry and real feeling far above the unmeaning jingle of verse which is the most common utterance of popular song; and the cultivation of this delightful gift has called forth the most tender and artless poems from gentle writers whom nothing but that inspiration could have made to produce what was in them. The pathetic wail of the poor lady who found to her cost that
"Love is bonnie, a little time when it is new,"
but that
"When love's auld it waxeth cauld,
And fades away like morning dew";
and that touching lullaby in which the mother hushes the babe whose
"Father wrought her great annoy,"
with its tender and simple refrain—