"It grieves me sore to hear thee weep,"
breathe out of the ancient depths of human trouble with a reserve and simplicity of feeling that seem almost personal. But the kindred inspiration which called forth the two versions of the "Flowers of the Forest" and the ballad of "Auld Robin Gray," along with many more, shows how warm was the impulse to this expression of feelings, which were at once intensified and drawn out of the sphere of revelations too individual by the breath of the melody which carried them forth.
Allan Ramsay has the merit of being the first collector of Scottish song. He was remorseless, like his century, and made the wildest havoc with some of his originals, cutting and slashing as suited his fancy, and adding of his own whenever it pleased him so to do. But with the exception of a number of Strephons and Chloes, not always ungraceful, in the newer fashion, and a sprinkling of ruder verses in which there is more indecency than immorality, the first two volumes of the Tea-table Miscellany are full of merit, and include many delightful simple lyrics, songs which compare most advantageously with the insipid "words" which at this present advanced age are used as a sort of necessary evil to serve the purpose of the music. "Say that our way is only an harmonious speaking of many witty or soft thoughts after the poet has dressed them in four or five stanzas," says Ramsay, with the apology which is a veiled assertion of higher aims, "yet undoubtedly these must relish best with people who have not bestowed much of their time in acquiring a taste for that downright perfect music which requires none or very little of the poet's assistance." And he tells us in the same preface of a letter he has had from America informing him that there too his manual of song has gone, and that his
"Soft verse made to a Scottish air
Is often sung by our Virginian fair."
The book is dedicated to the ladies—the Donne qui hanno intelletto d'amore, long supposed to be the final critics and judges of such productions: and is confidently recommended to these "fair singers" for whose "modest eyes and ears," according to the poet (but with notable exceptions, as has been said), they were prepared. The third volume consisted almost exclusively of English songs, among which are many classic verses. If it were but as a stepping-stone to those perfect lyrics, so full of natural truth and feeling, with which Burns afterwards brought to a climax the songs of his country, the Tea-table Miscellany would have a merit of its own.
Ramsay died in 1758, when the troubles of the country were over, the last seeds of insurrection stamped out, and the powerful revolution begun which made the clans loyal to Government and Scotch politicians faithful to the Union. He was buried in the Greyfriars Churchyard, where so many of the most notable of the citizens of Edinburgh were laid. A hundred years or so after, the enlightened community placed his statue in the gardens that lie between the old town and the new. And thus the poet's career was run; it was a prosperous one, full of the success that was most sweet to him; comfort and competence and reputation, at once that of a warm and well-to-do citizen and that of a poet. Few poets have lived to see their productions so popular. The Gentle Shepherd may be said to have been in every cottage in Scotland in its author's lifetime, and his songs were sung by everybody. Nor did this fame interfere with the citizen's well-earned and more substantial reward. The shop in which he began his prosperous career, and which was crowded so continually by eager messengers with their pennies in search of Allan Ramsay's last new piece—the most immediate and one of the most pleasant evidences of success—still exists, with its high steps and broad low windows, in the heart of the old town with which his name is so completely associated; and the quaint square house in which his later days of ease and retirement were spent still keeps its place on the east of the Castle Hill, surveying from its windows the enriched and amplified yet unalterable panorama so dear and beautiful to all Scottish eyes.
ALLAN RAMSAY'S MONUMENT