Between You and Me

by Sir Harry Lauder

"No bad," she'll murmur, whiles, and I'll gae on, for that means a muckle frae her. Then, maybe, instead o' that, she'll just listen, and I'll see she's no sure. If she mutters a little I'll gae on, too, for that still means she's making up her mind. But when she says, "Stop yer ticklin'!" I always stop. For that means the same thing they meant in Rome when they turned their thumbs doon toward a gladiator. And her judgments aye been gude enow for me.

Sometimes I'll get long letters frae authors wha send me their songs— but nearly always they're frae those that wad be flattered tae be called authors, puir bodies who've no proper notion of how to write or how to go aboot getting what they've written accepted when they've done it. I mind a man in Lancashire who sent me songs for years. The first was an awfu' thing—it had nae meaning at a' that I could see. But his letter was a delight.

"Dear Harry," he wrote. "I've been sorry for a long time that so clever a man as you had such bad songs to sing. And so, though I'm busy most of the time, I've written one for you. I like you, so I'll only charge you a guinea for every time you sing it, and let you set your own music to it, too!"

It was a generous offer, surely, but I did not see my way clear to accept it, and the song went back immediately. A little later I got another. He wrote a very dignified letter this time; he'd evidently made up his mind to forgie me for the way I'd insulted him and his song before, but he wanted me to understand he'd have nae nonsense frae me. But this time he wanted only fifteen shilling a performance.

Weel, he kept on sending me songs, and each one was worse than the one before, though you'd never have thought it possible for anything to be worse than any one of them if you'd seen them! And each time his price went doon! The last one was what he called a "grand new song."

"I'm hard up just now, Harry," he said, "and you know how fond I've always been of you. So you can have this one outright for five shillings, cash down."

D'ye ken, I thought his persistence deserved a reward of some sort, sae I sent him the five shillings, and put his song in the fire. I rather thought I was a fool tae do sae, because I expected he'd be bombarding me wi' songs after that bit of encouragement. But it was not so; I'm thankfu' to say I've never heard of him or his songs frae that day tae this.

I've had many a kind word said tae me aboot my songs and the way I sing them. But the kindest words have aye been for the music. And it's true that it's the lilt of a melody that makes folk remember a song. That's what catches the ear and stays wi' those who have heard a song sung.

It would be wrong for me to say I'm no proud of the melodies that I have introduced with the songs I've sung. I have never had a music lesson in my life. I can sit doon, the noo, at a piano, and pick out a harmony, but that's the very limit of my powers wi' any instrument. But ever since I can remember anything I have aye been humming at some lilt or another, and it's been, for the maist part, airs o' my ain that I've hummed. So I think I've a richt to be proud of having invented melodies that have been sung all over the world, considering how I had no musical education at a'.

Certainly it's the melody that has muckle tae do wi' the success of any song. Words that just aren't quite richt will be soon overlooked if the melody is one o' the sort the boys in the gallery pick up and whustle as they gae oot.