There is another kind of ballads which, though akin to those I have named, are in many points essentially different:—and the first of this class,
“Duncan Gray came here to woo,”
when sung in chorus, would be almost enough to cause the venerable age of eighty-eight to shake a foot all over Scotland. A merry party, of which I was one, once tried “Duncan,” on the Table Rock at Niagara Falls; and when we came to that line, where the poor neglected lover
“Spak o’ loupin ower a linn,”
I thought we should have all died with laughing, the scene was so in unison with the stanza. Moore’s two lovers, who—
“’thout pistol or dagger, a
Made a desperate dash down the Falls of Niagara,”
is good; but it is nothing to “Duncan Gray,” sung by half a dozen tenor voices on the Table Rock.
I mean, when I have leisure, to continue these reminiscences of Scottish song, and as I at this time must have taxed the patience, and tried the politeness of my numerous Irish and English readers, I will, in some future number, leave Ramsay, Burns, Tannahill, and Ferguson—for Chaucer and Shakspeare, Goldsmith and Moore.
Tannahill has some pieces, scarce excelled by any of our Scottish poets—he has also a virtue which endears him to me beyond even Robert Burns. He does not often laud in song the drinking of ardent liquors. If, as a printer, I were to publish an American edition of Burns, I think I would leave his songs in praise of Highland whisky out. They have done much harm in his native land; and to spread them here, would be like firing a match.