shepherd, the peasant youth often returns, for a few months, eagerly to pursue his education at the parish school.
It was so with Burns; he returned from labour to learning, and from learning went again to labour, till his mind began to open to the charms of taste and knowledge; till he began to feel a passion for books, and for the subjects of books, which was to give a colour to the whole thread of his future life. On nature he soon began to gaze with new discernment, and with new enthusiasm: his mind's eye opened to perceive affecting beauty and sublimity, where, by the mere gross peasant there was nought to be seen but water, earth, and sky, but animals, plants, and soil; even as the eyes of the servant of Elisha were suddenly enlightened to behold his master and himself guarded from the Syrian bands, by horses and chariots of fire, to all but themselves invisible.
What might, perhaps, first contribute to dispose his mind to poetical efforts, is one particular in the devotional piety of the Scottish peasantry; it is still common for them to make their children get by heart the Psalms of David, in that version of homely rhymes, which is used in their churches. In the morning, and in the evening of every day, or, at least in the evening of every Saturday and Sunday, these psalms are sungiri solemn family devotion, a chapter of the Bible is read, and extemporary prayer is fervently uttered.[1] The whole books of the sacred Scriptures are thus continually in the hands of almost every peasant. And it is impossible that some souls should not occasionally be awakened among them to the divine emotions of genius, by that rich assemblage, which those books present, of almost all that is interesting in incident, or picturesque in imagery, or affectingly sublime, or tender in sentiments or character. It is impossible that those rude rhymes, and the simple artless music with which they are accompanied, should not occasionally excite some ear to a taste for the melody of verse. That Burns had felt these impulses, will appear undeniably certain to whoever shall carefully peruse his Cottar's Saturday Night; or shall remark, with nice observation, the various fragments of scripture sentiment, of scripture imagery, of scripture language, which are scattered throughout his works.
Still more interesting to the young peasantry, are the ancient ballads of love and war, of which a great number are yet popularly known and sung in Scotland. While the prevalence of the Gaelic language in the northern parts of this country, excluded from those regions the old Anglo-Saxon songs and minstrels; these songs and minstrels were, in the meantime, driven by the Norman conquests and establishments, out of the southern counties of England; and were forced to wander, in exile, beyond its northern confine, into the southern districts of the Scottish kingdom. Hence in the old English songs, is every famous minstrel still related to have been of the north country, while, on the contrary, in the old Scottish songs, it is always the south country, to which every favourite minstrel is said to belong. It is the same district to which both allude; a district comprehending precisely the southern counties of Scotland, with the most northern counties of England. In the south of Scotland the best of those ballads are often sung by the rustic maid or matron at her spinning wheel. They are listened to with ravished ears, by old and young. Their rude melody; that mingled curiosity and awe, which are naturally excited by the very idea of their antiquity; the exquisitely tender and natural complaints sometimes poured forth in them ; the gallant deeds of knightly heroism, which they sometimes celebrate; their wild tales of demons, ghosts, and fairies, in whose existence superstition alone has believed; the manners which they represent; the obsolete, yet picturesque and expressive language, in which they
- ↑ William Burness looked upon his son Robert as the best reader in the house, and used to employ him to read the Bible to the rest. Scots Magazine, 1797.
