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THE LAST OF THE SCOTTISH HOMERS.'

THE last of the Scottish Homers ' is no title of my invention ; nor do I mean to incjuire too closely how far similarity of gifts and habits entitled the subject of my brief sketch to be ranged in the line of those who, in virtue of their relation to the Muses, have claimed kinship with the wandering bard of Chios. Upon his kinshij] with the minstrel of mediaeval times even — albeit the critical Ritson has rather ruthlessly sought to detract from the merit of the minstrel as a 'makkar,' as well as from his dignity generally — we need not too strongly insist. Enough to maintain that John Milne ' The Poet of Glenhvet,' with whom I pro- pose to deal in the light of a typical character, as well as in that of a bard, was a prolific versifier, who, dming the thirty years of his productive time, never failed to command the ear of a numerous and appreciative audience ; that his habits and practice were those of the peripatetic, ranging over a wide area as the exigencies of his occupation required ; and that he really was the last of the race of northern Scottish versifiers who 'sang or said ' as well as sold ballads of their own composition.

A word or two first as to our bard's personal history, and the circumstances under which his rhyming pro- clivities were developed, the chief source of informa- tion on both points being letters of his own addressed to a musical crony.

The date of John Milne's birth was 1792, and the place of his nativity Dunnottar parish in the county of Kincardine. The son of a ship's mate of good standing who died abroad, and orphaned of both parents before he had completed his fifth year, the child had at once to face life as he could in the capacity of a farmer's or crofter's herd-boy. Thereafter he had some experience of the occupation of an hostler, but ultimately settled down to the craft of a shoemaker. It were hard to say what circumstances may shape a man's life to par- ticular ends, however. And the fact of the sober- minded shoemaker having married a wife from the braes of Glenlivet where the business of whisky smuggling was universally practised, was evidently the turning-point in his history. Familiar with and 'bred' to the business of ' running ' whisky, it was deemed fit that her accomplishments in that way should be turned to account in the new region to which she had been transplanted. John Milne's savings off the pro- fits of his shoemaking were accordingly invested in a ci'op of growing barley, which he bought with ulterior intentions ; but as evil fortune would have it, the season turned out very unpropitiously, and the barley never ripened so as to be fit for malting. A few years later on, his home having in the interim been changed from Durris in Kincardineshire to Glenlivet in Banff- shire, shoemaking, which had given him a sort of chronic ' sore breast,' was foregone for the time. Smuggling was still ' at a great height ' in Glenlivet and surrounding glens ; and John Milne and his skilled help-meet ' made some whisky ' like their neighbours till ' the soldiers and preventives ' came upon the scene in force and rudely interfered with the business.

To put down smuggling in those days, whether as it existed in the form of illicit distillation of whisky in the upland glens, or the contraband importation of ' Hollands gin ' practised on the eastern seaboard of Aberdeenshire, was no child's play, however, and 'a great fight,' in which the Glenlivet men did their part stoutly in aiding to resist and defeat the preventive men, ensued, the field of battle being Glen Noughty, several miles off. It was in celebration of this fight that John Milne's muse first rose to the height of what he deemed a 'great argument,' and that he found his life's vocation. He had composed many inconsiderable rhymes before, but nothing worthy the dignity of pi-int. But now, so strongly was he moved by the divine afflatus or other influence, that he ' composed thirty-seven verses between breakfast and dinner-time sitting-making shoes, and minded the whole without writing a line of it.'

The date was 1826; and the two notable things about the ballad of ' The Highland Lads; or, Noughty Glens,' which extended to fifty-one four-line verses, and was meant to be sung to the air of ' Johnny Cope,' is the absolute crudeness of the rhyming, and the extent to which it had at once established the fame of its author among a reputedly hard-headed and intelligent peasantry as a ballad-writer. Of the ballad two brief samples may suffice. The leader of the attacking force