Thus far of the ploughman directly. 'I got letters from servants from all quarters concerning their masters,' writes the bard. And as the avowed champion of the servants what he has to say of their farmer employers is very seldom complimentary. Of one ' bad master," for example —
A pest to a' the countryside —
we are told —
When he fees men he 's smooth an' fair,
When they come hame he 's hard an' sair ;
He takes good care they '11 no think lang,
For a' they say or do is wrang.
And the bard goes on to tell of the 'injustice' and ' greed ' of the man against whom he utters his warn- ing to ' strangers and young men ' in strains that could not fail to make identification of the obnoxious person perfectly easj'. And a frequently recurring theme is that touched upon in the opening of ' The Whitsunday Fair,' where it is said —
The farmers now beghi to try
To screw the wages doon,
But servants know it is their way,
And yield they will not soon.
A counteractive to low wages urged with noteworthy persistency, always bearing in mind that the date was well-nigh half a century ago, was emigration to America. Wealth in prospect, with abundance of all the good things of this life, and freedom from landlord and clerical domination, were the direct incentives.
Besides, I 'II let you understand,
Vou soon might be a' lairds o' land,
By the great wages you would draw
Were you in the lands o' America.
For farmers, lairds, an' clergy here
Screw down men's wages every year.
But I 'd leave themselves to plough an' saw
And go to the lands o' America.
Uncouth in form as it might be, this teaching, iterated and reiterated in the ears of thousands of sympathising listeners, was not likely to be, nor indeed was it, with- out its influence in stirring up democratic discontent at home, and promoting a spirit in favour of emigration abroad among the rustic community.
In ' The Whitsunday Fair ' the bard is about at his best descriptively, and the following verses will ser'e as a sample of his power in that way : —
As through the thrang we push our ways.
We 're jagget back an' fore,
Here 's kicket shins an' trampet taes,
An' aiths an' jokes galore.
Here busy too the feein' 's pushed,
'Mid laughter loud an' lang,
An' lassies get their bonnets crushed
Whan jostlin' in the thrang.
The lassies, bless the bonny dears !
Stan' lithely by the tents.
An' whan some weel-kent lad appears, '
They keek wi' sidelin's glints.
There in the tents wi' muckle din.
They 're gettin' on the batter,
An' waiter bodies bickerin' rin,
While stoups an' glasses clatter.
An' whan the feein' 's nearly through
The tents are very thrang.
An' fowk beginnin' to get fou
An' stoiter when they gang.
But while the rugged numbers, the pre-Raphaelite sketching, and the sarcasms, not always too delicate or refined, of John Milne gave immense satisfaction to his patrons, and were the means of drawing many a copper from their pockets, his range of subjects was a wide one. He freely censured the errors of ' Our Statesmen,' denounced ' Dear Meal,' sang a psan ' On the Repeal of the Corn Laws,' and was an ardent advocate of political and social reforms generally. And he was sufliciently loyal withal to welcome his sovereign to her Highland home on Deeside, by the production of ' A new Song in favour of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria,' extending to sixteen verses in length. One of the most notable episodes in the career of the bard occurred at the time of the Disruption, when he went to Edinburgh, ' the very week the ministers came out,' with a piece composed for the occasion. 'The sale of it was,' we are assured, 'great,' though ' others had it reprinted and sold in every part of the city before three days were over.' After leaving Edin- burgh he was a month in Glasgow, and thereafter went through Fifesliire, Perthshire, and Forfarshire, vending the Disruption Ballad. Whether certain of the ballads he fathered at this time were genuinely his own is more than doubtful. The versification of one bearing the title ' A New Song on the Free Church,' for example, is so widely different from his usual uncul- tured style as strongly to suggest that some person of greater literarj' cultivation, and with church leanings, had not disdained to make use of the wandering bard as a fit medium of expression. This song, which was adapted to the tune of ' Lochaber no More,' opened in this wise:—
Farewell to my parish, farewell to my frien's,
And likewise farewell to my stipend and tien's,
It 's saIr may I rue that I joined the Free core,
For I '11 never return to my parish no more.
In polemics, however, as on certain social and other questions, John Milne could vary his strains as the occasion required ; and he was too democratic in his general notions not to have something to say bearing in an opposite direction from this. And accordingly, in a 'New Piece of Poetry about Clergj^men,' of nearly the same date, and which is certainly his own, the rights of the quoad sacra ministers are vindicated, the non-intrusion principle defended, and various church leaders, who like Naaman of old were prepared to worship Israel's God, and ' yet would bow to Rimmon,' roughly satirised. And here are pictured the results of patronage in filling the kirk vacancies : —
