Professor Blackie on Scottish Songs and Language.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 295, 1 September 1888, Page 5

Professor Blackie on Scottish Songs and Language.

Mr J. Scott Skinner, Invevurie, has received the following letter from Professor Blackie :— " Edinburgh, 25th April, 1888. Dear Sir, — 1 am delighted to hear that you are prosecuting vigorously your noble work of giving to the world the Logic collection of Scottish songs, pipe tunes, strathspeys, etc. You could not spend your genius on a task at once more patriotic and more opportune ; for it is only too evident that there is a class of persons growing up in Scotland at the present hour who are willing to sacrifice the rich heritage of popular song which they have received from their fathers for exotic beauties of all descriptions, and the meretricious novelties ot the hour. Far be it from me, brought up as I was in Germany, and breathing the inspiring atmosphere of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, to throw any discouiagement on the study of the highest form of musical art, as presented to us in the masterpieces of the great German and Italian composers ; but there is a peculiar charm, as well as a great moral and educative value in all popular song, which the most finished productions of artistic skill do not posse??, and which the greatest masters of the art have often made it their greatest glory to imitate ; and if popular song, or the VolMied, as the Germans call it, has this special virtue, the popular mnsic of Scotland has it in a remarkable degree — partly on account of its own excellence, paitly because for us Scotsmen it has the additional value of being Scottish, as native to our ears and to our hearts as the purple heather is to the brae, or the graceful tresses of the birch to the glen. If it be true, as the wise man said, that the eyes of a fool are at the ends of the earth, it is equally true that the ears of a wist man should not be tickled merely with farsought melodies, but be tuned in the first; place to airs of native growth, and to sounds a8 familiar as the breeze on the mountain or the murmur of waters on the plain. A man's first duty, whether in nature or in art, ia always to his immediate surroundings ; and the man who flings aside these natural sources of true culture for the woi ship of strange gods, is both a traitor and a fool. I myself have long been profoundly convinced that, next, to the Bible and the familiar acquaintance with its moral treasures that belongs to our Presbyterian piety, the Scotsman ow».-s all that is best and most human in his character to his rich heritage of popular song ; and the moment he ceases to' draw insphation from these sources, .he ■will either cease to exist altogether absorbed in the body of John Bull, or exist only in a state of apis?h artificiality and senile flunkeyiem. In connection with Scottish song, I cannot help alluding to a notion only too current among people who believe in accomplishments and talk of culture — viz., the notion that the Scottish language is vulgar and destined to die. If it dies, it will be from the neglect of those whose first duty it was to attend to its culture, and so far from being vulgar, it requires very little either of a cultivated ear or of comparative philology to know that it is, in fact, the most melodious and the most classical dialect of our common English tongue, and ought to be specially studied in all British schools, English as well as Scottish, exactly as the Athenian Greeks maintained the Doric of Epichaimus and Pindar in the choral parts of their tragedies.

The Government of Servia imposes an import tax on bustles. Is that why .the Queen got divorced ? The pin factories of England, Holland, France, and Germany are said to turnout 77,000,000 pins daily. Nearly 35,000 people live at Portsmouth on wages earned in doing some kind of work on England's big guns. There is an Indian tribe in California consisting of one man. When he dies his language will cease to be spoken. Chinese miners receive about 7^d per, day r each ; the pony and mule di'ivers lOd pcr 1 day, the enginemen lOd per day, and the Chinese deputies 4s per day. The Buenos Ayres "Standard" announces that 300,000 negroes from the United States, with a capital of 2,000, 000d01., are about to emigrate to that republic and form an agricultural colony in the Chac.o.