tune was, it appears, a great favourite of Mary, the consort of King William; and she once affronted the celebrated Purcell, by requesting to have it sung to her, when he was present; the story is as follows. The Queen, having a mind one afternoon to be entertained with music, sent to Mr Gostling, (then one of the chapel, and afterwards subdean of St Paul's,) to Henry Purcell, and Mrs Arabella Hunt, who had a very fine voice, with a request to attend her; which they immediately obeyed. Mr Gostling and Mrs Hunt sung several compositions of Purcell, who accompanied them on the harpsichord. At length, as there is nothing so fine but it will at last grow disagreeable, and even partridges were found nauseous by the King of France's confessor, her majesty grew tired of so much fine music, and asked Mrs Hunt if she could not sing the old Scots ballad, "Cold and raw." [This was a name which the tune had latterly assumed, from being set to a song beginning, Cold and raw, the wind does blaw, Mrs Hunt answered, "Yes," and sung it to her lute. Purcell was all the while sitting at the harpsichord, unemployed, and not a little nettled at the Queen's preference of a vulgar ballad to his music; but, seeing her Majesty delighted with the tune, he determined that she should hear of it on another occasion. Accordingly, in the next birth-day song, namely, that for the year 1692, he composed an air to the words, " May her bright example chase vice in troops out of the land," the bass whereof was the tune to "Cold and raw." It is printed in the second part of his Orpheus Britannicus, and is note for note the same with the Scottish tune, as at present sung. * It would appear that about this period, or a little before, the Scottish airs for the first time fell under the notice of the better orders of society, or became at all known in England. Hitherto, in both Scotland and England, people of education and condition only practised the elaborate sort of music, and knew nothing of the touching beauties of simple national melody. As their poets had imitated the intricate and regular compositions of the Italians, rather than followed the dictates of nature, so did they themselves relish only the artificial combinations and endless involvements of labyrinthine harmony, instead of possessing souls to be affected by the simple, straightforward eloquence of natural sound. The modulation of the shepherd's pipe might be very exquisite, might cause the dull cattle to stand and gaze, "Charmed with the melodye," and might speak volumes to the rural divinity whose charms were the burden of its lay; but it was all as nought to the man of refinement, whose evenings were spent in the mysteries of fugue and canon. At length, however, the upper classes became alive to the beauties of what they had so long neglected; and before the end of the seventeenth century, not only were the Scottish airs introduced into places of public amusement at London, but the best English composers thought proper to imitate them. That singular genius, Tom D'Urfey, and other Grubstreeters of the day, exerted themselves to fit the airs thus imported from the north with appropriate verses; for the original Scotch songs seem to have been found quite inadmissible into genteel company. Their efforts were attended with execrable results, as may be instanced in a note found attached in this collection to the song of “ Katherine Ogie." But, nevertheless, the fact that they did so is gratifying, as a proof that at least the native music of Scotland was then found worthy of the approbation of lords and ladies gay. The number of Scottish airs, and imitations of such, in Tom D'Urfey's grand collection, called "Pills to Purge Melancholy, 1719," is very considerable; and if they had had no real charms to recommend them to the notice of the public, they must have now been sufficiently conspicuous, for Tom's six successive volumes, although full of all kinds of filth, were dedicated to the highest people in England, and became the bosom books of high and low. What was then fashionable in England, must, of course, have been also fashionable in Scotland. Accordingly, we find Scottish music and song so much in vogue among the upper ranks in their native country, that Ramsay, only a few years after, dedicated his collection, entitled the Tea-Table Miscellany, to both extremes of society To ilka lovely British lass, Frae Ladies Charlotte, Anne, and Jean, That dances barefoot on the green. Before arriving, however, at that grand era in the history of Scottish song, the publication of the TeaTable Miscellany, it is necessary to make allusion to one or two facts which fall a little earlier. The chief of these is Semple's existence as a song writer before the time of Ramsay. Semple flourished during the latter twenty years of the seventeenth century; and he is affirmed, by unvarying and probable tradition, to have been the author of "Maggie Lauder," "Fy, let us a' to the bridal," and "She rose and loot me in." What makes this more probable, is, that not only does Semple seem, from his acknowledged poems, to have been able to write these capital lyrics, but it was quite a natural thing, while men of fashion in the sister country were imitating the old manner, as they called it, that a man of fashion in this country should do the same thing. Whether he was the author or not, it is at least certain, that "Fy, let us a' to the bridal" was printed in Watson's Collection of Poems, 1706, ere Ramsay had yet taken up the lyre; and it is thus curious, as the earliest Scottish song of the kind, now popular, which we can find entire in a printed book or manuscript. A doubt has been insinuated by Mr James Hogg, the esteemed author of the Queen's Wake, whether Semple was the author of "Fy, let us a' to the bridal;" and he presents us with an Ettrick tradition, that it was the composition of Sir William Scott of Thirlstain, in Selkirkshire, ancestor of the present Lord Napier.* "The first man," he says, " whom I heard *So Mr Hogg has informed me orally. The extract which follows is from Blackwood's Magazine for June, 1817. sing this song, accompanied it with an anecdote of the author singing it once in a large private assembly at London. There were three Scotch noblemen present, who were quite convulsed with laughter; and the rest, perceiving that there was something very droll in it, which they could but very imperfectly comprehend, requested the author to sing it again. This he positively declined. Some persons of very high rank were present, who appearing much disappointed by this refusal, a few noblemen, valuing themselves on the knowledge of Scotsmen's propensities, went up to this northern laird, and offered him a piece of plate of a hundred guineas' value if he would sing the song over again. But he, sensible that the song would not bear the most minute investigation by the company in which he then was, persisted in his refusal, putting them off with an old proverb, which cannot be inserted here." This vague tradition must be allowed to acquire some respectability, when it is known that Sir William Scott was really a vernacular Scottish poet, and one who flourished at the very time when "Fy, let us a' to the bridal" was printed in Watson's Collection. He was one of that illustrious little knot of wits, composed of Archibald Pitcairne, David Gregory, Walter Dennistone, Sir William Bennet, &c. who, living at the commencement of the eighteenth century, might be said to bring with them the dawn of the revival of literature in Scotland. He appears to have been much addicted to the composition of Latin poetry, there being a considerable number of such pieces by him in Ruddiman's publication of Selecta Poemata, 1727. In an elegy written upon him by John Ker, and published in the same volume, he is called deliciæ novem So orum, Et Caledonia decus Camanæ ; which seems to prove that he was an eminent writer of Scottish song. He died on the 8th of October, 1725. Ruddiman, in the preface to his Poemata, characterises him in a paragraph, which the learned will excuse me for giving in a translated form. "Sir William Scott of Thirlstain, illustrious in his birth, more illustrious by his virtues, an excellent counsellor and philologist, a judge of all polite letters, and a man to be compared with few in regard to integrity of life, and suavity and elegance of manners, deserves to be ranked in the next place to Pitcairn. He composed some very neat and pretty Latin poems, which, as he was a man of the most consummate modesty, he would never show except to a very few friends; nor would he ever, while in life, permit them to see the light by way of publication." Perhaps, however, nothing could give greater countenance to Mr Hogg's tradition, than the republication of a ludicrous macaronic poem which he wrote, and which must be allowed to display something like the same humour with the old song in question. Ad E m E -m, Equitem, M.D. Villadelphinus Frater. Qualis in terris fabulatur Orpheus Dura Clarshoo modulante, saxa, Talis Hiberno similis poetæ Asinus semper comes est, et anser, Per domum dansant tabulæ, cathedræ, Tunc mihi starkam promit anus aillam, Tunc mihi notæ redeunt Camœnæ, |