Notes and Queries

Birth-Day," 11-The Jews in England-Hanging and Resus-
citation, 12-Lavinia Fenton, Duchess of Bolton-Pastorini
-"Tohar"-Latin and English Quantity- Heraldic- "Th'
berrin 's gone by," &c. -"There's somewhat," &c., 13-Mrs.
Cowden Clarke's Shakspeare Concordance-Dr. William
Dodd-Fleur de Lys-"This marriage," &c. -Popular Verses
bearing Serious Allusions-Plays on "Play"-Folk-Lore of
the Hare "Faws," 14 "Markey" - Young's "Night
Thoughts"-Unsettled Baronetcies - Seizing Corpses for
Debt, 15-Sir Thomas Strangeways-Buda-Cowper: Trooper
-Wayneclowtes: Plogh-clowtes-Swans, 16-Classical Sign-
boards - Bardolf of Wirmegay-" How they brought," &c.

The Sunflower Shotten Herring Thomas Frye

"Bloody" The Waterloo and Peninsular Medals - St.

Catherine of Sienna-Woolston Well, West Felton-Sterne

as a Poet, 17-Bar Sinister-Welsh Testament, 18-" Reginald

Trevor: a Tale," &c. -Arms of Milgate: Radcliffe Family,

Mr. Gladstone, in a lecture on Scott delivered

at the Hawarden Literary Institution in February,

1868, said that we did not in these days appreciate

this great writer as we ought, and that newer

literary fashions had for a while (but only for a

while) obscured his splendid fame. Mr. Glad-

stone confessed himself a devoted admirer of

Scott, whom on another occasion he termed "the

first among the sons of Scotland," and I dare

say he spoke the above words more in sorrow

than in anger. My reason for alluding to them

now is, that I wish to point out that a recent

circumstance has gone far to prove that Mr. Glad-

stone was not speaking without book, and that

Scott's sun is for a while eclipsed, although I doubt

not that ere long it will "repair the golden flood,

and warm the nations with redoubled ray." A

Scottish lady, Miss Aitken, has just contributed a

volume to Macmillan's "Golden Treasury Series,"

entitled Scottish Song, and this book purports

to contain "a selection of the choicest lyrics of

Scotland." So far as I am competent to form an

opinion, this selection is made with much good

taste and sound judgment, and the volume quite

fulfils the promise of its title-page in giving us

the choicest lyrical poetry of Scotland, with, how-

ever, one notable exception. One name is con-
spicuously absent, and that name is-Sir Walter
Scott's! I do not mean that Scott is absolutely
and literally unrepresented; but, on turning to
the index, what was my surprise to find that
amongst the two hundred and ten pieces which
make up the volume, there was only a single one
by Scott, "Jock of Hazeldean"! I at first
thought that perhaps Miss Aitken did not con-
sider that
Scott, although a Scottishman, wrote

distinctively Scotch poetry; but this cannot be

her reason for almost entirely rejecting him from

her anthology. There are at least three pieces in

the book which, although written by Scotchmen,

are quite as much English as Scotch-Allan Cun-

ningham's "A wet sheet and a flowing sea," Hogg's

"Skylark," and Logan's "Ode to the Cuckoo."

Indeed, the first of these, so far from being Scot-

tish, has a particularly English flavour about it.

Now it would be easy to name six or eight of

Scott's lyrics which we might well expect to find

in a collection like Miss Aitken's "Rosabelle,"

"County Guy," "Soldier, rest, thy warfare o'er,"

"O, Brignall banks are wild and fair," "March,

march, Ettrick and Teviotdale," and the "Red

field of Harlaw," in the Antiquary, those glorious

verses which, as Sir Philip Sidney said of "Chevy

Chase," stir the heart like the sound of a trumpet.

Some of the above lyrics, taking lyrical poetry in

its most restricted sense, as meaning simply a song,

have perhaps never been surpassed, except by

Shakspeare, Burns, and perhaps Tennyson in his

Princess. Miss Aitken, however, goes still further,

and says (page 6) that Allan Ramsay is the second

of Scotland's poets, Burns of course being the first.

Truly Mr. Gladstone knew what he was saying;

a generation has arisen which knows not Scott.

Alas for Scotland, when an accomplished Scottish

lady presents her countrymen with a volume of

Scottish lyrics, and yet considers, I presume justly,

that Scott is so little to their taste that she need

only include a single specimen of his verse in her

book!

It is not too much to say that Scotland owes

more than half her fame to Scott, who was
the first to unfold the glories of her history
and the beauties of her scenery before the eyes,
not only of Britain, but of the whole civilized
world. Yet how little, comparatively speaking,
does she appreciate him; how coldly does she
repay "the debt immense of endless gratitude"
which she owes him; and what a half-hearted
affair was the Scott centenary fête in 1871!
But, as Mr. Gladstone said, "If we do not now
appreciate Scott as we ought, it is our misfortune,
not his. The fashion of the moment may prefer
the newest to the best; but as the calm order of
nature is resumed after a storm, so the permanent
judgment of mankind will regain its equilibrium,
and will render the honours of poetical and literary

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Notes and Queries, Volume 50