Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 3.djvu/459

Rh long and pathetic notes, while they hurry over the inferior and connecting notes, in such a manner as to render it exceedingly difficult for a hearer to trace the measure of them. They themselves while singing them seem to have little or no impression of measure.'

This is more particularly the case with the very old melodies, which wander about without any attempt at rhythm, or making one part answer to another. The following air is an excellent example of the style:—

In contrast to these are the Liuneags, short snatches of melody 'sung by the women, not only at their diversions but also during almost every kind of work where more than one person is employed, as milking cows and watching the folds, fulling of cloth, grinding of grain with the quern, or hand-mill, haymaking, and cutting down corn. The men too have iorrums or songs for rowing, to which they keep time with their oars.' Mr. T. Pattison (Gaelic Bards), tells us that this word Jorram (pronounced yirram), means not only a boat-song but also a lament, and that it acquired this double meaning from the Jorram being often 'chanted in the boats that carried the remains of chiefs and nobles over the Western seas to Iona.'

Patrick Macdonald says 'the very simplicity of the music is a pledge of its originality and antiquity.' Judged by this criticism his versions of the airs seem much more authentic than those of his successors. Captain Fraser of Knockie, who published a very large and important collection of Highland airs in 1816, took much pains, in conjunction with a musical friend, to form what he terms a 'standard.' As he had no taste for the old tonality, he introduces the major seventh in minor keys, and his versions generally abound in semitones. He professed a liking for simplicity, and is not sparing of his abuse of MacGibbon and Oswald for their departures from it; yet his own turns, and shakes, and florid passages, prove that he did not carry his theory into practice. As however a large portion of his volume is occupied with tunes composed during the latter part of the last century and the beginning of the present, in these it would be affectation to expect any other than the modern tonality. A specimen of what he says is an ancient Ossianic air is given as a contrast to that selected from Patrick Macdonald. In style it evidently belongs to a date much nearer to the times of MacPherson than to those of Ossian.

It cannot be denied that though by his alterations of the forms of Gaelic melody Fraser may have rendered them more acceptable to modern ears, he has undoubtedly shorn the received versions of much of their claim to antiquity. The volume recently published by the Gaelic Society of London (1876), though not faultless in regard to modern changes, has restored some of the old readings; one example ought to be quoted, for the air 'Mairi bhan og' is very beautiful, and the F♮ in the fourth bar gives us back the simplicity and force of ancient times.

Captain Fraser stigmatises the previous collections of Patrick Macdonald and Alexander Campbell (Albyn's Anthology) as very incorrect. But Eraser's own versions have in many cases been much altered in the second edition (1876), while more recent works—notably that issued by the Gaelic Society of London—differ most remarkably from earlier copies. The airs are evidently still in a plastic state, every glen, almost every family seems to have its own version. It may perhaps be admitted that those of Fraser, when divested of his tawdry embellishments and chromatic intervals may be found to represent fairly the general taste of the present day.

There has been a good deal of controversy in former times about Highland and Lowland, Irish and Gaelic claims to certain melodies: most of the former seem pretty well settled, but both Irish and Gael still hold to 'Lochaber.' That it is Celtic is apparent from its style, but whether Hiberno- or Scoto-Celtic is not so clear. The earliest documentary evidence for the tune is a Scotish MS. of 1690 (?)—afterwards the property of Dr. Leyden—where it is called 'King James' march to Ireland.' Macaulay, again, says that an Irish tune was chosen for James' march; but it must not be forgotten that in Scotland at that time and for more than a century later, the term Irish was used whenever anything connected with the Highlands was spoken of. The language was