Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/411

 Reviews. 387

fresh and fragrant as when Miss Tolmie culled them from the cliffs and braes whereon they grew, and they are gathered care- fully into a sheltered plot by themselves, with every plant scientifically classified, and its place assigned to it among the rest of the world's songs of labour and rest.

The songs are accompanied by an " Introduction " by the Editor, " Reminiscences " by the Compiler, a " Note on the Modal System of Gaelic Tunes " by Miss A. G. Gilchrist, and many notes in the body of the work from the hand of Dr. Geo. Henderson and others.

The two principal divisions of the collection are, Songs of Rest and Recreation, and Labour Songs.

Cradle songs, — nursery songs, they may be called, — are in rich abundance, and of the best.

The Labour Songs are thoroughly representative. Rowing, reaping, fulling, grinding corn, or, indeed, any labour in which more than one took part, was accomplished while timing the movements to music and song. Thus the toil of both men and women never sank into drudgery while it kept time to music, and the active limbs were kept in graceful play. Sixty years ago these songs were chanted everywhere on the mainland, and not merely in their last sanctuary in the Isles. Glancing over the Labour Songs, one finds that the waulking songs are also used as iorrams. One would fain have had a few iorrams which are used purely and simply as rowing songs, — for it has been remarked by some one that, as compared with England, Scotland has but few sea songs. This is to a great extent true of southern Scotland, but in our Gaelic Albyn the presence of the sea enters as fully into our poetry as it does into our landscapes. However, this want is but a small one, and not to be laid stress on where all else is so full and satisfying.

That there are variants of both words and music in every district of Gaeldom is abundantly evident from the detailed and lucid notes. At the outset, four renderings of " Uamh an Gir" prove the fact. The cave in my district of Argyll, into which the piper descended, is supposed to have a passage under the sea to Morvern. The story accords with that given in the note by A. G. G., only it was a green, not a grey, dog that killed 02ir