Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/199

 io» s. iv. AUG. ae, 1965.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 161 LONDON, SATURDAY, AUGUST 16. 1905. CONTKNTS.-No. 87. NOTES :— Footfalls and Music, 161—Robert Greene's Prose Works, 1«3—Four Etymological Notes—Harvest-Time, 164 —" Coop, "to Trap—Yurie of Kent, IBS—"Jiggery-pokery " — Henry Lucas — Easter by the Julian and Gregorian Styles. 186—Modern Alcbemy : Making Diamonds—How the Bnglish Press obtained Copies of the Treaty of Peace, 1815, 107. QUBRIES: — Original Regliteri Sought —George III.'s Daughters—Wheel as a Symlwl in Keligion—Gibbon, 167 —Labyrinth at Pompeii—Cardinal Mezzofanti — Gytba, Mother of Harold II.—Staniburst: Wal»ie—Oscar Wilde's 1 De Profundls '—St. Paulinas and the Swale—" Of " after " Inside "—Authors of Quotations Wanted —King John polioned by a Toad—The Almsmen, Westminster Abl>ey, 168—Famous Pictures as Signs—Pictures from 'Jullui Caraar'—Darwinian Chain of Argument—Chess between Man and his Maker — Premonstratensian Abbeys — The Not he, Weymouth— Peerage Titles—Cumberland Dialect —Roger Ascnam : " Schedule," 169. BBPLIES :—Yorkshire Dialect, 170—Tripos: Tripos Verses —Joseph Anttice, 172—Kates in Aid —Moon and Hair- cutting—The Birthday of George III. : Old t>. New Style. 173—Nelson Column—Palindrome, 175—A Nameless Book —Looping the Loop—Ballad of Francis Henyi—Prayer for Twins—Coliseums Old and New, 176 —Adolphe Belot— "Bombay Grab "—Academy of the Muses, 177—Lulach, King of Scotland, 178. SOTBS ON BOOKS :—'Middle Temple Records'— 'Memoirs of Lady Fansuawe'—' Memoirs of Robert Carey'—' The Quarterly Hevlew. Notice* to Correspondents. FOOTFALLS AND MUSIC. ONE of the most familiar of Scottish songs, which is appropriately wedded to a tune that is a universal favourite, is 'There's naeLuck about the House.' Mr. Stopford Brooke and other literary historians have named this lyric 'The Mariner's Wife,' and assigned it its share of importance in the Koraantie Revival of the eighteenth century. It cannot be definitely said who wrote the song. It is attributed on the one hand to Jean Adams (1710-65), a Greenock schoolmistress, who was a persistent versifier, but in her acknow- ledged work produced nothing with the dis- tinctive quality of this lyric. On the other hand, it has been confidently held to be the work of W. J. Mickle (1734-88), translator of 'The Lusiad' and author of 'Cumnor Hall,' the haunting ballad that captivated the youthful fancy of Sir Walter Scott. A MS. copy of the piece was found among Mickle's papers after his death, but as he himself never published it and has nothing else in the same strain he cannot be decisively named the author. Burns, with his character- istic enthusiasm for the good work of others, •considered 'There's nae Luck about the House' " one of the most beautiful songs in the Scots or any other language," adding, " These two lines, And will I see his face again, And will I hear him speak, as well as the two preceding ones, His very foot has music in't, As he comes up the atair, are unequalled by almost anything I ever heard or read." An interesting point arises in connexion with this musical imagery. A contemporary of Jean Adams and Mickle was James Mac- pherson (1738-96), who produced his startling Ossianic poems between 1762 and 1764. Malcolm Lainp, the Scottish historian, was one of the most resolute sceptics regarding Macpherson's alleged discoveries, and he devoted a section of his work to a trenchant if overdrawn criticism of their character. He is probably right in asserting that the ostensible translator was really the author of the ' Fragments' and the ' Epics ' with which he astonished the civilized world, and he is certainly fanciful, and sometimes even unjust, in many of his attempts to prove him an unscrupulous plagiarist. One of the points he endeavours to make bears on this question of musical footfalls. Macpherson rapturously says of an ineffable woman, " Loveliness was around her as light; her steps were the music of songs," thereby showing poetic insight and feeling kindred with those illustrated in the Song of Solomon. Laing feebly says that this perfect imagery rests on ' Paradise Lost,' viii. 488 :— Grace was in all her steps, Heaven in her eye, In every gesture dignity and love. This is not the kind of attack by which critical deeds are accomplished ; such tenta- tive and futile efforts serve rather to reveal the impregnable strength of a fortress than to prove the resistless tactics of the assailant. Macpherson's first clause was probably sug- gested by Psalm civ. 2, and it may owe something to Marlowe's peerless tribute to Helen of Troy, Oh ! thou art fairer than the evening air, Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars ; but, when all is said, he is fully entitled to credit for the compact splendour and the exhaustive brevity of his figure. The subse- quent metaphor inevitably suggests that which Burns chose from the Scottish song for special commendation, but it has, at the same time, sufficient individuality to stand apart and proclaim its independence. Still, it would be of curious interest to know which of the two cognate figures had the earlier existence. If Jean Adams wrote 'There's nae Luck about the House,' it is almost