Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/90

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. i. JAN. 29, 1910.

The lines may not be great poetry ; but they are simple, direct, and not devoid of pathos. Moreover, they rime and they scan. I hardly think that much more can be said if, indeed, as much for some of the verses in ' The Canadian Boat Song.'

2. It is also objected that Gait never claimed ' The Canadian Boat Song ' as his. That is true. One can only conjecture that he had forgotten having written it. This need not excite surprise when we remember his enormous literary productivity. Nearly eighty volumes are attributed to his pen, but no one seems able to state the exact number. Then we must remember that his recollection of his own productions was not at all trustworthy. He wrote an epic poem and published it ; yet years afterwards, when drawing out a list of the books he had written, he omitted to mention the epic. Remarking jocularly on this omission, he is reported to have said that he should be remembered as one who had published an epic poem and forgot that he had done so. If Gait could forget this work, it is no great stretch of fancy to imagine that he may also have forgotten a bit of verse so com- paratively trifling as ' The Canadian Boat Song.' Besides, there is a question as to whether he recognized, or was willing to recognize, his own handiwork after it had undergone the transmuting touch of the " transcriber " and editor, Lockhart.

This brings me to the last point. Internal evidence seems to justify one in believing that two pens were engaged in the com- position of ' The Canadian Boat Song.' I quote, for the purpose of contrast, the " haunting verse n :

From the lone shieling of the misty island

Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas

But still the blood is strong, the heart is High- land, And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.

Compare this with the last stanza :

Come foreignrage Let Discord burst in slaughter !

O then for clansman true, and stern claymore The hearts that would have given their blood like water,

Beat heavily beyond the Atlantic roar.

If the same pen composed both stanzas the felicitous touch and glamour of the one, and the turgid rhetoric of the other then certainly Icarus, flying too near the sun, had got the wax of his wings melted, and thereafter had plunged headlong into the deep. " Atlantic roar," indeed, is weirdly suggestive of

the bubbling cry Of some strong swimmer in his agony.

It is surely more consistent to suppose- that a mind " attuned to finer issues " than that of the first author had amended the draft of the original poem, leaving us ' ' a thing of beauty " where before there had been little. else than tawdry rhetoric. That finer mind could have been no other than the <; transcriber " of the song, Lockhart .. I venture therefore to submit that Gait was the original author of ' The Canadian Boat Song,' but that Lockhart, in all pro- bability, revised and improved his verses. WALTER SCOTT.

Stirling.

[The reader should study Mr. Fraser's book before making up his mind on the point. We have seen too many literary coincidences to be easy believers in such arguments ; but Mr- Fraser's evidence is unusually to the point.]

' THE BOOK OF OATHS.'

SHORTLY after the beginning of the Common- wealth there was published

" The Book of Oaths, j and | The Several! forms thereof, | both Antient and Modern. | Faithfully Collected out of | Sundry Authentike Books and | Records, not heretofore extant." Printed at London for W. Lee, M. Walbancke, D.. Pakeman, and G. Bedle. 1649. 12mo.

A second edition appeared in 1715.

The first edition contained some 230 oaths of various kinds, from which much informa- tion is obtainable regarding the duties of curious and obsolete officials, and many side-lights are thrown on various historical incidents and occasions. I have roughly grouped the documents as follows :

1. Coronation Oaths. The " Antient Oath " of the Kings of England, the oath of Edward II., the new oath corrected by Henry VIII. with his own hand (" the originall is in the hands of Sir Robert Cotton,. Knight and Baronet, 1625"), and the oath of Charles I., are given.

2. Oaths of Allegiance. Various forms of oaths of allegiance and of supremacy are included; also the oaths (temp. Henry VIII.) to secure the succession of the crown by Queen Anne and Queen Jane. Among the oaths of fealty are those of a Duke and Earl of Scotland ; of the Prior of St. John of Jerusalem (temp. Edward IV.), with the homage of James of Scotland to Henry VI. , of John Baliol, and of King John to the Pope in 1213. The words of allegiance of the Duke of York and of Buckingham, and other peers and ecclesiastics, to Henry VI., are given in several forms. From Philip, Duke of Burgoyne (and many other French