Page:The Book of Scottish Song.djvu/12

iv of standard songs that could not be omitted, have left only a few pages for a Preface, and have forced the Indexes into the smallest type. An extended dissertation on Scottish Song is. however, in this place the less necessary, as already a vast amount of information on the subject, and almost all that is valuable in the way of anecdote, is scattered over the volume in the shape of commentary to individual songs. A brief chronological summary of the leading authorities in Scottish song may therefore here be sufficient to guide the reader in his researches.

A love of music and song can be traced in the earliest literature of Scotland, in the works of James I., Dunbar, and Gawin Douglas; and the songs of these days seem to have been characterized by a gay and jovial spirit, little in accordance with the alleged austerity of the national character. In 'Peebles to the Play,' (ascribed to James I., 1424-37), two songs are mentioned as being then in popular use:—'There fure ane man to the holt,' (There went a man to the wood), and 'There shall be mirth at our meeting yet.' These songs, which are both lost, may be called the first of which we have any notice, with the exception of a rhyme mentioned by Andrew Wynton, made on the death of Alexander III., (1286), and two or three taunting doggrels made by the Scots on the English, especially one on the siege of Berwick, (1296), and one on the victory of Bannockburn, (1314), none of which can properly be considered in the light of song, according to our modern meaning. About the same time as the reign of James I., or a little later, a humorous poem was composed, called 'Cockelby's Sow,' (preserved in the Bannatyne MS.) which refers to a number of songs and tunes then in popular use,—such as 'Joly Lemmane,' 'Tras and Trenass,' 'The Bass,' 'Trolly Lolly,' 'Cok craw thou qllall [sic] day,' 'Twysbank,' 'Terway,' 'Be yon wodsyd,' 'Lait, lait in evinnynis,' 'Joly Martene with a mok,' 'Rusty Bully with a bek,' &c. Of all these the words are lost, and if the tunes exist, they do so, with one or two exceptions, under different titles. The next intimation of song which occurs in our literature is in Gawin Douglas's prologues to his translation of Virgil, written about 1512, wherein four different songs are adverted to, viz. 'The ship sails ower the saut faem,' 'I will be blithe and licht,' 'I come