emboltura," implying thereby those deliverances of themselves which men's hearts under emotion give. This, then, I conceive to have been the primary idea of ballads; but only in one form of what is now called Ballad Literature-and that form, moreover, the one least usually implied by the term-do we find the original idea fully contained. Nevertheless, what we now call a song is, to my mind, the true representative of the ancient ballad; and although we shall have to give our term wider scope this evening, it will be convenient to consider the original signification first.

Rousseau's half truth, "that the man who reasons is only a depraved animal," is, I take it, a whole truth when predicated of songs. Men feel before they reason, and songs I make to depend on a man's emotional, not on his intellectual, nature. This, then, would be my definition of a song—“ the brief musical utterance of a single emotion."

Let us take that definition to pieces. The first characteristic of a song is that it be musical-of course, I am using the word "musical" here in the broad Carlylese sense, meaning thereby harmony of thought as well as melody, of numbers and rhythm; but in passing I may call to your mind the almost invariable connection of songs with music commonly so called. This connection of "dancing words and speaking strings," to borrow Cowley's phrase, is strictly consonant with the original meaning of the word ballad, though for its metaphysical reason we should have to go much deeper into spiritual affinities and proprieties than we are now prepared to do. We may, however, venture to say that the want of definiteness in music is met by the definite emotion expressed in song, and that the musical vehicle is felt to be so apt because the root of music, as well as that of song, is emotional, not intellectual. Concerning the second characteristic of song, I have already incidentally spoken. I have referred it for its origin to the feelings;

D

Wooing at her, pu'ing at her,
Courting with her-canna get her.
Filthy elf, it's for her pelf

That a' the lads are wooing at her.

And after this description of Tibbie's love-affairs, the singer concludes with this appropriate reflection: Be a lassie e'er so black,

Gin she hae the name o' siller,

Set her upon mountain's top,

The wind will blaw a man until her.

Be a lassie e'er so fair,

Gin she lack the penny siller,

She may sigh for all the year

Before a man be even'd till her.

With the old style of songs that kind of humour is the most common. The satire has always relation to the broadest and plainest-I can hardly say nuisances, perhaps, when I remember that women, and especially wives, are the main object of ridicule.

"The husband ever abideth in travail,"

says one disagreeable old scamp (I speak from a feminine point of view).

One labour past, there comes another new,

And every day beginneth she a battle,

And thro' complaining changeth cheer and true.
Thus wedlock is an endless penance,

Husbands know that have experience,

A martyrdom and a continuance

In sorrow everlasting, yea, a deadly violence,
Whereof beware!

Another husband relates as a wonder that it was not until eight days after his marriage that he was "chidden or banged," but, alas! after that

Soon enough I had assay

Of sorrow and care, she made me bare.

For with despyte she up arose

And smote me sore upon the nose.

The husbands haven't it all their own way, however, as witness that invocation of an angry spouse to her husband, to the tune of

Auld guidman, ye're a drucken auld carle.

But this I can cap by the complaint of another goodman that his wife gets quarrelsome in her cups.

That a pint with her gossips I would her allow,
But when she sits down she aye fills hersel fou,
And then when she's fou she's unco camstearie-
Oh, gin my wife would drink hooley and fairly!

Enough, however, of these connubial compliments. Other social habitudes are handled as freely. A certain song satirises the pride of dress as displayed by a fisher's wife who, adorned with a new gown, sailed up the High Street of Newhaven, and only condescended to say to her former friends:

Stand about, ye fisher jades,
And give my gown room.

From the keen appreciation of marital happiness displayed in some of the foregoing quotations to the precursor of that happiness and to the love-songs there anent, is but a short step. In choosing of these for quotation, the embarrassment of riches is painfully felt. Such a lord is love, and beauty such a mistress of the world, that apparently every man who has written at all, has written concerning this "Summer pilot of an empty heart, unto the shores of nothing." These love-songs comply more rigidly, probably, with the definition than songs of almost any other tenor; and dealing as they do with the very rudiments-the bricks and mortar, so to speak-of men's nature, it is not surprising to find that, as a rule, the measure of the excellence of this kind of song is the depth, reality, and unity of the passion expressed. It is always true, and here it is specially true,