The Book of Scottish Song/The Minstrel

The Minstrel.

[This beautiful little ballad first appeared as a fragment in an Edinburgh newspaper, and its authorship is generally ascribed to a Newcastle poet of the name of Pickering, on no other good ground that we know of, than that the original communication to the newspaper bore upon it the Newcastle post-mark. Donocht Head is a mountain in the north of Scotland, and we prefer it to a post-office stamp in marking out the country to which the song belongs. The verses are adapted to the air called "Gordon Castle." The last twelve lines in the present copy are by Captain Charles Gray, R. M., who has very happily eked out the otherwise unfinished production. In reference to this song, we have much pleasure in printing the following communication from Mr. Robert White, a Newcastle gentleman, who himself entertains great doubts as to Pickering being the author.—"These fine stanzas," says Mr. White, "are indebted for much of their celebrity to Robert Burns, who, in a letter to George Thomson of the 19th Oct., 1794, says, 'Donocht Head is not mine; I would give ten pounds it were. It appeared first in the Edinburgh Herald, and came to the editor of that paper with the Newcastle post mark on it.' Six years afterwards, when Currie's edition of the Poet's works, which contained the above remarks, was published, a correspondent of the Monthly Magazine, Vol. X. 208, affirmed the fragment to have been written by Mr. George Pickering, of Newcastle upon Tyne; and this assertion was corroborated by another correspondent of the same periodical in Vol. XI. 141. Since that period, it has been attributed by the literati of Scotland to the same individual, with this difference that in most instances he has, by mistake, been called Thomas instead of George. He was born at Simonburn in Northumberland, about the beginning of 1758; became a clerk to Mr. Davidson, a respectable lawyer in Newcastle, in 1776, and afterwards obtained the chief management of the Stamp Office for Northumberland, Newcastle, and Berwick. Subsequently he was unfortunate: he quitted the north of England; resided for a time in Norfolk, and it was believed, went abroad about 1798. After being absent, and unknown even to all his early friends, for upwards of a quarter of a century, he returned to his native place in depressed circumstances, and died in the neighbourhood of Newcastle about 1830. His poetical pieces, with those of Thomas Bedingfeld, an associate of his, were edited by James Ellis, Esq., of Otterburne, and published in an octavo volume at Newcastle in 1815. As a poet, he possessed, perhaps, talent of a more diversified kind than that of those who generally supplied the magazines of his time with verse: he is, as his humour veers, grave or gay, witty or satirical; but we think he succeeded best when he drew not upon his imagination, but on his reflective faculties or his feelings. To be sure, at the period when he composed his pieces, the prevailing taste for poetry was greatly swayed by the mannerism and false glitter which our acquaintance with French literature and Pope's translation of Homer had introduced: Cowper in England was beginning to occupy higher ground, and Burns in Scotland was making a still nearer approach to nature; yet as Pickering shared little of what these men possessed to overflowing, he was more apt to follow the beaten path, than betake himself to another through which he could not clearly distinguish his way. He wrote a couple of English songs, one of which is a pretended translation from what came before the public as a song in the Lapland tongue, and may be estimated as a favourable specimen of his ability. 'The Minstrel', only, appears in a Scottish garb, and forms his chief passport to fame. Simple, touching, and beautiful, its composition exhibits such an admirable command of Scotland's vernacular language, that we can scarcely believe a Northumbrian could have written it, unless he had resided for a considerable time in Caledonia, and been in daily intercourse with her people. If, however, the authorship belongs to George Pickering, we look upon the attempt as being remarkably happy. The additional lines by Capt. Charles Gray tend very appropriately to complete the picture: they are conceived and executed in the genuine spirit with which the original stanzas seem to have been penned."]

Keen blaws the wind o'er Donocht head,
The snaw drives snelly through the dale
The gaberlunzie tirls my sneck,
And, shiv'ring, tells his waefu' tale—
"Cauld is the night, let me in,
And dinna let your Minstrel fa',
And dinna let his winding-sheet
Be naething but a wreath o' snaw.

Full ninety winters ha'e I seen,
And piped whare gorcocks whirring flew,
And mony a day ye've danc'd, I ween,
To lilts which frae my drone I blew."—
My Eppie wak'd, and soon she cried,
"Get up, gudeman, and let him in;
For weel ye ken the winter night
Was short when he began his din."

My Eppie's voice, O wow! it's sweet!
E'en though she bans and scaulds a wee;
But when it's tuned to sorrow's tale
O, haith, it's doubly dear to me!
"Come in, auld carle! I'll steer my fire,
And mak' it bleeze a bonnie flame;
Your blude is thin, ye've tint the gate,
Ye should nae stray sae far frae hame."

"Nae hame ha'e I," the Minstrel said,
"Sad party strife o'erturn'd my ha';
And, weeping, at the eve o' life
I wander through a wreath o' snaw."
"Waes me, auld carle! sad is your tale—
Your wallet's toom—your claithing thin;
Mine's no the hand to steek the door
When want and wae would fain be in."

We took him ben—we set him doun,
And soon the ingle bleez'd fu' hie;
The auld man thought himself at hame,
And dried the tear-drap frae his e'e.
Ance mair the Minstrel wak'd a strain—
Nae merry lilt, but sad and slow;
In fancy's ear it seem'd to wail
A free-born nation's overthrow.

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