and the music ceased awhile. People of all descriptions, in all directions, hurried to their respective pews, with accommodating civility to strangers. The curate opened his book and his duties, the clerk unsheathed his spectacles, confined his nostrils, and the service was reverently performed, with a suitable discourse and decent melody. After this was ended, the bailiff and his friends returned in like order as they came, perambulating the precincts of the town. Then the glory of all true Britons, was manifested by the clatter of knives and forks, at the favourite depôt for provisions, and genuine hilarity closed the "ringing out of the old bailiff,” and the ringing in of the new one. J. R. PRIOR. With the preceding communication from Mr. Prior, are the following verses. To the Dead Nettle. 'Tis May! 'tis May! air, earth, and flood, 'Tis May! 'tis May! why should not man Dulce Bomum. To the Editor of the Every-Day Book. Sir,-It may not, perhaps, be generally known what it was that gave rise to the writing of the old breaking-up song of "Dulce Domum," so loudly and so cheerfully sung by youngsters previous to the vacation; and as an old custom is involved in it, you may deem both the song and the custom worthy a place in your EveryDay Book. They are subjoined. I am, Sir, &c. Leadenhall Street, HENRY BRANDON. May, 1826. About two hundred and thirty years ago, a scholar of St. Mary's college Winchester was, for some offence committed, confined by order of the master, and it being just previous to the Whitsuntide vacation, was not permitted to visit his friends, but remained a prisoner at the college, as report says, tied to a pillar. During this period he composed the well known "Dulce domum," being the recollections of the pleasures he was wont to join in, at that season of the year. Grief at the disgrace and the disappointment he endured, so heavily affected him, that he did not live to witness the return of his companions, at the end of their holydays. In commemoration of the above, annually on the evening preceding the Whitsun holydays, the master, scholars, and choristers of the above college, attended by a band of music, walk in procession round the court of the college and the pillar to which it is alleged the unfortunate youth was tied, and chant the verses which he composed in his affliction. Heus! Rogere, fer caballos; Eja, nunc eamus. Limen amabile Matris et oscula, Mr. Brandon's account of the "procession round the courts of the college," and the singing of "Dulce Domum," is sustained by the rev. Mr. Brand, who Domum, domum, &c. adds, of the song, that "it is no doubt of Suaviter et repetamus, Concinamus ad Penates, Vox et audiatur ; Phosphore quid jubar, Gaudia nostra moratur ? very remote antiquity, and that its origin must be traced, not to any ridiculous tradition, but to the tenderest feelings of human nature." He refers for the English verses to the "Gentleman's Magazine," for March, 1796, where they first appeartion." On looking into that volume, it ed, and calls them "a spirited translaseems they were written by one of Mr. Urban's correspondents, who signs “J. R.” and dates from "New-street, Hanoversquare." Dr. Milner says, that from amongst many translations of this Winchester ode," the present "appears best to convey the sense, spirit, and measure, of the original; the former versions were unworthy of it." He alleges that the existence of the original can only be traced up to the distance of about a century; yet its real author, and the occasion of its composition, are already clouded with fables.* 66 Milner's Hist. of Winchester. AMERICAN VOCAL MUSIC. By the favour of a correspondent in North America, we are enabled to extract from the "Colonial Advocate" of Queenston, the following interesting article, by a Scotch resident, on the state of melody in the region he inhabits. It particularly relates to May. SCOTTISH SONGS. "Dear Scotia! o'er the swelling sea On earth where'er thy offspring roam, I have often thought it a pity that there is no feature in which Canada, and indeed America in general, exhibits more dissimilarity to Scotland, than in its want of vocal music. On the highland hills, and in the lowland vallies, of Caledonia, we are delighted with the music of the feathered choristers, who fill heaven in a May morning with their matin songs. The shepherd whistles "The Yellow Hair'd Laddie"-the shepherdess sings "In April when primroses deck the sweet plain"-all nature seems in harmony. But here all is dulness and monotony, "We call on pleasure-and around A mocking world repeats the sound!" Even the emigrant seems to have forgotten his native mountains; and in the five years in which I have sojourned in America, I have not once heard "Roslin Castle" sung by a swain on a blithe summer's day. Here they are all dull plodding farmers, as devoid of sober melody as the huge forests which surround them are void of grace and beauty: talk to them of poetry and music, and they will sit with sad civility, "as silent as Pygmalion's wife." Now and then you may hear a hoarse raven of an old woodchopper in the barroom of a filthy tavern, roaring in discordant notes, "Yankee Doodle:" or, in a church or meeting-house, you may behold fifteen or twenty men and women picked out of the congregation, stuck up in a particular part of the house and singing the praises of redeeming love, with the voices of so many stentors. The affectation they display, cannot fail to disgust you: the form of godliness is present, but the power thereof is wanting. The memory of a native Scotsman retraces back those halcyon days, when gladness filled the corn-field-when sober mirth and glee crowned the maiden feast-when the song went merrily round at Yule, to chase away the winter frosts and coming to the day of universal rest from labour, calls to mind the venerable precentor with his well-remembered solemn tunes, where old and young, infancy and advanced age, willingly joined together in singing HIS praise-where the fiddle and the flute, the harp and the organ, were uselesswhere no set people stood up in a corner, as if to say, "we, the aristocracy of this congregation, can offer a sweeter with our melodious voices so much better and more acceptable sacrifice than you, attuned than yours." It may, perhaps, appear irreverend in me, to say a word of sacred music in an essay intended for Scottish songs; but I thought the contrast would not be complete without this allusion. A late esLiterature," uses a fine argument in sayist "On vulgar prejudices against favour of native poetry. "Let us ask," says he, “has Britain the nations of the world, from any one a greater claim to distinction among circumstance, however celebrated it be in arts and arms, than from its being the birthplace of Shakspeare? And if the celebration of the anniversary of Waterloo be held in the farthest settlements of India, so is the anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, the pastoral poet of Scotland : "Encamped by Indian rivers wild, When kingdoms, and states, and cities pass away, what then proves to be the most imperishable of their records, the most durable of their glories? Is it not the lay of the poet? the eloquence of the patriot? the page of the historian? Is it not the genius of the nation, imprinted on these, the most splendid of its annals, and transmitted, as a legacy, and a token of its vanished glory, to the after ages of mankind? And now, when the glories of Greece and Rome are but shadows, does not our blood stir within us at the recital of their mighty achievements, and of their majestic thoughts, which, but for the page of the chronicler would have been long ere now a blank and a vacancy; glory departed without a trace, or figures traced upon the sand, and washed away by the returns of the tide : “Oh! who shall lightly say that fame, A desert bare, a shipless sea. To earth-worn pilgrims' wistful eye' That point to immortality." The blue hills and mountains, among which Byron first caught the enthusiasm of song; the green vallies and brown heaths where Scott learnt to tell of Flodden field, and deeds of other days, in verse, lasting as the source of the deep Niagara, yet return an echo to the wellknown "Daintie Davie" of Robert Burns. As down the burn they took their way, Sic pleasure to renew?" How I should delight to hear such an artless tale sung on the braes of Queenston, or the green knowes and fertile plains around Ancaster. I once in Montreal heard a gentleman from little York (a native of Perthshire) sing "Daintie Davie" in fine style; but it was the old set, and as it is a very good song, I think the first stanza and chorus may "drive dull care away" from half a dozen of my readers as well as a good hit at that silly body, our sapient attorney-general, or a squib at his forkhead Mr. Solicitor, would have done : "Now rosy May comes in wi' flowers Chorus. "Meet me on the warlock knowe, Daintie Davie, Daintie Davie, There I'll spend the day with you, My ain dear Daintie Davie." About two years ago, I wrote to a correspondent in Scotland, to send to Dub das about ten reams of our best Scottish, English, and Irish ballads, and to avoid any that were exceptionable in point of morality. This person has since arrived in America; but his ideas on the propriety of introducing ballads into a new country, I found to be different from mine-otherwise I had by this time employed several "wights of Homer's craft” to disperse the twenty thousand halfpenny songs I then ordered. It would have, perhaps, sown the seeds of music in our land, and hundreds of American presses, may be, would have spread abundantly the pleasing stanzas, until accursed slavery had stopt the strain in the southern regions of republican tyranny. I can call to mind the time, as well as if it were yesterday, when I first heard "The Maid of Lodi?" it was at a Scottish wedding, at Arthurstone. Sir Ewan, the aged sire of the brave colonel Cameron, who fell at Waterloo, was present with his lady; and, gentle reader, I think it was the youthful minister of the next parish who sung, accompanied by the bride's youngest sister. It was followed by "Blythe, blythe," which I must give the reader from memory. News is scarce this week-the king of France is dead, and surely the tidings of the next's coronation will not arrive in time to fill a paragraph in the "Advocate" for a month to come-so let us have Blythe, blythe and merry was she: Blythe in Glenturret glen. By Yarrow banks the birken shaw; The flowers of Yarrow ever saw. Her looks were like a flower in May, Her smile was like a simmer morn ; As light's a bird upon a thorn. Her bonnie face it was sae maek The evening sun was ne'er so sweet There's little pleasure in the house, When our gudeman 's awa'. 11. The sun had gone down o'er the lofty Ben Lomond. 12. My uncle's dead-I've lands enew. 13. For lack of gold she's left me, O. 14. O' a the airths the wind can blaw. 15. When honey-dyed bells o'er the heather was spreading. 16. Loudon's bonny woods and braes. Awee afore the sun gaed down. Last May a braw wooer cam'd down the new way. lang glen, And sair wi' his love he did deave me ; I said there was naething hated like men, The deuce gae wi' 'm to believe me, believe me, The deuce gae wi' 'm to believe me." What a chaste pleasure what a gladdening influence over the most stoical mind, any of the following songs yield, when well sung to their own tunes, by a half dozen young ladies in the parlour, or by a chorus of bonnie lassies in the kitchen, as the former pursue their sewing and knitting, and the latter birr. their wheels, and stir the sowens in an evening, in the opulent farmer's dwelling; or when heard in the most humble cottage of a Scottish peasant. Well might the farmer's dog, Luath, say, " And I for e'en down joy hae barkit wi' them." Let these classes come to Upper Canada to-morrow, and they will tire of its dulness. Nature's face is fair enough; but after the traveller leaves the last faint sounds of the Canadian boatsman's song, as it dies on the still waters of the St. Lawrence, music will be done with.I had forgotten however, I must now quote the songs alluded to; and I well can from memory : 1. Gloomy winter's now awa'. 2. Roy's wife of Aldivalloch. 3. Beneath the pretty hawthorn that blooms in the vale. 4. And she showed him the way for to WOO. 5. I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen. 6. John Anderson, my Joe, John, when we were first acquent. 7. Thy cheek is o' the rose's hue, My only joe and dearie, O. 8. Coming o'er the craigs o' Kyle. 9. O, lassie, art thou sleeping yet;-and the answer. 10. There's nae luck about the house, There's nae luck ava'; 20. Mirk and rainy was the night. 21. My Pattie is a lover gay. 22. I'm wearin' awa', Jean, Like sna' when its thaw, Jean. 23. Its Logie o' Buchan, o' Logie the laird. 24. With the garb of old Gaul, and the fire of old Rome. 25. Come under my plaide. 26. O' Bessie Bell and Mary Gray. 27. Ye banks and braes of bonny Doon. 28. The laird of the drum, a wooing has gone, And awa' in the morning early: And he has spied a weel fa'red May, A shearing her father's barley. 29. My bonny Lizzie Baillie. 30. Green grow the rushes, O! I must have done-I have named so many songs to put my readers in mind of "Auld lang syne;" and I could add as many more, of truly Scottish origin, that I should like to see in Canada, as would fill up the "Advocate;" but I must stop-the heard a few of these well sung in Capoliticians would complain. I have nada the last, a lintie in Queenston braes sings now and then. Would there were ten thousand such in Upper Canada! The English version of the following line, is not near so pretty as the Scots original, which goes thus : 'I once was a bachelor, both early and young, And I courted a fair maid with a flattering tongue : I courted her, I wooed her, I honoured her then, And I promised to marry her, but never told her when. O, I never told her when," &c. |