?4 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



of the mountainous homes which they had left, and of the hearts 

 which were there beating and weeping for them. 



National song, of all other, holds a powerful sway over the minds 

 of those in whom it awakens thoughts of fatherland and freedom. 

 "What would he the poetry of any nation, or any age, if robbed of the 

 spirit of its song ? "What would be left of Scottish character if the 

 ballads of the Caledonian bards were swept away ; if the harps of the 

 minstrels perished with the fingers that first swept them ? The song 

 that cheered the shepherd boy while tending his sheep, comes back to 

 him in the hour of oppression and danger ; and even upon the battle- 

 field, that melody calls up the moors and mountains of his native land ; 

 the wild woods and the streams come back, and the breezy freshness 

 of the heather fans his cheek again, as he marches with a firm step 

 and a nervous arm to win his liberty or die. It is said that he who 

 writes the songs of a nation may at the same time predict its history, 

 for patriotism has ever burned the brighter when music fanned the 

 flame, and the human breast has ever throbbed with a holier devotion 

 when the soul of song was stirring at the heart-strings. 



The same tender emotions which move the camel-driver to sing to 

 his camel, as he shares with the patient brute his dates and barley- 

 bread, and then ceases in his song to hear the tinkling of the bells 

 upon the desert sand, animated the harper in the olden times when 

 he poured forth his wild songs to nerve the chieftain's arm for battle. 

 No music is there like the human voice : harmony may flow from 

 trembling strings; but the soul of song dwells sweetest on the human 

 lips. It was in musical sentences that Pythagoras uttered those won- 

 derful spondees by which he could suddenly pacify a man that was in 

 a violent transport of anger ; and in the simple ballad sung to-day at 

 the fireside, the heart finds one of its sweetest consolations, and learns 

 a sympathy which for ever links it in memory with home. Virgil 

 knew the value and the beauty of the voice when he made Silenus 

 sing of the Epicurean birthday, and in a strain so thrilling that 



Tripping satyrs crowded to the song; 

 And sylvan fawns, and savage beasts advanced, 

 And nodding forests to the numbers danced. 



And there are but few who could sit listless while the lips of beauty 

 were uttering the language of a tender ballad — a ballad of the heart, 

 woven of fhome joys and sorrows — not the jingle of a heartless and 



