es. To a
fine sensibility there is, I think, a much more peculiar trait in Irish
music, whether gay or sad--a strain of _longing_ which imparts a charm
like songs of memory--a strain so subtle that my explanation can only be
intelligible to those who have already apprehended it.

Kindred to the Irish is the Welsh and the Scotch music. The Welsh has a
more hopeless sob, the Scotch a wilder mirth. We feel in the old Welsh
tunes that terrible struggle they had, first with the Romans, and then
with the Anglo-Normans; and whoever has heard the "March of the Men of
Haerlech" will understand why King Edward slew the Welsh Bards.

The most striking examples of Scotch music are the pibrochs and
strathspeys. These compositions generally ring with a wild laughter that
is almost harassing, especially when it is enhanced by the abrupt close
with the fifth instead of the keynote. The ear, which has been longing
for the rest, has a sense of being teased and deluded with the
rollicking strain. As exponents of the cautious, cannie Scot we should
think them a satire did we not know what a wild vein of Celtic wit runs
through the granite foundation of his character. If it be true that
national musics embalm peculiar humanities, of no country is this so
true as of Scotland, for no people and no history is so highly
picturesque and so full of the broadest lights and shadows. In their
earliest history we find this antithesis. They lived rudely as peasants:
they fought as if possessed by the very spirit of chivalry. When they
abolished the magnificence of the papacy they inaugurated the barest of
churches. They were the first to betray Charles Stuart, and the last to
lay down arms for the rights of his descendants. They are worldly-wise
to a proverb, and yet wildly susceptible to poetry and romance.

The songs of such a people have necessarily a great variety: the color
and the perfume of life are in them. Listen to the mocking, railing
drollery of "There cam' a young man," the sly humor of the "Laird o'
Cockpen," or "Hey, Johnnie Cope!" and you may understand one side of
Scottish character. The Border ballads, that go lilting along to the
galloping of horses and jingling of spurs, are the interpretation of
another side. The same _active_ influence accompanies the Jacobite
songs--"Up wi' the bonnets for bonnie Dundee!" filled many a legion for
Prince Charles--and the blood kindles yet to their fife-like and
drum-like movements. Again, the s