tately rhythm and march of some of the
oldest airs make them peculiarly suitable for patriotic songs; and Burns
took advantage of this when he adapted "Scots wha hae" to the air of
"Hey, Tuttie Taittie!" for to this spirit-stirring strain Bruce and his
heroes marched to the field of Bannock-burn.

Scotch music is a good example of the fact that the favorite musical
instruments of the different nations have undoubtedly caused some
favorite group of notes, constituting _motives_ of a peculiar rhythm,
which are employed with evident preference. Thus, the use of the minor
seventh instead of the major seventh (as in "Wha'll be King but
Charlie?"), and the sudden modulation from the minor key to the major
key, a whole tone below, are in exact accord with the bagpipe, and are
more certain in the strathspeys, reels and dances which are universally
played on that instrument; the intervals of which are

[Illustration: MUSIC.]

with the bass of the drone emitting A, so that A minor must be regarded
as the principal key of this instrument. Indeed, Macdonald, in his
_Complete Tutor for the Great Highland Bagpipe_, gives the odd rule that
the "piper is to pay no attention to the flats and sharps marked on the
clef, as they are not used in pipe-music."

In Scotch music are also continually found motives of a rhythm in which
the first note has only one-fourth the duration of the second. This is
known as the Scotch catch or snap, and evidently originated in the
strathspeys, though it is now a distinction of many fine songs, notably
so of "Roy's Wife of Aldavalloch."

That these old melodies are the voice of ancient Scotland is proved by
the fact that no modern musician has been able to imitate them. Haydn
tried to rearrange some of them, and failed, and Geminiani blotted
quires of paper in attempting to write a second part to the "Broom o'
the Cowdenknowes." No: ere we can add anything to the national music of
Scotland we must restore the precise national conditions of which it was
the articulate idea.

English music, until the days of the Tudors, was really French: England
sang, as all Europe did, the songs of the Troubadours. But the "Chanson
de Roland" and the "Complaint of the Chatelain de Courcy" were not
English strains, for a national song is a winged fact. France was the
legitimate successor of the Troubadours, and many of their oldest songs
would serve to-day as _airs de vaudeville_. The French national music
has mostly