Half-hours with the W.E.A.

Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 47, 3 June 1932, Page 13

Half-hours with the W.E.A.

‘New Series from 1YA Songs of Scotland A series of 4 by Mr. J. W. Shaw, MA, on Wednesdays, June 8, 15, 22, 29. Pas Scot, in spite of his reputation for dourness and inarticulateness, has managed to get more of himself into song than the people of much more volatile and yivacious nations. The song has all along been his favourite medium of expression. The national character, the national aspirations, and the national history have all been embodied through the centuries in the songs of the people. Some of them are so old that both the words and music date to the shadowy days before the dawn of history. It bas been suggested that many of the songs, words and melody, are communal productions, the spontaneous outeome of the rhythms that beat in the hearts of the nation; but all our experience goes to show that nothing artistic is given to the word until it filters through an indiyidual mind und heart. The momentum of the national life and experience is behind it, but it takes its form in the struggle for articulation of a single soul. Once it is given shape, it may for good or il] be subjected to continual modification as it passes from group to group or from age to age. Or it may so commend itself to the general mind by its perfection that it is kept intact as a sacred thing from century to century. The singing impulse has never left the Scottish people. The children were from their earliest years made familiar with the lilts of love and war and sorrow that enshrined Scotland’s past and her sense of values in the biggest things of life; which are also the simplest. When Burns expressed his ambition to sing a song for Scot land’s sake, he was stating what thousands of Scots in every stratum of society bad felt.

There are songs written by kings, and there are songs that wrought themselves out in the heart of a cobbler at his bench, or a travelling tinker of the roads. My Lord the Bishop has contributed his share, and even the woman of the streets has flamed for a moment into unforgettable song. In its breadth of range through every section of the community, in its continuance from generation to generation, this urge to song is one of the most remarkable phenomena in literary history. Scottish songs may be broadly classified into historical and personal. The greatest of all ballads, "Sir Patrick Spens," "The Flowers of the Forest," most poignant laments for the fallen. "Seots Wha Hae,’ most thrilling of battle songs, are typical of the songtreatment of great events in national history. A large section of historical songs deals with the Jacobite rising of 1745, and the romantic loyalty of Scotland to Bonnie Prince Charlie. The personal songs interpret every phase of everyday life in Scotland. Apart from the national gift of melody in word and music, the Scot had at his command a language perfectly adapted to the terse and vivid expression of ail the elemental emotions. "Bonny wee thing" is the same in meaning as the Iinglish "Pretty little thing," but the one is pure poetry and the other is trivial commonplace. Burns, of course, overshadows all other Scottish singers. ierhaps no other poet in history has a purer singing note. And besides, he purified the stream of many unpleasant elements it had gathered in its course down the years, and gave it a momentum that soon overswept national boundaries and made it available for the healing of the nations. But in their highest moments of inspiration, Allan Ramsay, James Hogg, Lady Nairne, Robert Tannahill, and a dozen others, are searcely inferior to Burns. The melodies were composed for the violin. Many of the older ones use the primitive pentatonic scale. In a great many cases the composer is unknown. He had his inspiration, handed over

his gift, and went his way unrecorded. Within the: last few years Mrs. Kennedy Fraser has recovered a magniticent treasure of song in the Western Isles, and recovered it just in time. Al! authorities agree that her discoyeries are the greatest contribution to folk-song in our generation.