here was no end to the encomiums and paeans. Almost every
individual hero was celebrated, and these songs were made by the
acknowledged masters of the lyre, such as AEschylus and Simonides. With
us, great deeds have to wait their poets. Distance of time must first
throw around them a poetic hue; and after the hero has sunk unnoticed
into a nameless grave, the bard showers his praises on him, and his
worth is universally recognised. Or if his merits are discerned before
his death, song is not one of the appointed organs through which our
people demand that he should be praised. If a heroic action gets its
poet, the people will listen; but if it pass unsung, none will regret
it. Besides, we do not discern the poetry of the present so strongly as
the Greeks did. Everything with them seems to have been capable of
finding its way into verse. Alcman delights in speaking of his porridge,
and Alcaeus of the various implements of war which adorned his hall. The
real world in which the Greeks moved had the most powerful attraction
for them. This is also, in a great measure, true of the unknown poets,
who have contributed so much to Scottish minstrelsy in the days of the
later Stuarts. There is no squeamishness about the introduction of
realities, whatever they be; and the people took delight in a mere
series of names skilfully strung together, or even in an enumeration of
household articles or dishes.[3]

This pleasure in the contemplation of the actual things around us, is
not nearly so great in modern cultivated minds. We are continually
trying to get out of ourselves, to transport ourselves to other times,
and to throw ourselves into bygone scenes and characters. Hence it is
that almost all our best historical songs, written in these days, have
their basis in the past; and the one which moves us most powerfully,
"Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," actually carries us back to the times
of Robert the Bruce.

It is rather singular that most of the Scottish songs which refer to our
history, are essentially aristocratic, and favourable to the divine
right of kings. The Covenanters--our true freemen--disdained the use of
the poet's pen. They uttered none of their aspirations for freedom in
song, and thus the Royalists had the whole field of song-writing to
themselves. Such was the state of matters until Burns rose from amidst
the people, and sang in his own grand way of the inherent dignity of man
as man, and of the rights of labour.