Excerpt from A Treatise on the Language, Poetry, and Music of the Highland Clans: With Illustrative Traditions and Anecdotes, and Numerous Ancient Highland Airs The melodies, reels, and strathspeys of the Gael met with no better fate than the Ossian of Maherson, and the Sean Dana of the Rev. Dr Smith; nobody believed in their antiquity. For how, it was philosophically argued, could a rude and barbarous people carry down from remote ages in their oral lore and every day amusements, such poetry and such music This was sound reason ing for it is impossible to believe, that the music and poetry of a separate and distinct people could have two separate and distinct characters, from the indissoluble connexion between poetry and music, until within a very recent period. It was equally impossible to believe that the poetry and music of a people, and the people themselves, should be of two different and distinct characters; that the people should be rude and barbarous, and their poetry and music not only intelligent, but refined. Either of the two postulates must be conceded, therefore, to Dr Johnson, by whom the question of the authenticity of the poems was put on this sound and philos0phic basis The Doctor does not seem to have had the music of the Highlanders under consideration but I submit that the music and the poetry were twins, - born of the same parentage, nursed at the same bosom, and reared among the same glens and mountains and that whoever believes in the one, is bound to believe in the other. I therefore thoroughly agree with Doctor J ohnson, so far as he goes; but submit that the music forms an inseparable element in the question. The state of society that could have produced, and have in its every day amusements preserved such music, might well produce such poetry; and that state of society could not have been either rude or barbarous. But the copiers and publishers of the music had by their own vile snobbery contributed to the scepticism on the subject. They deprived the melodies and tunes of the Signet of antiquity contained in the hereditary names, and rebaptised them, in compliment to their patrons and patronesses, and thus stamped them, exfacie, as modern instead of ancient music. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.