Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

The Greeks, from their vivid imaginations, became the most arrant idolaters of the family. The Persians, on the other hand, preserved a greater simplicity of religion; and while the Jews clave to the tradition of a God who "made man in His own image," they adhered, with a grand erroneousness, to the worship of the pure element of fire. We probably find traces of this worship even in the multiplicity of the religion of the Pelasgians in the worship of Vesta or Hestia, that ancient and respectable divinity who required a sisterhood of pre-Christian nuns to administer her rites and sacrifices. As the characters of the diverging tribes developed, their gods developed also, and we may read off history from mythology. With the Greeks the rule of life was physical beauty, and the full exercise of physical and intellectual vigour; and their gods abundantly reflected this rule of life. With the Goths and Norsemen strength was the rule of life, and a moral element was added, that of valour. They were at all events brave, and, because brave, true; for falsehood is the vice of the coward and the slave. The Berserker must fear nothing-not even Odin himself. There is a terrific grandeur in that conduct of the northern Viking, who, when told that he must go to hell if he would not be baptised, and as a reply to the question where his ancestors were, was told they were in hell, said, "Then I elect to go to my ancestors." Christianised, this Viking valour takes the shape of duty. No power, no circumstances, can take from a man the power to be true and fearless; and in this spirit it is written round the wheel of the British war-ship, “England expects every man to do his duty." If Nelson had been that heathen Viking, we doubt if the missionary would have frightened him into baptism, though he might have persuaded him by the argument of love. In the British Islands the history of the several races that peopled them

VOL. XCI.NO. DLVII.

is written in the several languages and dialects. The Celts are still pastoral, the Anglo-Saxons agricultural, the Norsemen maritime; the Normans, the Romans of the north, still bind all together by their laws, and gracefully bear the principal burden of government. Happily for our safety, we are fringed and fenced with a Norse population, who take to the sea like ducks. Our Lowlanders, both English and Scottish, are Anglo-Saxon; our Highlanders are Celts. Of course, intermarriages have produced a general mixture; but the mixture does not even now descend to the roots of society. There is still a distinction of features and of dialects, though the general language of all, like the general physiognomy, is an amalgam. Of all the races, the Welsh are, perhaps, the most pure, which is a doubtful advantage to them, as power, both in man and animal, is the result of the mixing of breeds. On the whole, it may be said that two languages only prevail in the British Islands-the Celtic and the Teutonic; the Welsh, Irish, and Gael being subdivisions of the former, and the Danish and Anglo-Saxon of the latter. But it is as difficult to classify languages as it is to classify the animal kingdom; all the species run into one another with imperceptible nuances. For instance, the Lowland Scottish has a much stronger admixture of Teutonic words, German and Norse, than the general English, and is freer from the ingrafted words of Norman or Latin origin. And we know as a matter of history, that the influence of the Norman conquest was only partially felt in the south of Scotland, and did not extend itself to the north at all. We are all aware that both Northmen and Saxons had one favourite beverage for the people, which the Northmen called ale, and the Saxons beer. We also know that the two names coexist; but it is said that where the stronger liquor is called ale, the Danish element is the stronger in the population, and

2 B

where beer is honoured and ale held in comparative contempt, the Anglo-Saxon. So that Christopher Sly, when he called for a cup of the smallest ale, betrayed his Saxon origin, or perhaps that of the great Shakespeare himself, as, indeed, might be expected in the midland locality of Stratford-upon-Avon. Stratford-upon-Avon! How much of English history is in this single word! we see in it the Roman strat, the Teutonic ford, and the British river or avon! We know not how many elements of race-added to the Anglo-Saxon-may have gone to form the grand composite called Shakespeare.

Our

But

One must be careful, in using these great family names, not to assign them, as we would to a parish pauper, too circumscribed a settlement. Our Saxons did not live, as do their present namesakes, in the north of Germany; but they passed over it, whence no one knows, but from the East somewhere. It is said that their name is identical with that of the Sacæ, who alone, beside the Persian knights, fought valorously at Platea. The present kingdom of Saxony has received a Sclavonic population; while the present Thuringians are a high German race of later comers. Saxons were low Germans. they doubtless abode in Thuringia once, since skeletons have been lately exhumed there with the buckets beside them in which they used to carry their mead or hydromel, and other implements, the patterns of which have been found in Britain. And the Danes or Northmen were a very vague population. In general they doubtless came from the fiords of Norway, the islands of Denmark, and the south shore of the Baltic, and attacked the nearest land; so that Worsaae has supposed that England was chiefly settled by Danes, and Scotland by Norwegians. But even now Norsemen and Danes speak the same language with a slight dialectic difference, and the distinction is rather

local than ethnic. In those early times, until they came to some final land, all mankind were rolling stones, and as such they gathered no moss, but came hungry as hunters, devouring all before them.

One of the strangest phenomena connected with the history of language, is the prevalence of two characters in the same language side by side, like the major and minor keys in music. These characters have received the names of High and Low. They appear to belong to all the languages of the highly-organised races. We have high Celtic in the Welsh, Breton, and extinct Cumbrian and Cornish languages; low Celtic in the Irish, Gaelic, and Manx. We have the old high German and the Gothic, the mother of the Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, and present PlattDeutsch, Dutch, and Flemish. We have high Pelasgian in the Hellenic language; low Pelasgian in the Latin and Etruscan; and we have bifurcate subdivisions of these branches, one dialect of the same language more approaching the high, and the other the low key. In the languages derived from the Latin, we have high Latin in French and Italian, low Latin in Spanish and Portuguese-the Portuguese being pitched still lower than the Spanish. In Greek we have high Hellenic in the Ionian and Attic dialects, low Hellenic in the Dorian and Æolic. And then, again, we have high French in the Langue d'oi, low French in the Langue d'oc; high Anglo-Saxon in English, and low Anglo-Saxon in Lowland Scottish. The general features are not easy to define, but the low languages love the broad vowel sounds better than the fine; and of the consonants, prefer medials to termes. There is a greater richness and fulness in the low languages — a greater precision and expressiveness in the high, though it is difficult to say, on the whole, which has the advantage in euphony.

Some philologists have fancied that they discover gender in this difference, and that one type may have sprung from the language of the fathers of the human race, and the other from the mothers. But it is difficult to say which is the more masculine or the more feminine. If we compare Italian with Spanish, Italian appears the more easy to articulate, and therefore the more adapted for song, while Spanish is fuller and grander, and more sonorous. The beauty of the Spanish does certainly appear of a more masculine order than that of the Italian. And where the two types conflict and it is a question of the weaker giving way-it seems as if the low language is apt to get the upper hand; as, for instance, in America, where the high German comes in contact with the English. And high languages appear to have a tendency to become low; for instance, the Attic variety of Ionic Greek, in which, as time went on, contractions of vowels supervened, and the double was substituted for the double s—πράσσειν and πρατ Twould correspond to "besser" in German, as compared with "better" in English. Thus we are inclined to think that if there is any foundation of truth for this fancy

of sex in language, that the high type represents the feminine, and the low type the masculine element. The words high and low themselves would be perhaps as well rendered by sharp and flat, as their signification has a musical analogy. The high type may be more feminine than the low or bass, as the voices of women are higher than those of men. Perhaps time will unravel. this strange riddle of language. It will be indeed marvellous if it be discovered that language reflects man, not only in his organisation generally, but in his sexual relationship; and that the study of language is thus in all completeness the study of the mental history of man, making the complement to ethnology or the study of his physical history, and both together comprising the natural history of the highest of God's creatures. History, commonly so called, is a record only of the actions and conscious words of men, and may itself be coloured according to the writer's bias or mannerism. Language is a history of the thoughts and unconscious words of men, and must be a true record, because, like the facts of nature, its characters have been traced by the finger of the Creator.

DAVID WINGATE'S POEMS AND SONGS.

[THE following are Preface and some specimens from a forthcoming volume containing Poems and Songs which have been sent to us from Lanarkshire.-ED. B. M.]

PREFACE.

I confess that I see no reason why I should write a preface, and, unadvised, would probably have left it unwritten. But some friends-men of learning and taste-assure me it is absolutely necessary. What can I say? Shall I tell you I have no learning? The book itself will tell you that. Shall I whine, and say to my critic, "Have mercy on me !—think of my position in life?" No, indeed! On the contrary, I say, Weigh the book alone. My peculiar circumstances (if they be peculiar) have no right to go in with it. If I have sung badly or thought sillily, let it be no excuse for me that I am, and have been, a collier since my ninth year. Probably the fact of my being a collier should have been suppressed altogether; but I thought, if any reader wishes to know what I am, the information is here for him. If the book has any merit apart from whatever that fact may suggest, it may live; if not, it deserves to die. If a groundless vanity has given birth to and sustained my long-cherished dream of something better than the pit, do not hesitate to tell me so. It may serve to convince me that I am in my proper place, and teach me to be content. God save me from that charity which refrains from calling me a blockhead because my face is covered with coal-gum! To those who have aided and encouraged me in putting my thoughts into this form, I can only say-Thank you most sincerely!

WINDMILLHILL, NEAR MOTHERWELL, Feb. 1862.

A MINER'S MORNING SONG.

DAVID WINGATE.

Awake, brother miner! The stars have grown dim,
"Tis time to be stirring the sleep-strengthened limb;
The lark is saluting the regions of love,

And soon will the sun flash the grey mists above :
Prepare thee to sink, though the fancy should soar;
We must to the dark scenes of labour once more.

Come rise, brother, rise! and from grumbling refrain;
He who murmurs in idleness, murmurs in vain;
A sweet slumber hangs on thy little ones' brows,
A love-hallow'd prayer's in the heart of thy spouse:
She pleads where thou know'st she has pled well before,
That angels may guard thee to safety once more.

Arise! brother miner! 'Twas only a dream,
That hum of green woodlands, that stroll by the stream;
Some joy-loving fairy, in portraiture gay,

Hath shown thee by night what thou seest not by day.
Yet, brother, despair not, the hours will pass o'er;
We'll rise, as the day wanes, to gladness once more.

Suppress those deep sighs, brother, though it may be
The fate of thy kinsman is waiting for thee;

O'er sorrows untasted 'tis folly to brood;

We must, like thy kinsman, brave danger for food.
Then up and be stirring; like serf-men of yore,
We'll rest when we've plodded our portion once more.

Be cheerful, poor brother! I've heard of a land
Where no over-labour e'er blisters the hand;—
A land where no fetters of slavery are seen,
Where the grindstone of tyranny never hath been.
Perhaps we'll go there when our ploddings are o'er,
And then we'll be weary-bon'd miners no more.

FIRE!

[The late melancholy accident at the Dykehead Pit, near Larkhall, Hamilton, suggested the following Poem. The incidents are, I think, nearly real.]

It was the corning-time-the hour

Of rest, but new begun ;

The ponies had their rakes * brought in,
And been stabled one by one :
Some lucky miners had been sent
To the regions of the sun.

The "oncost" near the bottom sat,
With napkins spread on knee,
Taking their humble mid-day bite,
Drinking the twice-warm'd tea;
Eating their labour-season'd meal'
In thankfulness and glee :

When, lo! they heard a sound, that made
Their breath for a time retire-

A strange alarming sound-and still

Its note of alarm rose higher.

"Let's see what's wrong," said one: "my God!

There drops the signal-wire ;

The lining-deals are glowing red,

And the shaft's ablaze with fire!"

"What's to be done!" thought every one,

As they gaz'd, with fear aghast,

And felt the air around them rush

With a strong and strengthening blast.

"What's to be done!" What could they do?

For the burning wood fell fast,

And the roar of the fire above proclaim'd
Life's chances hastening past.

The growing heap of embers red

There helplessly they watch'd,

And they saw the cage drop hissing hot,

With the sever'd rope attach'd.

Then thicker fell the burning shower,

And the air-rush ceas'd anon,

While a thick white cloud-the breath of Death-
Began to gather down.

Rake-load.

« AnteriorContinuar »