- Performer Name:
- Performance Venue:
- Performance Date:
- Author:
- Brunton, Mary
- Date Written:
- Language:
- English
- Publication Title:
- Discipline: A Novel
- Article Title:
- Page Numbers:
- 290-291
- Additional Info:
- Volume 3
- Publisher:
- George Ramsay & Co.
- Place of Publication:
- London
- Date Published:
- 1814
Text:
[290] NOTE G, page 246.
"Extemporary Songs."
Extemporary Songs are common among the Highlanders. With these they beguile their labours; often, of course, at small expence of taste or invention. The readiness with which they apply their verses to compliment, to banter, often to graver purposes, is, however, very remarkable; and Cecil is far from furnishing a rare or exalted specimen of the powers of Highland improvisatori.
I have been told, that an Argyllshire woman one evening, while expecting her husband's return, was surprised by a visit from some persons whom she guessed to be officers of justice sent to apprehend him. Finding the man absent, they determined to wait his arrival in the hut; taking care, of course, that his wife should not go out to apprise him of his danger. She contrived, however, to hush her baby with an extemporary song, which, without alarming the vigilance of her guards, warned [291] her husband from his perilous threshold; and he escaped. Other instances, somewhat of a similar kind, suggested the incident in the text.
Indeed, the only merit which the Highland scenes in Discipline presume to claim, is, that, however inartificially joined, they are all borrowed from fact.
Notes:
- Collected by:
- AE