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The harpsichord was constantly in use; and those old Scottish songs, which echo now like some lost memory to our grandfathers and grandmothers we are writing of those personages glided on the air from coral lips, and made the spring more bright; and many gallant hearts were there enslaved, and sighed whenever they heard sung again those joyous or sad ditties of the Scottish muse.
Many a time afterwards have I heard these ditties sung on the march, or in the barrack-room, or round the fires as we lay out at night. I was not near so unhappy, in spite of all, as I had been on my first enlisting in Ireland.
"By my faith," said Leofwine brightening; "these are sounds and sights that do a man's heart good, after those doleful ditties, and the long faces of the shavelings. I vow by St. Alban, that I felt my veins curdling into ice-bolts, when that dirge came through the woodholt.
It is, as has been said above, incredible that we should have before us nothing more than the disconnected ditties of a Syrian wedding-minstrel. Graetz knew nothing of the repertoire theory that has been based on Wetzstein's discoveries of modern Syrian marriage songs and dances.
These were the "roaring boys" who met in hedge alehouses, and when they had by any chance obtained a little money or a little credit, determined to create a counter-revolution by declaring their sittings permanent, and proclaimed, in the words of one of their choicest ditties, "We'll drink till we bring In triumph back the king."
It happened that there was a very small attendance at the "cave" that night, and we were all more sociable and friendly because the company was select. The songs were chiefly of the sentimental class; such ditties were much in vogue at the time of which I speak. There came into the "cave" a gentleman with a lean brown face and long black mustachios, and evidently a stranger to the place.
His sister Freya is the most propitious of the goddesses. She is very fond of love ditties, and all lovers would do well to invoke her. Bragi is the god of poetry, and his song records the deeds of warriors. His wife, Iduna, keeps in a box the apples which the gods, when they feel old age approaching, have only to taste of to become young again.
Any publisher would take these, and reviews like 'High Living, and the 'Ladies' Genteel Guide' went into raptures over: 'Another of Miss Francie Forsyte's spirited ditties, sparkling and pathetic. We ourselves were moved to tears and laughter. Miss Forsyte should go far.
'Excuse me, madam, but why should I sing that you love not to hear? 'It is not I would hear it, child, but I would have my lord hear it. I would fain prove to him that there are songs in plain English, as he calls it, that have as little import, even to an English ear, as the plain truth-speaking Irish ditties which he will not understand.
Allied to these songs are the various ditties which the peasant girls and lads sing on certain occasions, consisting of endless repetitions of words or syllables; yet through this melodious tissue, apparently without meaning, sparks of real poetry often shine.
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