Note 1383 — Chapter XLI

“These songs are a species of composition entirely by themselves. They have no affinity with our ancient ballads of heroism and romance, and one part of them far less with the mellow strains of our pastoral and lyric muses. Their general character is that of a rude energetic humour, that bids defiance to all opposition in arms, sentiments, or rules of song-writing. They are the unmasked effusions of a bold and primitive race, who hated and despised the overturning innovations that prevailed in church and state, and held the abettors of these as dogs, or something worse—drudges in the lowest and foulest paths of perdition—beings too base to be spoken of with any degree of patience or forbearance. Such is their prevailing feature; but there are amongst them specimens of sly and beautiful allegory. These last seem to have been sung openly and avowedly in mixed parties, as some of them are more generally known, while the others had been confined to the select social meetings of confirmed Jacobites, or hoarded up in the cabinets of old Catholic families, where to this day they have been preserved as their most precious lore.”—Hogg’s Jacobite Relics.