That is our first lesson, then, very utterly learned 'by heart.' This is our second, (marginal note on Sir Walter's copy of Allan Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany, ed. 1724): "This book belonged to my grandfather, Robert Scott, and out of it I was taught 'Hardiknute' by heart before I could read the ballad myself. It was the first poem I ever learnt, the last I shall ever forget." [67] He repeated a great part of it, in the forests of La Cava, in the spring of the year in which he died; and above the lake Avernus, a piece of the song of the ewe-milkers:-- "Up the craggy mountain, and down the mossy glen, We canna' go a-milking, for Charlie and his men." These I say, then, are to be your first lessons. The love, and care, of simplest living creatures; and the remembrance and honour of the dead, with the workmanship for them of fair tombs of song. The Border district of Scotland was at this time, of all districts of the inhabited world, pre-eminently the singing country,--that which most naturally expressed its noble thoughts and passions in song. The easily traceable reasons for this character are, I think, the following; (many exist, of course, untraceably). First, distinctly pastoral life, giving the kind of leisure which, in all ages and countries, solaces itself with simple music, if other circumstances are favourable,--that is to say, if the summer air is mild enough to allow repose, and the race has imagination enough to give motive to verse. The Scottish Lowland air is, in summer, of exquisite clearness and softness,--the heat never so great as to destroy energy, and the shepherd's labour not severe enough to occupy wholly either mind or body. A Swiss herd may have to climb a hot ravine for thousands of feet, or cross a difficult piece of ice, to rescue a lamb, or lead his flock to an isolated pasture. But the borderer's sheep-path on the heath is, to his strong frame, utterly without labour or danger; he is free-hearted and free-footed all the summer day long; in winter darkness and snow finding yet enough to make him grave and stout of heart. Secondly, the soldier's life, passing gradually, not in cowardice or under foreign conquest, but by his own increasing kindness and sense, into that of the shepherd; thus, without humiliation, leaving the war-wounded past to be recalled for its sorrow and its fame. Thirdly, the extreme sadness of that past itself: giving pathos and awe to all the imagery and power of Nature. Fourthly, (this a merely physical cause, yet a very notable one,) the beauty of the sound of Scottish streams.