The songs of such a people have necessarily a great variety: the color and the perfume of life are in them. Listen to the mocking, railing drollery of "There cam' a young man," the sly humor of the "Laird o' Cockpen," or "Hey, Johnnie Cope!" and you may understand one side of Scottish character. The Border ballads, that go lilting along to the galloping of horses and jingling of spurs, are the interpretation of another side. The same _active_ influence accompanies the Jacobite songs--"Up wi' the bonnets for bonnie Dundee!" filled many a legion for Prince Charles--and the blood kindles yet to their fife-like and drum-like movements. Again, the stately rhythm and march of some of the oldest airs make them peculiarly suitable for patriotic songs; and Burns took advantage of this when he adapted "Scots wha hae" to the air of "Hey, Tuttie Taittie!" for to this spirit-stirring strain Bruce and his heroes marched to the field of Bannock-burn. Scotch music is a good example of the fact that the favorite musical instruments of the different nations have undoubtedly caused some favorite group of notes, constituting _motives_ of a peculiar rhythm, which are employed with evident preference. Thus, the use of the minor seventh instead of the major seventh (as in "Wha'll be King but Charlie?"), and the sudden modulation from the minor key to the major key, a whole tone below, are in exact accord with the bagpipe, and are more certain in the strathspeys, reels and dances which are universally played on that instrument; the intervals of which are [Illustration: MUSIC.] with the bass of the drone emitting A, so that A minor must be regarded as the principal key of this instrument. Indeed, Macdonald, in his _Complete Tutor for the Great Highland Bagpipe_, gives the odd rule that the "piper is to pay no attention to the flats and sharps marked on the clef, as they are not used in pipe-music." In Scotch music are also continually found motives of a rhythm in which the first note has only one-fourth the duration of the second. This is known as the Scotch catch or snap, and evidently originated in the strathspeys, though it is now a distinction of many fine songs, notably so of "Roy's Wife of Aldavalloch." That these old melodies are the voice of ancient Scotland is proved by the fact that no modern musician has been able to imitate them. Haydn tried to rearrange some of them, and failed, and Geminiani blotted quires of paper in attempting to write a second part to the "Broom o' the Cowdenknowes." No: ere we can add anything to the national music of Scotland we must restore the precise national conditions of which it was the articulate idea.