The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

Social Life of the Borders. 187
within the memory of the writer the remembrance of this
struggle was a reah'ty, and influencing the minds of a
generation then passing away, and he can recall with what
vividness the sister of one of the best Border singers used
to entertain her youthful listeners around the fireside with
an account of Dalziel and " Bluidy Claver's" raid into
Moffatdale, and her earnest prayers that we would never
forget these men.
It was under such influences as these, then, that the
Border men grew up, who were to find their highest utter-
ances in song, and there can be no doubt, as already
remarked, that their severance from the outer world gave
their efforts an intensity and reality which instilled into
their ballads and songs that power so strikingly exemplified
in " The Dowie Dens of Yarrow," " The Flowers of the
Forest," and " Lucy's Flittin'," and gave them that abiding
pathos which so truly touches the heart.
From the list of Border singers, however, I must exclude
the greatest name in Scottish song, Robert Burns, though
in his poems he has made use to some extent of the
elements which make up so much of the life of the Borders ;,
yet still, to him they did not stand in the same relation,
and were used for purposes oi grotesque effect rather than
from conviction. Burns, also, was rather a poet of " the
living present," a poet for those in the full flush of life and
enjoyment. He was, also, essentia;lly a man of modern
thought. He had lived always within the influence of the
highways leading to the great centres of population in the
country, and he knew every shade and variety of society,
and natures like his are touched by the impulse of their
time, and the hopes of human advancement. He had been
caught, like Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, by
the " wild pulsations of the social strife," gathering
in strength and turbulence in a neighbouring country^
and his strongest utterances have, therefore, been
in accordance with progressive ideas. He was