But there are more than lines of Scottish poetry which may become matter of reminiscence, and more than Scottish song melodies which may be forgotten.  There are strains of Scottish PSALMODY of which it would be more sad to think that they possibly may have lost their charm and their hold with Scottish people.  That such psalmody, of a peculiar Scottish class and character, has existed, no one can doubt who has knowledge or recollection of past days.  In glens and retired passes, where those who fled from persecution met together—­on the moors and heaths, where men suffering for their faith took refuge—­in the humble worship of the cottar’s fireside—­were airs of sacred Scottish melody, which were well calculated to fan the heavenward flame which was kindled in lays of the “sweet Psalmist of Israel.”  These psalm-tunes are in their way as peculiar as the song-tunes we have referred to.  Nothing can be more touching than the description by Burns of the domestic psalmody of his father’s cottage.  Mr. E. Chambers, in his Life of Burns, informs us that the poet, during his father’s infirmity and after his death, had himself sometimes conducted family worship.  Happy days, ere he had encountered the temptations of a world in which he had too often fallen before the solicitations of guilty passion! and then, beautifully does he describe the characteristic features of this portion of the cottars worship.  How solemnly he enumerates the psalm-tunes usually made use of on such occasions, and discriminates the character of each:—­

     “They chant their artless notes in simple guise;
       They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim: 
     Perhaps DUNDEE’S wild warbling measures rise,
       Or plaintive MARTYRS, worthy of the name,
       Or noble ELGIN beets[17] the heavenward flame.”

He was not, alas! always disposed in after life to reverence these sacred melodies as he had done in his youthful days.  In his poem of “The Holy Fair,” he less reverently adduces mention of these sacred airs:—­

     “Now turn the Psalms o’ David ower,
        And lilt wi’ holy clangour. 
      O’ double verse come gie us four,
        An’ skirl up the Bangor.”

These tunes seem to have been strictly and exclusively national.  In proof of such psalmody being quite national, I have been told that many of these tunes were composed by artisans, such as builders, joiners, blacksmiths, etc.

Several of the psalm-tunes more peculiar to Scotland are no doubt of an early date.  In Ravenscroft’s Psalms, published with the music in four parts in 1621, he gives the names of seven as purely Scottish—­King’s, Duke’s, Abbey, Dunfermline, Dundee, Glasgow, Martyrs. I was used to hear such psalmody in my early days in the parish church of Fettercairn, where we always attended during summer.  It had all the simple characteristics described by Burns, and there