Introduction
Whence arose the popular belief that some persons impart luck to the books of other persons? The answer, if it were not a question of books but of other projectiles, would be (in savage society) that one man has more maya or wakan or orenda than another; has more of a subtle, imponderable, potent, innermost, all-pervading something than another, and that he can communicate this gift, by luck or otherwise, to others. Thus in Rutuya a medicine man communicated his maya to Colonel Gudgeon, to Lieutenant Grant, and other gentlemen, who then walked barefoot but unsinged over a floor of red-hot stones. Obviously our civilized faith in prefaces by other hands than the author’s (usually the better man), is part of the orenda or maya superstition or belief.
Were I conscious of possessing maya or luck, I would gladly impart it to all men, if all men were equally virtuous, like the teacher of the art of flying in “Rasselas,” by Dr. Samuel Johnson. But I am so far from being conscious of possessing maya that I only wish, if there be indeed a quantity of this transcendental ether, that some one who had plenty of it would write introductions for my books, which stand greatly in need of a supernormal “send off.” Still they are not in quite such evil case as they would be were I a poet, for many a man and most women most justly disesteem their own capacity for reading verses. Indeed that art is now almost lost, and it is strange to think that there are probably to-day more persons who write verse than who read it. Poetry, like Christmas cards, is bought, not to keep, but to give away at Christmas, on birthdays, and, by economical friends of the bride, at weddings. There is always plenty of poetry in small volumes, in flabby leather covers, among the array of wedding presents. This offering is a survival: the idea of love is still connected with the writings of Tennyson and Browning, though experience tells us that the poetry-reading days of the pair end at the altar.
The child of an earlier generation, I was capable of reading verses in my youth, and even now can do so, retaining at least that faculty of a dead world, just as the last Pict held the secret of “brewing the ale from the heather bell.” Mr. Charles Murray’s ale (which is excellent) is all brewed from the heather bell, is pure Scots; and he sings the songs of our national Zion on “a distant and a deadly shore,” that of the Transvaal—though this is a mere figure of speech, the Transvaal, like Bohemia, possessing at present no sea-coast.
To the patriotic Scot there is somewhat affecting in the echoes of very rich Scots which reach us across the African continent and “seas that row between.” To speak for myself, I am never so happy as when I cross the Tweed at Berwick from the South, or go on the links at Wimbledon Common, and hear the accents (for there are several, including that peculiar to Gourock) of my native tongue. These observes are quite genuine, and come from a Scot whose critics in England banter him on his patriotism, while his critics in Scotland revile him as rather more unpatriotic than the infamous Sir John Menteith, who whummled the bannock. The Scots of Mr. Murray is so pure and so rich that it may puzzle some patriots whose sentiments are stronger than their linguistic acquirements. The imitations of Horace are among the best extant, and Mr. Murray might take Professor Blackie’s advice, trying how far the most rustic idylls of Theocritus, say the “Oaristus,” can be converted into the Doric of the Lowlands. If one may have favourites, among these is “The Packman,” “The Howe of Alford,” “The Hint o’ Hairst,” “The Antiquary,” and “The Lettergae.” Does any Lettergae survive in this age of guilt when the harmonium pervades the kirks which our fathers purified from the Romish organ? Indeed, the poems beget a certain melancholy. “I am never merry when I hear sweet music” from a world that is dead or dying, the world of Scott and Hogg, the world that knew not polluted streams, and railways, and motor cars, and, worst of abominations, the gramophone.
In a far-off land Mr. Murray retains the sentiment of that forgotten time, and is haunted by the scent of peat and bog myrtle, the sound of old words that now are strange, the poverty that was not the mate of discontent. Enfin he has the secret of the last of the Picts, if indeed he was the last, if they do not dwell with “The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies” in the secret places of the hills. Poetry more truly Scots than that of Mr. Murray is no longer written—was not written even by Mr. Stevenson, about “a’ the bonny U. P. Kirks,” for in his verses there was a faint twinkle of the spirit of mockery.
ANDREW LANG.