Produced by Andrew Sly
[Transcriber's Note: Two small volumes of Violet Jacob's poetryhave been combined together to produce this text.]
By
Author of "Flemington"
LondonJohn Murray, Albemarle Street, W.1919
(First published in 1915)
I have to thank the Editors of the Cornhill Magazine,Country Life, and The Outlook, respectively, for theirpermission to reprint in this Collection such of the followingpoems as they have published.
There are few poets to-day who write in the Scots vernacular, andthe modesty of the supply is perhaps determined by the slendernessof the demand, for pure Scots is a tongue which in the changes ofthe age is not widely understood, even in Scotland. The variousaccents remain, but the old words tend to be forgotten, and we maybe in sight of the time when that noble speech shall be degradedto a northern dialect of English. The love of all vanishing thingsburns most strongly in those to whom they are a memory rather than apresence, and it is not unnatural that the best Scots poetry of ourday should have been written by exiles. Stevenson, wearying for his"hills of home," found a romance in the wet Edinburgh streets, whichmight have passed unnoticed had he been condemned to live in thegrim reality. And we have Mr. Charles Murray, who in the SouthAfrican veld writes Scots, not as an exercise, but as a livingspeech, and recaptures old moods and scenes with a freshness whichis hardly possible for those who with their own eyes have watchedthe fading of the outlines. It is the rarest thing, this use ofScots as a living tongue, and perhaps only the exile can achieve it,for the Scot at home is apt to write it with an antiquarian zest, asone polishes Latin hexameters, or with the exaggerations which arepermissible in what does not touch life too nearly. But the exileuses the Doric because it is the means by which he can best expresshis importunate longing.
Mrs. Jacob has this rare distinction. She writes Scots becausewhat she has to say could not be written otherwise and retain itspeculiar quality. It is good Scots, quite free from misspelt Englishor that perverted slang which too often nowadays is vulgarising theold tongue. But above all it is a living speech, with the accent ofthe natural voice, and not a skilful mosaic of robust words, which,as in sundry poems of Stevenson, for all the wit and skill remainsa mosaic. The dialect is Angus, with unfamiliar notes to my Borderear, and in every song there is the sound of the east wind and therain. Its chief note is longing, like all the poetry of exiles,a chastened melancholy which finds comfort in the memory of oldunhappy things as well as of the beatitudes of youth. The metres arecunningly chosen, and are most artful when they are simplest; andin every case they provide the exact musical counterpart to thethought. Mrs. Jacob has an austere conscience. She eschews facilerhymes and worn epithets, and escapes the easy cadences of hymnologywhich are apt to be a snare to the writer of folk-songs. She hasmany moods, from the stalwart humour of "The Beadle o' Drumlee," and"Jeemsie Miller," to the haunting lilt of "The Gean-Trees," and thepathos of "Craigo Woods" and "The Lang Road." But in them all arethe same clarity and sincerity of vision and clean beauty of phrase.
Some of us who love the old speech have in our heads or in our