Consul's) dwelling.
For the amateur of genuine ballad verse, here is a field quite as fertile
as that which was reaped by Scott and Ritson amid the border peels and
farmhouses of Liddesdale. It is not unlikely that some treasures may thus
be brought to light. The genuine expression of popular feeling is always
forcible, not seldom poetic. And at any rate, these wild bits of verse are
redolent of the freshness of the sea-breeze, the damps of the clinging
fog, the strange odors of the caboose-cookery, of the curing of cod, and
of many another "ancient and fish-like smell." Who will tell us of these
songs, not indeed of the deep sea, but of soundings? What were the stanzas
which Luckie Mucklebackit sang along the Portanferry Sands? What is the
dredging-song which the oyster "come of a gentle kind" is said to love?
These random thoughts may serve to indicate to the true seeker new and
unworked mines of rhythmic ore. We are crying continually, that we have no
national literature, that we are a nation of imitators and plagiarists.
Why will not some one take the trouble to learn what we have? This does
not mean that amateurs should endeavor to write such ballad fragments and
popular songs,--because that cannot be done; such things grow,--they are
not made. If the sea wants songs, it will have them.
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