Black, John THE FALLS OF CLYDE, OR, THE FAIRIES ; A SCOTISH DRAMATIC PASTORAL, IN FIVE ACTS. WITH THREE PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Fairy Elves, Whose midnight revels by a forest side, Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees; while over-head the moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth Wheels her pale course. They, on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds. Paradise Lost, X. 781. EDINBURGH: PRINTED FOR WILLIAM CREECH, AND LONGMAN, HURST, REES, AND ORME, AND J. MURRAY, FLEET-STREET, LONDON. A. SMELLIE, Printer. 1806. INTRODUCTION, CONSISTING OF THREE DISSERTATIONS, 1. ON FAIRIES. II. ON THE scotish LANGUAGE. III. ON PASTORAL POETRY, DISSERTATION I. The propriety of the fubject of the following Pastoral shown by the example of Poets and the opinion of Critics-The peculiar right a Scotchman has to adopt the fairy way of writing-Remarks on local poetry-Three kinds of Fairies, Continental, English, and Scotish. The native legends of thy land rehearse. Collins. T may seem to require explanation why, in the following Pastoral Drama, I have assumed a hypothesis which, though once generally prevalent, has now lost its credit, except in the nursery, and why I have written it in a dialect which is decaying daily. This dialect, too, can already boast of the finest poem of the pastoral kind that perhaps has ever been written, and which (by raising high the standard of this sort of composition) has rendered success extremely difficult, On both these points I shall endeavour to satisfy the reader, provided his patience accompany me through the following Dissertations, which I will freely confess are of a length apparently very disproportionate to the work which they profess to introduce, If we consider the history of poetry, we shall see that all the best poets have created or adopted some system of ideal existence. The Greek and Roman writers availed themselves of the polytheistic notions of their countries. The Italians adopted the magic of the Arabs; Milton chose the hierarchies of the Talmud and schoolmen; and Spenser and Voltaire have allegorised the passions. The title Poet or Maker (which last word was at one time adopted in our language) seems to express the opinion of the ancients that, to create, to "body forth the form of things unknown," was the object of that distinguished class of men, who, according to Hecataeus, an old Greek writer, ought to be possessed of α deλnga, many soothing tales; the name Troubadours, or inventors, shews the sentiments of the middle ages. Fracastoro, the greatest perhaps of modern Latin poets, gives the muses the epithet of amantes mira camoenae, the wonder-loving muses; and Shakespeare tells us that the pen of the poet turns his phantasies to shape, and "gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name." I would not multiply these authorities, which some may think pedantic, had not fancy for many years discovered a disposition to pass from the poets to the philosophers. The ancient and best poets however, in almost all countries, have been fond of brisk fairies and dapper elves. In England, Shakespeare, Drayton, |