Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Our Familiar Songs and Those Who Made Them: Three Hundred Standard Songs of the English-Speaking Race, Arranged With Piano Accompaniment, and Preceded by Sketches of the Writers and Histories of the Songs
Very great songs - great in all respects - are comparatively few. Perhaps a continued and warmly-expressed interest in the makers of familiar songs equivalent to that which other artists enjoy - would render those who are will ing to make the songs of a nation quite as numerous as those who are anxious to make its laws. The revival of degenerate song begun by Burns was a new inspiration and although several Scottish ladies, immediately following him, kept themselves sedulously hidden from public view, while they produced some of the finest songs ever written, a deep personal interest became manifest toward the writers of lyric verse in Scotland. The result is, that no other people pos sesses such an array of poets whose rhyme can be echoed in written melody, and there is' more popular knowledge of Scotland's song-writers than of those of any other nation. In England little interest has been manifested in this portion of the tuneful guild, and still less has our own country troubled itself about its singing men and singing women.
John Howard Payne's magnificent monument only testifies to consideration that came too late. But for him, and for others even more deserving, ostenta tious and costly monumental remembrance is not to be desired. Something with more of human sympathy in its expression should take its place.
GI e pillar'd fame to common men Nae need 0' cairns for ane like thee.
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