Song-writer, was born 16th August 1766, at the “auld house” of Gask in Perthshire, third daughter of its Jacobite laird. In 1806 she married her second cousin, Major Nairne (1757–1830), who in 1824, by reversal of attainder, became sixth Lord Nairne, and to whom she bore one son, William (1808–37). They settled at Edinburgh, and after her husband’s death she lived for three years in Ireland, then for nine on the Continent. She died at Gask, 27th October 1845. Her eighty-seven songs appeared first in “The Scottish Minstrel” (1821–24), and posthumously as “Lays from Strathearn.” Some of them are mere Bowdlerisations of “indelicate” favourites; but four at least live and shall live with the airs to which they are wedded—the “Land o’ the Leal” (c. 1788), “Caller Herrin’,” “The Laird o’ Cockpen,” and “The Auld House.” See Rogers’s “Life of Lady Nairne” (1869), and Kington Oliphant’s “Jacobite Lairds of Cask” (1870).

Personal

  The personal aspects of our Poetess are represented in the portrait with which this volume is adorned. The original was painted by the late Sir John Watson Gordon, in 1816, and is preserved at Gask. In her fiftieth year the “Flower of Strathearn” retains her charms. The countenance is of the aristocratic type; the nose aquiline, a small mouth, dark expressive eyes, and a high and gracefully moulded forehead. She was of middle size; her hands and arms were elegantly shaped; and her very movement betokened the polished gentlewoman. Her manners were such as to evoke respect and reverence. She possessed an abundant vivacity and much enjoyed the tale of humour. By her kindly ways she attracted the young…. As a Christian gentlewoman, Lady Nairne was an honour to her country and age. No dispenser of charity ever fulfilled the injunction more literally as to the bestowal of alms in secret. When any of her good deeds became known, she was sensibly pained. “Religion is a walking and not a talking concern” was her favourite maxim: she acted upon it.

  Carolina Oliphant, in her songs for the people, vindicated nobly the genuine humanity of true nobility, and the strong, sweet sympathies of a patriarchal life. But Carolina Oliphant also was a grand dame. The blue blood in her veins ran very blue. In her stateliness as a bride, she put aside with some impatience and vexation the kiss of her cousin and bridegroom, as being too bold and public an assertion of the rights which she had just given him. She had even a greater horror than Lady Anne Linsday cherished of being reduced to the level of literary publicity, and of being exposed to rude praise and blame along with the common herd of authors. Not only was she a woman,—and authorship was counted unfeminine by these great ladies,—she was also a lady, an Oliphant, a Nairne. Lady Nairne did not so much as confide to Lord Nairne the secret which would have made his heart proud, if he were a match for his wife in genius and feeling. She did not even tell him that she was the author of “The Land o’ the Leal,” lest his honest gratification should tempt him to betray the truth.

  In her youth she was so notable for her personal charms that she was known in popular language as the Flower of Strathearn; and the beauty of her mind, manifested in an early occupation with music and lyrical poetry, was not inferior to the fascination of her person. She lived single till she was forty years of age, and then married Captain William Murray Nairne, a military gentleman of noble descent, whose duties as inspector-general of barracks in Scotland forced him to reside in Edinburgh. The house which she occupied, still recognised by the visitor in the letters C. N. above the portal, is pleasantly situated beneath the shadow of the lofty Arthur’s Seat, looking eastward towards Portobello and the Forth. In this abode Lady Nairne dwelt for about thirty years, performing her part gracefully in the literary society of the Modern Athens, and at the same time, as a christian woman, signalising herself, in her own modest way, by contributing munificently towards the support of the popular charities, then rising into notice under the intelligent apostleship of Dr. Chalmers.

  She was foremost in all scenes of gayety, and is said to have taken a carriage at midnight and driven several miles to bring one of her young lady friends out of bed for a party where partners were scarce. In the simple social pleasures of the local aristocracy, the country balls and meetings, and the gatherings of the tenantry, “the Flower of Strathearn” was a conspicuous figure, while her keen eyes were taking in the queer figures that appeared later in all the glow of bright humor in “The Laird of Cockpen,” “The County Meeting,” and “Jamie, the Laird.”… She would not allow her son to be taught to dance, and regarded her poetry as the somewhat flagitious exercise of a worldly spirit, and spent her days in the doubt and self-affliction of a harsh creed and in the petty interests of a narrow church. She was deeply interested in the hopeless task of “converting” the Catholics of Ireland and the Jews to Scotch Presbyterianism, and was the mentor of her relatives after the fashion of Mrs. Hannah More, the patroness of bazaars, and at one time with her sister was expelled from an Italian town for distributing Protestant Bibles to the people. But her native nobleness of character shone through the theological clouds. She was regarded with affection as well as reverence by her younger relatives and her servants, and impressed all who came in contact with her by the cordial grace of her manners, and the aristocratic and highly marked contour of her features, which in the bloom of youth had made her “the Flower of Strathearn.” Her benevolence was unceasing and self-sacrificing, if not always wisely directed, and at one time she had all her family plate sold and the proceeds sent to Dr. Chalmers for the support of an industrial school for the poor.

  In her later years Lady Nairne was involved in the atmosphere of pietism which began to prevail over Scotland, dating from the pious crusade of the Haldanes. Secular amusements—save painting—were no longer to her mind, the fashions of the world that pass away were no more to the taste of her who had in unregenerate days written the “Laird o’ Cockpen.” She had always been religious, though the humour would bubble over into fun in her songs.

General

  Two great motives may be distinguished in her verse—sympathy with the life of the common people among whom she moved with old-fashioned familiarity as a radiant comforter and joy-bringer, and sympathy with the chivalrous spirit of Jacobitism, which was the air she breathed in her own family. Her songs contain all that is best and highest in the Jacobite poetry of Scotland,—the tender regret that never sinks into wailing, the high-tempered gaiety that bends but will not break, the fiery spirit that reaches forward to victory and never thinks of defeat. It was a misfortune for the Pretender that such a poet-laureate of his cause did not appear till forty years after that cause was hopelessly lost.

  Lady Nairne, who was a religious person, and yet loved her country’s songs, and felt how much they contain, which, if not directly religious, was yet “not far from the kingdom of heaven,” desired to remove the barrier; and she sang one strain, “The Land o’ the Leal,” which, even were there none other such, would remain to prove how little alien to Christianity is the genuine sentiment of Scottish song,—how easily it can rise from true human feeling into the pure air of spiritual religion.

  It seems to me that by far the finest of this group of writers is the Baroness Nairne, “The Flower of Strathearn,” as she was fitly called in her own district. She may not have the strength of Joanna Baillie, or the versatility of Mrs. Hemans, but her songs are full of deep pathos and kindly humour. They are never local nor of an interest purely temporary, as was the case with the poems of many of her compeers, but they are instinct with fine feeling that comes straight from the heart and goes straight to the hearts of all readers.

  That this woman had ever written a line of verse was a secret which she all but carried to the grave with her. And yet for fifty years, no less, people all round her had been singing her songs and talking about them with admiration, and phrases from them had become household words throughout Scotland, and some of them were universally spoken of as the finest Scottish songs, the songs of keenest and deepest genius, since those of Burns…. Then there are love-songs, satirical songs, humorous songs and songs of Scottish character and oddity, nonsense songs and songs of philosophic “pawkiness” and good sense, songs of scenery and places, and songs of the most tearful pathos. A few are of a distinctively religious character. Passing from matter or subject to quality, one may say that there is a real moral worth in them all, and that all have that genuine characteristic of a song which consists of an inner tune preceding and inspiring the words, and coiling the words as it were out of the heart along with it. Hence there is not perhaps one of them that, with the advantage they have of being set to known and favourite airs, would not please sufficiently if sung by a good singer. Apart from this general melodiousness or suitability for being sung, the report for all of them might not be so favourable; but, tried by the standard of strict poetic merit, about twenty or twenty-five of the whole number, I should say, might rank as good, while eight or ten of these are of supreme quality.

  Lady Nairne was a true poet. Her “Laird o’ Cockpen” is full of a humour that is quite peculiar to herself; while her Jacobite songs, “Wha’ll be King but Charlie,” and “Charlie is my Darling,” are alive with warlike spirit as sincere and earnest as though they had been written in the heat of the struggle, during the pauses of the very battles. In these poems she evidently feels every word she writes, and this quality of sincerity alone, even apart from their other conspicuous merits, causes them to reach a far higher standard of excellence than all the other Jacobite verse which was written in her time. “Caller Herrin’,” written to a tune representing the chime of the bells of the Tron Kirk at Edinburgh, will always be worthy of study as a fine example of words arranged to musical sounds. Her masterpiece is “The Land o’the Leal.” This faultless poem is worthy of the pathetic situation it renders so irresistibly. We seem to hear the very accents of the dying woman as she speaks to the fond husband who was the father of her dead child. Yet “The Land o’ the Leal,” flawless as it is, seems as spontaneous as her more crude work. Indeed it may be said of this kind of lyric no less than of the Jacobite ballads, that Lady Nairne never wrote a line that she did not feel; and this fact gives to her poems a strength which nothing else could give.

  Lady Nairne excels in the humorous ballad, the Jacobite song, and songs of sentiment and domestic pathos. She skilfully utilised the example of Burns in fitting beautiful old tunes with interesting words; her admirable command of lowland Scotch enabled her to write for the Scottish people, and her ease of generalisation gave breadth of significance to special themes. In her “Land o’ the Leal,” “Laird o’ Cockpen,” and “Caller Herrin’,” she is hardly, if at all, second to Burns himself. “The Land o’ the Leal,” set to the old tune “Hey tutti taiti,” also used by Burns for “Scots wha ha’e,” was translated into Greek verse by the Rev. J. Riddell, fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. “Caller Herrin’” was written for the benefit of Nathaniel Gow, son of the famous Perthshire fiddler Neil Gow, whose melody for the song, with its echoes from the peal of church bells, has been a favourite with composers of variations.

  Perhaps the most perfect example of the lyric song, in which the melody is mingled with and sustains and elevates the feeling, and both are conjoined in an effect which melts the heart and possesses the ear, although the strain is not of so high a rapture of love or sorrow as parts of Burns “Ae Fond Kiss” or Lady Anne Bothwell’s “Balow,” and is of a peaceful sweetness and resignation rather than passion, is “The Land of the Leal,” by Carolina, Lady Nairne. In its original and simplest form, before she had interpolated a verse to express some of her theological ideas, it is the perfect interpretation of a sweet, solemn, and simple thought, the tenderest and purest emotion, breathed in an equally simple, but absolutely perfect melody, that is like the flowing of limpid water, crystal clear and unbroken to the end. The heart of the world has responded, and it has a place like none other in the tongue of song…. The fame of the authoress, so far as she can be said to have any of her own individual personality, rests upon this song, and sufficiently, while the English language shall last, but it was not the solitary example of her genius, and her poetical work, although not great in bulk, contains other lyrics of a very high quality, with a wide range from high martial spirit and homely pathos to gay and frolicsome humor, and instinct with the vital and living element of song.

  For the number and beauty of her lyrics of all kinds, among the song-writers of Scotland Lady Nairne is excelled only by Burns and rivalled only by Tannahill…. With a genius which was equally at home in the pathetic, the humorous, and the patriotic, Carolina Oliphant remains not only the sweetest and most famous singer of the lost Jacobite cause, but far and away the greatest of all Scottish lyric poets of her sex, and in two of her pieces, the two above mentioned, it does not appear extravagant to say, she is not surpassed even by Burns himself.