19th century Scottish song collections - certainly not all the same

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THREE WAYS TO MAKE
A SONG COLLECTION
And one way to annoy your neighbours!
19th Century Scottish Music
Dr Karen McAulay

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Last lecture: C18th Celtic music
• How people in Scotland viewed their own national music
• (To a lesser extent) how it was viewed in England.
• And what was happening in Ireland and Wales
• And the key themes were …

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6 key political & cultural influences
Travel
Political
History
Ossian
Popularity
Scottish
outwith Scotland Song
Enlightenment Primitivism &
Antiquarianism

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This week
• 3 song collections and an English anthology: different
times, different approaches
• C18th influences continued, but changed gradually
• Albyn’s Anthology / Alexander Campbell
• The Scotish Minstrel / Robert Archibald Smith
• Songs of Scotland / George Farquhar Graham
• and …
• Popular Music of the Olden Time / William Chappell

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MISTAKEN FOR
NAPOLEON
Alexander Campbell‟s Hebridean Song-Collecting
Summer, 1815

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An extraordinary man
Alexander & John Campbell Classically trained by Tenducci
(caricature by John Kay, 1784)

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A dilettante – literature & art too.
Sketch from Campbell‟s
Journey from Edinburgh through Parts of North Britain

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Albyn‟s Anthology (1816-18)

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Campbell‟s “Slight Sketch of a journey made
through parts of the Highlands & Hebrides.”
“On the 23rd July 1815, I took my place as an
out-side passenger on the mail-coach to Stirling. On
my arrival there, I armed, and apparelled myself in the
ancient costume of my native mountains; and set
forward for Lanrick Castle.”
Lanrick Castle – home of Sir John MacGregor Murray
(influential and interested)

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Off to the
Hebrides …
Imagine a trip today.
Now think again!

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Stopping for
directions at
Lanrick Castle
After that – on foot.
Callander.
Ferry to Lismore.
Ferry to Mull.

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Social gathering

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Fingal‟s
Cave, Staffa
Piper played a lament in
the cave

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Dervaig, Mull
Met an old lady with Tunes from Margaret Maclean-
a song-collection Clephane
Stopped at Callach Point to draw a
view, and met an old man who
could recite Ossian

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Tunes from boatmen, fiddlers, gentry …
Mull, Staffa, North and South
Uist, Benbecula, Skye …

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Mishaps and misadventures
Fell in Tobermory Falls Kept awake by talkative weaver

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Got taught piping notation
- and transcribed some

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ALEXANDER CAMPBELL
(1764-1824)
23 July – 23 October, 1815
Journey “by sea and land, of between eleven and
twelve hundred miles, undertaken to collect on the
spot materials for Albyn‟s Anthology” …

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Results of Campbell‟s trip
• Attempted another journey in Borders following year
• Albyn’s Anthology - 2 volumes
• Gaelic and English
• Highland and Border repertoire, including …
• Novelist & ballad-collector Walter Scott - words
• Poet & Novelist James Hogg – words and tunes
• But what was the music like?

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Some examples
• Una of Ulva (Luineag Mhic Leod) AAII/13
• Does have intro/coda
• Moved beyond figured bass but clumsy harmony
• Oh, sweet is the feeling („Smi m‟ shuidh‟) AAII/2
• Same observations: inappropriate/unprepared
inversions, strange passing notes (but nice tune)
• When I was a wee thing (Oran sugradh) AAII/79
• Double-tonic tune: AC seems unsure how to handle it
• My Peggy, thou art gane away (AC‟s Gaelic; Hogg
English) AAII/25 dedicated to Sir John MacGregor Murray
• More effective

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R A SMITH – THE SCOTISH
MINSTREL
(Give or take a made-up song or two)

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Wild flowers,
honeycombs and jewels
• Metaphors inform us about audience expectation in early 19th
Century Scottish song collections
• Robert Archibald Smith, The Scotish Minstrel [sic] (1820-24)
• In 6 vols. Subsequently compiled 1-vol Irish Minstrel.
• Allan Cunningham, The Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern
(1825)

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Recurrent themes
• 1. Minstrels
• 2. Origins (minstrels, royalty, peasants)
• 3. Manner of presentation
• 4. Authenticity v. restorations/imitations

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Robert Archibald Smith
The Scotish Minstrel
How it was done
• Committee of ladies
• Lady Carolina Nairne
• (aka Mrs Bogan of
Bogan)
• Ballad-collector William
Motherwell involved at
least towards end.

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The significance of Paratext
• Floral & natural metaphors in The Scotish
Minstrel:
• „simple “breathings of nature”‟
• „Not a few of these wild flowers have been gathered from the
peasantry.‟
• Floral & natural metaphors in The Irish Minstrel:
• „our old national melodies are imperishable plants, unfading
evergreens…‟

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If you thought the minstrel theme had died
out …
• „There are some Scotch bards to whom we have not had
the courage to make any application; but if they would
twine a wreath for the Minstrel, proud would he be to wear
it.
• We now send him forth, „[…] to wander through the
mountains of his native land - to traverse the green wilds
of Erin, and the sequestered vales of Cambria; and, we
trust, he will be hospitably received “‟mong merry
England‟s cultured fields.”‟
• (The Scotish Minstrel I - Preface )

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Albyn’s Anthology and Scotish Minstrel –
both had links with contemporary poets
Flowers as metaphors The land as a metaphor
Lady Carolina Nairne & R A Smith Sir Walter Scott
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
The land as metaphor
„Like the natural free gifts of
Ballad collector William Motherwell Flora, these poetical garlands can
Minstrelsy Ancient and Modern, 1827 only be successfully sought for
where the land is uncultivated;
„Though the field in which many have and civilisation and increase of
reaped, may, by this time, be well learning are sure to banish
deemed nearly bare, yet much is still them, as the plough of the
left for future skill and industry to agriculturalist bears down the
glean. mountain daisy.‟

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Another theme: Nature v. artificiality
Ritson, Scotish Song (1794) Allan Cunningham, Songs of Scotland
• „beautiful peasant, in her • [Scottish muse]
homespun russet‟ • „the lyric muse of the north‟
• Compared with • „the muse of simple nature‟
• „the fine town lady, • Compared with
patched, powdered, and • „her more courtly sister of the
dressed out, for the ball or south‟
opera, in all the frippery of
fashion.‟

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The idea of buried treasure
• Cunningham indulged in fakery – confession alluded to
„planting‟ flowers and jewels (ie fake folksongs) for
others to find.
• R A Smith admitted to making up songs for his collection
and wrote to Motherwell that the preface had to mention
all the „fine airs produced and saved from oblivion.’
• Literary examples -
• Walter Scott
• James Hogg
• And others

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The results of R A Smith‟s efforts
• In far distant climes, Scottish Minstrel Vol.1 no.1
• Thy cheek is o’ the rose’s hue, Vol.4, no.1
• No intros/codas, but harmonically much more competent
• Some in Scots, some English (Lady Nairne‟s preference)
• Incidentally, he got into trouble with Thomas Moore over
his subsequent Irish Minstrel collection – copyright issues
involving material taken from Moore‟s Irish Melodies

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Changing attitudes
• Mid 1820s, much disapproval of fakery
• Mid 19th Century, fakery seen as creative endeavour.
• Eg, Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, May 1847, about
Cunningham‟s Scottish poems:-
• ‘They are no more imitations than the finest poems of
Burns, or Hogg, or Motherwell. […] every one of them
came direct from the heart of our beloved Allan, and are,
in their way, as truly original compositions as any burst
that ever yet was uttered by inspired poet under the
canopy of heaven.’

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MID 19TH CENTURY
The authoritative, competent
George Farquhar Graham, Songs of Scotland

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Cultural changes
• More acceptance of „fakery‟
• More insistence on authority
• Continuing insistence on propriety
• Replace words „unsuitable for the more fastidious taste of
the present day‟, „profane absurdity‟, „this very trashy
song‟

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The piano in the parlour
• Before mid-19th, subscription lists show who bought
collections
• Names begin to change from titled gentry, to
schoolmasters, clergy & female amateurs
• More didactic, and for domestic use.
• Middle-of-the-road, playable by average pianist
• … but more musically complex than Campbell or Smith‟s
collections
• Compilers - professionals

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G F Graham‟s collection - examples
• Gloomy winter’s now awa (setting by T M Mudie) Vol.1/6
• Commentary by G F Graham
• NB referencing earlier sources, including Alexander
Campbell, Gow, William Stenhouse‟s Illustrations
• Note how much more sophisticated setting is, & intro/coda etc.
• Tullochgorum Vol.4, no.1 (setting by G F Graham) Vol.1/52
• Again, commentary by G F Graham
• Acknowledges problematic implied harmony (the double tonic
Campbell struggled with)

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AND HOW TO ANNOY THE
NEIGHBOURS
William Chappell‟s Popular Music of the Olden Time
(1855-59)

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William Chappell
• English antiquarian (family publishing firm)
• Popular (ie national) music
• Old English ballads
• A Collection of National English Airs, consisting of Ancient
Song, Ballad, and Dance Tunes (1838-40)
• Substantially altered, became Popular Music of the Olden
Time (1855-59) – published in parts and then in 2 vols.
• Controversial

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Which neighbours? The Scottish ones
• Correspondence: significant Scots
• Chappell – Edinburgh librarian David Laing
• Chappell – Dundonian music seller, Andrew Wighton
• Wighton – Grumpy Aberdeen publisher, James Davie

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Cultural Nationalism (and the chip on
Chappell‟s English shoulder)
• We‟ve already noted C18th Scottish resentment of Union
with England;
• Lowland/Highland and Scots/English arguments over
Ossian;
• Late C18th and early C19th Irish anti-English feeling;
• Now English defensive about heritage
• And Scots resentful about Chappell‟s observations

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New edition
• After Chappell‟s death, book revised:
• Old English Popular Music
• Significant changes
Not much to say about C19th Scottish
collections?
• Clearly discernible changes
• Literary and cultural influences
• Cultural nationalism