Dr Karen McAulay explores the history of Scottish music collecting, publishing and national identity from the 18th to 20th centuries. Research Fellow at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, author of two Routledge monographs.
I couldn’t find a nice anniversary for yesterday, but I certainly have one for today, 28th December.
Journo, music critic, and Scottish song compiler George Farquhar Graham (1789-1867) was the editor of John Muir Wood’s long-lived song collection, Songs of Scotland, first published in 1848. As such, he featured heavily in my Our Ancient National Airs. But the book enjoyed an afterlife as one of Bayley and Ferguson’s handsome reprints – The Popular Songs and Melodies of Scotland – thus getting a mention in A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity, too.
Where’s all this going? Well, today is Graham’s 236th birthday – ‘Many happy returns, Sir!’
Followers of this blog will already know my penchant for anniversaries. This festive season, I’ve decided to indulge myself – and you, dear reader – with the kind of trivia that doesn’t make it into my research writing.
90 years ago today, Thomas Nelson editor Richard Wilson was languishing in hospital. (On Boxing Day – how miserable!) His daughter had been handling his correspondence whilst he was ill, so he could keep in contact with his boss. But by Boxing Day, he’d been able to check the page proofs of the Music Guide (a teaching manual) from his hospital bed.
Now, I know he was a dedicated soul – but I also know that the series editor (not his boss) of the teaching series, ‘Music Practice’, was agitating to get these books published as soon as possible. Sooner, if at all feasible!
Let’s hope Wilson’s efforts didn’t delay his recovery …
I just remembered a tiny detail about Sir John Macgregor Murray that didn’t make it into my recent Folk Music Journal article!
213 years ago today, we’d have found him at his writing desk, Christmas Day or not. He was writing to Lewis Gordon about,
‘inspecting the Materials collected by the Society.’
This was in connection with the Gaelic dictionary project. In fairness, they didn’t make a big splash of Christmas then. At least he was doing something he enjoyed!
***
‘Sir John Macgregor Murray: Preserver of Highland Culture, Music and Song’. Folk Music Journal vol. 13 no.1, pp.50-63.
170 years ago today, antiquarian ballad and song collector William Chappell sent an unintentionally incendiary letter to Andrew Wighton!
It is difficult to find really good tunes of this early date, because there is so little genuine Scotch music in print – although plenty of Anglo-Scottish.
Sparks flew in Dundee. How dare Mr Chappell suggest that much of Scotland’s song repertoire wasn’t really Scottish, but some kind of English-worked mishmash? Sparks also flew in Aberdeen, when Chappell’s song-collection was published, on account of his extensive annotations.
This is actually part of a larger story, which I explored in the final chapter of my first book, Our Ancient National Airs: Scottish Song Collecting from the Enlightenment to the Romantic Era. Chapter 8 is headed,
William Chappell, English antiquarian and song collector; author of Popular Music of the Olden Times;
Andrew Wighton, Scottish shopkeeper and song-collector in Dundee (his amazing collection was bequeathed to the city, and The Wighton Collection is now in the Central Library);
James Davie, crusty old Aberdonian musician and song-collector, fiercely patriotic and with a strong dislike of Chappell and all that he stood for;
David Laing, Edinburgh librarian, authority on Scottish literature and songs, and altogether good chap, generous in sharing his knowledge.
If you’re interested in learning more, my book is available in quite a few libraries or in paperback, e-book or Kindle format. Chappell’s collection is also readily available.
This morning saw the arrival of the latest issue of The Magic Lantern (no.45, December 2025) containing my article, ‘”Heart-Moving Stories” Illustrated by Magic Lantern’. I’m grateful to have had this opportunity to share a favourite bit of research, to which I alluded briefly in my recent monograph.
‘”Heart-Moving Stories” Illustrated by Magic Lantern’, The Magic Lantern no.45 (Dec 2025), pp. 11-12.
My next research project requires ethical approval – interviewing real live people rather than writing about people long since departed. And it’s imperative that I get my submission in on time, since the next meeting of our ethics committee is early next year.
I’ve been working on it for weeks. (Admittedly, I’m a part-time research fellow, so I technically have only 10.5 hours a week to get my research activities done. Yes, we all know that the reality is different!) Anyway, yesterday was my own deadline: it just happened to be the last day we’re open before Christmas, and the morning after my last working day this year.
Efficiency (and Thoroughness)
There’s only one way to fill in a form efficiently, and that’s to make sure every question is answered satisfactorily. To this end, I go through and make myself a list of the information I must provide. Over the past few weeks, I assembled the info. Attachments were created and labelled. And here’s where Tuesday (not a ‘work’ day) and Thursday came unstuck. I wanted to have a particular collection of old newspaper excerpts to share as an interview prompt. Finding and listing them was easy enough. Formatting the document in Word, though? With clips of the excerpts? It took hours!
Have I Forgotten Anything?
Finally satisfied, I turned back to the form. And there – I swear they weren’t there when I initially saved it! – were a couple more questions with grey-shaded boxes requiring answers. And attachments. What a good thing I double-checked. ✔️
It’s done. Phew! Details of whom I hope to interview, what I’ll be asking, and how I’ll save and use the gathered information, are all itemised.
And … breathe!
I submitted it. Ensured everyone involved could access it. At last, I can stop thinking about it until after Christmas!
Now, where’s the domestic to-do list (all the stuff I need to do, because no-one else will think about it) …?
‘All good things must come to an end’, as the saying goes. And an IASH Postdoctoral Research Fellowship is a thoroughly good thing. I handed back my keys with sadness today, but I have had a great year. (The Fellowship was technically six months, but I was graciously permitted to hang around, retaining the use of my office for the rest of the year, which was wonderful, and enabled me to continue data-gathering in the Library’s Heritage Collections.)
19th meets 20th century Looking back …Last glance from bus stop St Patrick’s Square
If you are looking for a next step after your PhD, or if like me, you’re making a change of direction – or need a spell concentrating on a particular research question in the Humanities – do consider applying.
I devoted my time to examining the archives of the Edinburgh publishers, Thomas Nelson. I initially entitled my project, ‘From National Songs to Nursery Rhymes, and Discussion Books to Dance Bands: investigating Thomas Nelson’s Musical Middle Ground’, but the nursery rhymes turned out to be poems, and weren’t what I had in mind! The rest? Yes, I researched them.
I found quite a bit of correspondence between Thomas Nelson’s editors, authors and compilers, which was gratifying. I was able to trace material in journals that I would not have had access to, had I not been in Edinburgh; there’s the excellent University Library collection of actual and digital resources, and the National Library of Scotland just down the road.
I have deferred commencing any significant written work until I had explored all the potentially relevant materials in the files. I believe I’ve now reached that point. As a result of conducting this research, I have ideas for extending my research in new directions, and I’m contemplating writing another book, so I need not only to explore potential audiences, but also to start working on a book proposal
However, I have also applied for and recently won an Athenaeum Award from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland to enable me to conduct an oral history project. This work, to be conducted in 2026, will hopefully enable me to write a final chapter for my proposed monograph. (I’ll be blogging about this before too long, but there are things I need to do first, before I spill the beans!)
I have benefited from being part of a research community, hearing other scholars’ papers and discussing our research; and attending researcher development sessions. I was able to focus on my new direction as a researcher – important, after so many years as an ‘alt-ac’ researcher working in professional services. In this regard, I have also been in a position to submit some other unrelated work for publication, and I spoke at a conference at the University of Sussex in June, all of which gives me a sense that my research is gathering momentum.
Today, my last day, I took a cake to the University Library’s Heritage Collections; went to IASH’s Christmas lunch; and mulled over aspects of my ethical approval submission for my next project. (Oh, and drank quite a bit of coffee!)
Thank you so very much for a great year, IASH!
IASH (Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities)
Anyone looking at my publication record is soon going to be mightily confused. The article about Sir John Macgregor Murray concerns a Highlander who lived from 1745-1822. I wrote it at a time when I was still researching Scottish music collecting and publishing in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries.
Today, I received the final proofs for the next extensive article. This time, it’s about Scotswomen with portfolio music careers in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries. (Two of them were of English parentage, but let’s not quibble!) A spin-off from my latest book, in the sense that I turned my focus onto a number of individuals who had hung around in the shadows of the book, this article extends over some 22 pages, and luckily there wasn’t a great deal needing changing in the proofs. But the instructions for using the proofing system extended over 49 pages, and there was also a ten-step quick tour of the process. I nearly had a fit at the sight of the former, but the latter told me nearly all I needed to know. Job done.
There are still more articles in the pipeline; I’ll flag them up as they come along! Meanwhile, there’s the small matter of Christmas requiring my attention during the semi-retired part of my existence, not to mention the continued tidying up of our poor scarred, rewired residence! But first, I need stamps …
Image: Glasgow Athenaeum, forerunner of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (Wikimedia Commons) – where two of ‘my’ musical ladies received their advanced musical training.
Finally, an article from me after a long spell of apparent silence. ‘Sir John Macgregor Murray: Preserver of Highland Culture, Music and Song’. Folk Music Journal vol. 13 no.1, pp.50-63.
The article started out as a conference paper, but I felt it deserved a wider audience. Let me share the abstract:-
Abstract
Sir John MacGregor Murray is known by Scottish music historians as the man who retrieved Joseph Macdonald’s Compleat Theory of the Scots Highland Bagpipe. This act of transmitting a work about Highland culture was just one instance of the Highland chieftain’s involvement in facilitating the artistic output of his native country. A founder member of the Highland Society of Scotland, he traversed the Highlands in pursuit of James Macpherson’s Ossian poetry, assisted song collector Alexander Campbell in planning his own itinerary in the Highlands and Western Isles, and helped establish a piping competition in Edinburgh. Sir John was one of a number of individuals who played a mediatory role in the collecting and publication of Scottish music. This article outlines Sir John’s role in the codifying and promotion of Highland culture, embracing literary as much as musical endeavours. It also introduces some of the other individuals who played a similar role in Scotland during the Georgian and Victorian eras.
I’ve proof-read an article for The Magic Lantern; navigated Cambridge University Press’s article dashboard for my impending RMA Research Chronicle article; signed an ‘Ironclad’ contract; updated my Pure (institutional repository) account; signed up to a short online course in connection with next year’s research project; and attended a meeting.
It feels as though it’s been a busy morning. One could argue that it has been more administrative than actual research work, but research doesn’t get done without a secure administrative foundation, so that’s good enough for me.
Post-Rewiring?
I’d best describe my mental state as ‘fragile, but functional’! But I’m getting there.
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 