Chasing After Ossian: the Impossible Mission

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Today, I went to the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland (the successor to the Highland Society of Scotland) to explore various manuscripts in their archives.  In my search for documentation about Sir John Macgregor Murray’s Gaelic interests, I felt it only right that I should inspect these mss to see if they shed any more light on the man and his obsessions.

As well as letters by Sir John, I looked at someone else’s 1807 tour of the Highlands in search of Ossianic “reciters”.  Mr Stewart referred to himself as the “Tourist” in his list of interviews with twenty different individuals from all walks of life.  Oral history transcription never was straightforward, and poor Mr Stewart didn’t have it easy at all! When you imagine this kind of activity being pursued by a number of “tourists” over several years, as they endeavoured to prove what exactly James Macpherson had used back in 1760, it’s not too hard to extrapolate a complex picture of overlapping expeditions, and I wonder how many people got sick and tired of being interviewed, cajoled into reciting their precious repertoire, or declining more or less graciously to cooperate!

I shared some of Mr Stewart’s experiences on a Twitter stream this evening.  It’s really going off at a bit of a tangent, considering he only alluded to Sir John three times, but I was interested because of my own doctoral researches into the musical side of Scottish song collecting.

Anyway, here’s the story as it appears on Twitter:- My curated Twitter “Moment”

Incidentally, Friends of Wighton associate, harpist Simon Chadwick has shared with me some live recordings of Ossianic verse being declaimed in more recent years – I’ll share his link, and you can explore it for yourself! Early Gaelic Harp Info: Lays: Recordings

Image: ‘Ossian Relating the Fate of Oscar to Malvina’ – from The Poems of Ossian by James Macpherson -artist, William Brockedon, via ArtUK

 

Invaluable Resource: The Stationers Company Archive 1554-1984, by Robin Myers

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

robin myers book coverBy and large, this book is aimed at book and publishing historians – it enumerates the contents of the Stationers’ Company Archive from 1554-1984, at Stationers’ Hall. The compiler, Robin Myers, was for a long time Honorary Archivist there. (She has the status of Liveryman at the Stationers’ Company.)

Not the first attempt at documenting this complex body of material, but certainly the most comprehensive, I commend especially the Preface (xiii-xiv) and Introduction xvii-xxxvii), which gives an overview of the history of the Archive. Significantly, the creation of a proper muniment room in 1949 made visits more convenient for researchers, and also saw the awakening interest of musicologists looking for first London editions by famous composers.

Next, cast your eye over the Contents, and in particular Section I – the Entry Books of Copies & Register Books 1557-1842; Registers of Books Sent to Deposit Libraries 1860-1924; a Cash Book & Copyright Ledger Book 1895-1925; and Indexes of Entry Books 1842-1907 appear between pp.21-30. The Entry Books cover several years at a time for the earliest period, and a couple of years at a time for the era that our project has been covering. As I may have mentioned already, I’m quite interested in the book commencing June 1817, and we find in the listing that the wording, ‘Published by the author and his property’ “begins to appear not infrequently in this volume.” This would seem to imply a greater sense of intellectual property, although there may be another more technical explanation of which I’m not aware!

Much of the rest of the book concerns leases, freedoms, wardens’ vouchers and other documentation which are maybe of little concern to the average musicologist, but it would do no harm to glance through the contents if only so that you know what else is there. A complicated web of documentation of which many of us are blissfully unaware!

Myers, Robin (ed.) The Stationers’ Company Archive 1554-1984 (Winchester: St Paul’s Bibliographies, 1990) ISBN 0906795710

The records of the Stationers’ Company are now available as digital images via publisher Adam Matthew: Literary Print Culture: the Stationers’ Company Archive, 1554-2007. As well as the records themselves, there’s also a wealth of background information, including commentary by Robin Myers. You can view a short YouTube video here.