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.
Four years ago, I gave a conference paper with this title. Time passed before I found it a home as a published article, but I’m pleased to say that it is now published in Brio, Vol.63 no.1, pp.13-30.
Brio is the professional journal of IAML(UK & Irl), the British and Irish branch of the International Association of Music Libraries. It’s a fitting home for an article about a Scottish song collection of a rather distinctive nature.
I’ve added the article details to my RCS Pure page, and I’ll also list it here on my Publications page and on ResearchGate. If you’d like to read it but can’t access it, do drop me a line via my ‘Join the Conversation’ page on this blog.
Abstract
‘The introduction to the musical world of yet another collection of Scots songs may possibly in certain quarters seem to demand something in the nature of an apology’, said editor James Wood in his 1908 preface. Wood’s collection is intriguing. The clumsily-worded title on the cover incorporates an embossed lozenge/roundel of Edinburgh’s Dunedin cross. Although Wood compiled the collection, he collaborated with a musical editor, Learmont Drysdale, and another eleven Scottish musicians are acknowledged. His own identity is a bit of a mystery. The book’s scarcity is also noteworthy; it was possibly a short print-run. Well-intentioned, it perhaps lacked general appeal, and paratextual clues bear out the assertion that this highbrow, specialist publication may not have sold very well.
Whilst the rain pours and a breeze gets up outside, I decided that today was definitely a day for indoor pursuits, and – with my mind on a forthcoming lecture – I thought it was time to look at a volume which is quite the most unexpected of all the Scottish song books in my collection. My interest was in the motivation for its compilation. I love working out what the compiler had in mind, and who his intended audience might be.
The whole book was ‘printed for the proprietors’ by McCorquodale & Co., Ltd and Aird & Coghill, (letterpress and music respectively) both in Glasgow. It’s a scruffy old tome – I really haven’t looked at it closely before, largely because it looks so unappealing from the outside. It was clearly compiled for advertising purposes, and I didn’t expect to find much of note inside. Don’t get too excited about the ‘Gaelic’, though. It’s the name of a brand of whisky…
The Gaelic Hotch Potch of Story, Song and Music from Scotland, by J. Murray Mackenzie (4th ed.) Stirling, 1895
Diagonally across the cover, is printed a strip of the compiler’s family tartan. (I’ve written before about the obsession with tartan on this kind of book. It would have appealed to the target audience.) This 4th edition was published in Stirling in January 1895. However, a notice in the Indian Daily News (30 Oct 1895) says that the book is in its fourth year of publication, so I imagine it first came out ca. 1891.
The National Library of Scotland has the only library copy – of the subsequent, 5th edition, which dates from 1911. By this time it was entitled The Gaelic Old Smuggler hotch-potch, which actually tells you all you need to know. It is connected with a whisky company, The Stirling Bonding Company, Ltd. (My heroines, poet Mary Ann and her composer daughter Rose Smith would not have been impressed, being firmly committed the temperance movement!) Anyway, my 1895 copy informs the reader that,
The “Gaelic” Whisky and “Old Smuggler” bottle are both registered, and we warn those infringing the above trademarks in any way, that they will at once be proceeded against.
Mr Mackenzie declares in the ‘Introductory’ preface that ‘many friends’ had requested this fourth edition. He describes it quite accurately, as,
… a short collection of familiar Scotch Songs, Highland Music, and Stories of an anecdotal character associated with the district of Stirling, interspersed with a few facts about Scotch Whisky, and Recipes for Haggis, Scones, Porridge, and Oat-Cakes, in truth, a veritable Hotch-Potch. Many of the anecdotes are old […] To some they may not be “cauld kail”. To the many I trust they may have more than a mere passing interest, and may serve to carry their fancies back to “Bonnie Scotland”, the land of their birth.
For the Overseas Market
Aha! This book is for the ex-pat in the Scottish diaspora. It wasn’t just advertised in India – I found it advertised in New Zealand, too. Even into the 1940s-50s, this “Gaelic Whisky” and “Old Smuggler” went to Australia and America, and plenty of ephemera can be found on eBay accordingly. There’s far less ephemera to be found on home ground, and the book itself appears to be quite rare.
My copy, which was priced at four shillings, is dedicated to the Directors of the Stirling Bonding Company, Limited, as a mark of the compiler’s ‘appreciation of [their] endeavours to maintain the character of true Scotch Whisky abroad, and upright dealings at home.’
The Compiler, J. Murray Mackenzie
Restaurateur?
Despite his ‘Introductory’ being signed ‘Stirling, 1895’, Mr J. Murray Mackenzie is not easy to track down, but I don’t think he published any other books of Scottish songs and tunes. Did he work for Stirling Bonding Company, or maybe have something to do with their advertising? He was not amongst the senior managers who signed an agreement to become part of a larger company in 1896. I’m intrigued! Despite AI having suggested he was an Edinburgh architect, I’m more inclined to think he’s the man who, having previously been an invalid attendant for some years, got a public house licence for wine and beer in Edinburgh in 1910, and was described as a restaurateur from 1912 onwards. This bloke lived from 1859-1928, so he’d have been 32 in 1891. I haven’t yet linked him to any music making, but this does at least link him to alcohol supply! It’s feasible. *
Piper? Highland Dancer?
But please don’t take my word for it – it’s such a common name! There was also a Glasgow John Mackenzie who won prizes for piping and Highland dancing at Highland games and gatherings, certainly from 1889 onwards. It would be nice if it were the same man, but first we’d have to explain why he was in Glasgow. (And I found a married John Mackenzie, recent Piper to the Caledonian Asylum in London, in spring 1880, but the Edinburgh man that I found first was ‘John M. Mackenzie’, and a bachelor when he married in 1894, so that tends to rule out the earlier London-based Scot.)
Contents
So, what have we got here?
Introductory
Recipe for Scotch Haggis by Mistress Meg Dods of the Cleikum Inn, St Ronan’s (Vegetarians might turn the page quickly here! It’s detailed. Meg Dods was the proprietor of the Inn as early as 1823 and seemingly published a cookery book in 1827.
Recipe for Scones by Mary Fraser. I’d have tried this for you, but I don’t have any sour buttermilk, nor a hot girdle. Shame.
Recipe for Oat-Cakes by Kirsty MacDonald. (Same problem – no hot girdle.)
Recipe for Porridge, by every Decent Scotch Woman.
An “End” at a Curling Match. [Comic Dialogue]
The Dangers of Tea-Drinking. Reprinted from a leading article in the “Glasgow Herald”, 31st December, 1894.
Scotch Whisky. By a Highland Malt Distiller. The opening sentence tells you all you need to know:- ‘[…] in the East it is the universal medical opinion that throughout the tropics a moderate use of alcohol is most necessary to the maintenance of sound health in a tropical resident.’ [Six sides of text, including an advertising puff for the “Gaelic” Whisky, advice and illustrations as to how to tap and store whisky in casks. Extravagant advertising copy is nothing new, either:-
Made in the lonely highlands of Scotland from pure hill water, far removed from the smoke of large cities, distilled from Scotch barley and bere […] This small species of barley, as grown on the upland soils, is sweeter and makes finer whisky than the heavy barley grown in the lowlands. Foreign barley we never touch – thus assuring the quality of our whisky. […]
A full-page cartoon of a kilted Highlander seated on a cask, warming his feet on a candle stuck in a “Gaelic” whisky bottle
18 pages of ‘local anecdotes’ – 45 of them.
Dance Tunes, Marches, Laments & Songs
And then, at last, we reach the Highland Music. There’s a brief introduction advising the reader that the music is arranged ‘in sets for a full Highland Reel’ – a strathspey to be slowly played four times, followed by a reel, quickly ditto, and another strathspey, slowly ditto.
‘And lastly, the Reel of Tulloch or Hullachan is played as often as the spirit of the dancers can keep it up. I have seen it played for thirty minutes, till couple by couple dropped out.’
Now, gentle reader, here’s the surprise. There are twelve sets of dances provided, and the Reel of Tulloch is repeated at the end of every single set. Wow! So, that’s pp.2-27 taken care of. There’s more.
pp. 2-27 Reels and strathspeys
pp. 28-38 Marches
pp.38-43 Pibrochs [sic]. Note that these piobaireachds are in piano settings – they’re not written for bagpipe performance.
pp. 44-50 Laments
pp. 52-100 Songs
So, is there anything noteworthy about the contents? The first thing that hit me was that there are just the titles of the dance tunes or songs, and no attributions, So, if you wanted something by Robert Burns or James Hogg … you’d have to know that already, because the book won’t tell you. Burns is well represented amongst the songs.
There is no index or contents page.
The accompaniments for the dances are fairly basic, but grace notes are indicated. Meanwhile, the song accompaniments are competent, and generally don’t mirror the vocal line. Some of the dances have dynamics indicated, whilst the songs have both dynamics and Italian tempo markings.
Mackenzie must have had a sense of humour, as the first dance in the book is a strathspey entitled ‘Highland Whisky’. The first lament? ‘The Gaelic bottle’s done’, marked ‘Slow’. And the final song in the book? ‘O, Willie brew’d a peck o’ maut’, sung appropriately enough in an ‘Allegro gioviale’ tempo.
Whilst most of the tunes, including ‘Highland Whisky’, are pre-existent tunes, I rather suspect that ‘The Gaelic bottle’s done’ and ‘Mackenzie’s Lament’ might be newly-written. ‘Mackenzie’s Lament’ is certainly neither of the versions I found online. (There could be a few other tunes hiding, but I’m disinclined to check out every single tune!) And I believe the pibroch ‘Cabar Feidh’ has a connection with the Highland Mackenzie clan
O, Willie Brew’d a Peck o’ Maut
Absent Friends
Unusually, there is no ‘Auld Lang’, and no, ‘Oh, why left I my Hame’. For a book destined to be sent overseas, it’s surprisingly unsentimental!
The Book’s Afterlife?
I think I may have found a newspaper report of a lady in New Zealand actually using this book. I’ll share the news-clip, which made me both smile, and wince slightly for the long-suffering congregation! It’s in the Papers Past database from New Zealand’s National Library (Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume LXX, Issue 4260, 10 December 1912, Page 2). The ‘Lament for the Dead on the Battlefield’ and ‘Mackintosh’s Lament’ are on consecutive pages in the collection I’ve been describing:-
My copy of this book is old and battered. However, I like to think that it has enjoyed an active, possibly rather merry life …
* The AI link to an Eastern European website does name the compilation under the later edition’s title, but their Murray Mackenzie would still have been a schoolboy when he compiled the 1891 first edition!
There’s more about the Stirling Bonding Company on the Bay Bottles website, explicitly emphasising the exporting activity.
And … going off at a complete tangent, I saw a headline in The Herald newspaper today (29 October 2026), saying that tax on whisky is now 74 pence in the pound. I’m certainly no economist, nor a whisky connoisseur, but I was curious to know how this compared with 1895. Oh my goodness! Tax was then 25% or 30%. Mr Mackenzie and the directors of the Stirling Bonding Company would have been most alarmed.
I’ve started writing an article about the Leng Scots Song contests. I haven’t yet decided where it’s going to be submitted, or how long it’ll be! I just want to get a rough draft done first. But what I do know is that I’ve got exactly 12.4 hours of recorded interviews absolutely laden with interesting anecdotes about how the competitors decided what to sing, how they felt about standing up and singing unaccompanied, and lots, lots more. Only earlier this week, I heard from a relative of someone who entered in 1931. I was able to provide them with a photo of the youthful competitor, making for one very happy relative. I feel as though I’ve done a ‘good deed’ this week!
I have lists (of course I have lists; you can’t beat a good list!) of songs, and interviewees, and schools, and song books – sifting through all my gathered information is quite a herculean task in itself.
And now – talking about writing – I’m heading out to a calligraphy class tonight. It’ll be fun to focus on the physical art of putting ink on a page, after a day toiling over a laptop and deciding what to write about, in which order!
Postscript. On second thoughts … the clumsy, left-handed child that I was, came back to haunt me this evening. There will be no elegant copperplate from me, tomorrow or any time in the future. (But I can type very fast …)
WordPress reminded me today about a blog post that I originally wrote three years ago for WhittakerLive, the Whittaker Library blog.
I shared it again in 2024, and because I am an admirer of Francis George Scott’s work arranging Scottish songs, I thought it would be worth airing again today.
To recap – I have done oral history interviews with a number of people who participated in Dundee’s Leng Medal competitions for Scots song singing – mostly as children, but a few teachers have also talked with me. I’ve checked the transcriptions of 25 out of the total 27 interviews, and I also have a few emailed responses too. If you’re one of the people I’ve interviewed or emailed, then can I offer a big thank you, right now, because I now have lots and lots of information and memories. I really am very grateful. I couldn’t have done this without you. You’ve shared your memories, you’ve made me smile, and some of you have even sung to me. Who could ask for more generosity of spirit than that?
So, what’s next?
Writing. (Writing for the popular, non-academic press, and then writing a book chapter.)
An event, hopefully. Still under discussion.
A book about Thomas Nelson’s educational music publishing, or something along those lines.
And I have more than one string to my bow. I’m also still researching …
The Trumpet Major’s Youngest Daughter
Slightly crumpled conference bag (it has already endured both London and Scottish rain!)
After my talk at the recent Royal Academy of Music conference, Women and Musical Histories, 1789-1914, I have continued researching Rose Smith’s life. I’ve already found out more, and tomorrow I’m off to consult an archive where I hope some of my still outstanding questions might be answered. I foresee a [second, more focused] research trip to Rose’s birthplace in the near future, before our Scottish days get short and wintry!
I’d also like to organise another event! But I really must focus on getting the Dundee research written up and celebrated before I get consumed by this other research thread.
It’s a good thing I’m semi-retired, really! If I was still cataloguing jazz CDs in the library, I certainly wouldn’t have time to plan research expeditions without taking annual leave.
I was playing through some of the songs in Song Gems (Scots) last night. My attention was taken by a song here entitled ‘Mary in Heaven’, set to a tune called ‘Mary’s Dream’. This is a Scottish song – nothing whatsoever to do with the Annunciation in the Biblical New Testament. Rather, it’s a song written by John Lowe in the late 18th century, in which a bereaved Scottish girl has a visitation from her dead fiance’s ghost; it was written for a real person whose fiance had died. You can look it up – there are numerous instances of it in old Scottish song books. Antiquarian John Glen’s collection, now in the National Library of Scotland – and digitised – holds plenty of copies. As well as collecting and writing about Scottish songs, Glen was a friend of the compilers of Song Gems (Scots).
Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum ,Vol.1
It was in James Johnson’ Scots Musical Museum, and George Farquhar Graham included it in his Songs of Scotland, published by John Wood (latterly by Bayley & Ferguson as The Popular Songs and Melodies of Scotland).
Suffice to say, I fell in love with this tune! It begins in the minor, goes into the relative major and back, and dallies with the submediant in the second half – it’s beautifully constructed. But how could I use it? I worked out the meter, and after a bit of digging, found the words of an old hymn in the same meter, which were eminently suitable for an introit. I’ve added sparing choral harmonies, and obviously it won’t have soloistic ornamention. But I’m still quite pleased with the results.
And so it shall come about that ‘Mary in Heaven’ will most acceptably be sung in a Presbyterian church …
Here’s Anita Rosati’s gorgeous April 2026 recording of ‘Mary’s Dream’:-
I’m not a Luddite, and I fully appreciate that AI can do truly remarkable things – but I don’t entirely trust AI. It gets things wrong. It disrespects the concept of intellectual property. And it has the capacity to perpetuate fallacies – attributed and unattributed – on a scale which gives me misgivings for the work of future scholars.
To my horror, I found a tiny example of this today. I had trusted a Google AI summary. Yes, I know – it was reprehensible, and I should have known better. It was when I was writing my posting about ‘Durisdeer’.
Correct
Kenneth McKellar did indeed sing it – you saw the YouTube video that I shared.
Incorrect
Now then, a recording of a modern Scottish song by Kenneth McKellar was certainly used over the opening credits of a film in 1963. However, that modern Scottish song was not ‘Durisdeer’, which as we know, was a Victorian creation by Lady John Scott. Google’s AI summary put two and two together and made five. I was somewhat alarmed to discover that by repeating this fallacy, my blog post was now highlighted as an authoritative statement about it.
I have now corrected my earlier posting about ‘Durisdeer’, ensuring that I have not perpetuated the hallucination connecting the man-and-the song, with the man-and-a-different-song-and-a film. As attractive and appealing as the hallucination was, it was just plain wrong.
Yes, I’m on holiday! So I’ll keep this brief, but I have to share this: the postie has just delivered my author’s copy of Print and Tourism: Travel-Related Publications from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century / ed. Catherine Armstrong and Elaine Jackson.
My contribution is Chapter 8, The Glories of Scotland in Picture and Song: Jumping on the Festival of Britain Bandwagon (pp.187 – 205). It enabled me to write more about this Mozart Allan publication than I was able to justify in last year’s monograph about Scottish music publishers. I’m very happy indeed to have this chapter in Vol.7 of the Printing History and Culture series.
It’s important always to bear in mind the wide range of music that can be described as Scottish. It’s certainly not just folksy-sounding songs from farm workers of long ago! Styles have changed, and tastes varied over the centuries. And as I demonstrate here, different types and classes of people made contributions of a more or less lasting kind.
One Single Song
It’s so easy to go chasing after red herrings! This time it was a single song, and I only looked it up because I didn’t recognise the title. I think I’ll stop with what I’ve found out – quite enough for my purposes.
Lady John Scott (1810–1900)
Going through the Leng Gold Medal shortleets (Scots for ‘shortlists’) – I several times encountered a song that I hadn’t any recollection of seeing before: Lady John Scott’s ‘Durisdeer’.
Lady John Scott – born Alicia Ann Spottiswoode – was born in Berwickshire, now referred to as the Scottish Borders. She was a composer and poet, and enthusiastic about Scottish heritage – indeed she was the first female Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
Ought I to have known more about her? Arguably not. She’s famous for one particular song, ‘Annie Laurie’, out of those that have actually been published. In fact, the Scottish Poetry Library website says that she ‘rewrote’ the words to ‘Annie Laurie’.
‘Durisdeer’
We’ll meet nae mair at sunset, when the weary day is done …
Opening lines of ‘Durisdeer’, by Lady John Scott
I was, in fact, wrong about not having encountered ‘Durisdeer’ before, though, because it’s in a couple of song-books in the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Since I indexed most of the Scottish song books in the library – an activity which certainly paid off, because it means that ‘my’ Scottish song index is constantly, and universally available – it follows that I have almost certainly indexed those two instances of ‘Durisdeer’. However, I would have had no reason at the time to have noticed this particular song, which appears to have been published once in London by Lonsdale, ca.1850 (the Whittaker Library hasn’t got that one), and then by Glasgow and London firm Paterson ca.1910 in Lady John Scott’s Thirty Songs, and again by Paterson in the New Scottish Orpheus Vol.3 in 1937. The Thirty Songs must also have been reissued ca.1930-31, for I found a review of it in Music and Letters, April 1931. (More of that anon!)
Significantly, the person at the head of Paterson’s was John Michael Diack, who was a teacher at the Glasgow Athenaeum School of Music and later became Superintendent of Music for Glasgow, as well as being Paterson’s editor. (He gets several mentions in my Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity, now available in paperback). Diack’s inclusion of this song in two Scottish song compilations (the one by Lady John Scott herself, and the New Scottish Orpheus) would also have helped bring it both to music teachers’ and to singers’ attention.
Kenneth McKellar popularised it in the late 1950s. Probably as a result of this, it began to appear in music festivals! I found it in the Leng Gold Medal shortleets from 1968 onwards – it could have been sung before that, but detailed records only survive from 1967 onwards. It was also sung in the nearby Arbroath Musical Festival in 1959, and in Perthshire festivals in the 1950-60s. I’m sure it must have been sung in a number of music festivals, but I’ve done enough searching!
Kenneth McKellar sings ‘Durisdeer’
‘Durisdeer’ is a pretty piece. It’s named after the place by that name, has Scottish lyrics, and is by a Scottish woman composer, but it’s not what you’d call a ‘traditional’ folk song. Whilst it undeniably is Scottish, it doesn’t sound very Scottish, apart from the use of Scottish dialect and a gapped melodic outline at the midway and final cadences of this two-verse song.
Mind you, I have mused and written often enough about what actually counts as Scottish, concluding that a bit like beauty, Scottishness is in the eye (ear) of the beholder.
Anyway, back (briefly) to the review of Lady John Scott’s Thirty Songs. This reassures me that, for all ‘Durisdeer’ is tuneful enough, I don’t need to feel too bad about not having known it:-
Lady John Scott: Songs (including Annie Laurie). She wrote the tune and fabricated the words of one immortal thing. This volume shows that as long as she stuck to Scots sentiments things went well. There is nothing here to equal ‘Annie Laurie,’ but still some pleasant things remain. [Paterson.]
Music and Letters, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Apr., 1931), p.214, Review by ‘Sc.G.’
‘Sc.G.’ was Scott Goddard (1895-1965), a music critic and Walford Davies’ assistant at Temple Church. He had studied at the Royal College of Music. I don’t know about the other 28 songs in the book. If, like ‘Durisdeer’, they’re ‘pleasant things’ rather than an ‘immortal thing’, then at least Goddard and I agree!
(The Scottish Orpheus Vol.3 is still available, now distributed by Novello.)
My Leng Medal Memories research is funded by an Athenaeum Award from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
It’s fair enough to say that I find spreadsheets endlessly fascinating, although I don’t use them for number-crunching. However, they’re invaluable for comparing data. In fact, I discovered this before I even knew the word, ‘spreadsheet’, since I did some repertoire comparison for my Masters research degree on mediaeval English plainsong uses at the University of Exeter in 1979-80. It was a 60K-word Masters thesis – I’d intended to continue it to doctoral level, but decided instead to write it up as a Masters then changed subject for the PhD. (And that became my first doctoral attempt, the one that never got finished.)
Computer printout from my Masters thesis, 1980
This was before the era of personal computers. My data was tabulated manually on a very long roll of kitchen shelf-lining paper, which opened out the full length of the Music departmental library in ‘Knightley’ on Streatham Drive. I compared post-Pentecostal Alleluias and sequences from various English liturgical manuscripts, along with pieces of plainsong from an Augustinian burial rite, now in Shrewsbury public school library. That’s nearly as much as you need to know about my Masters!
Just a Roll of Paper!
Computer Science? Yes, Indeed!
However, one other interesting fact is that I was the first music postgrad to involve the Computer Science department in my repertoire analysis. I filled in cards – or forms, can’t remember which – which were input by the computer scientists to arrive at statistics as to how much different categories of plainsong correlated in terms of repertoire, across different monastic orders and geographic locations.
Karen Elisabeth Manley, English mediaeval liturgies and their plainsong. Exeter, 1980.
The Magical Microsoft Excel
Since my second incarnation as a musicologist in the present century, I’m sure you can imagine how exciting it has been to be able to compare repertoires of Scottish song in a variety of different contexts. But this time I can save my spreadsheets safely – they’re much more portable and more readily manipulable.
In the context of my Leng Medal research, my ‘cup truly overfloweth’ this week, since I’ve seen lists of songs sung, enabling me to see how tastes have changed over the past sixty or so years. I’ve been comparing what was sung, against a few different song books available at particular times. Obviously, I can’t compare ALL the songs against ALL the song books that exist – I would surely go insane! Indeed, I couldn’t even capture ALL the data for every single year over that period – I simply didn’t have time. But carefully judged snapshots are certainly giving me food for thought. I’ve had endless fun today, producing charts and tables to examine the data in different ways.
The Most Popular Songs sung by Leng Gold Medal Finalists
Oh, did you think I was going to tell you which they were? Sorry, not at the moment – I need to keep specifics for when I write my research up later! It’s certainly interesting, though.
I only picked nine different years for close examination. Suffice to say, they have given me plenty of hard data to set my oral history interviews in context.
And not a roll of shelf-lining paper in sight nowadays!
My Leng Medal Memories research is funded by an Athenaeum Award from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
