Ramsay’s ‘The Gentle Shepherd’ Songs

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Reaching the end of my recent cataloguing project – the gift of a number of books of old Scottish music – I must confess I left what looked like the most miscellaneous, worn, unbound pieces until last. Late on Friday afternoon, I had observed that one such piece had a pencil note at the head – ‘Music for The Gentle Shepherd, Foulis edition, 1788’. Now, this is a famous ballad opera by Allan Ramsay.  It was so popular that my colleague Brianna Robertson-Kirkland writes that there were 86 editions of  The Gentle Shepherd, 66 of them the ballad opera. Initially, the songs only indicated the name of the tune to use, and different editions have more or less songs. The 1788 edition contains a full vocal score of the songs, and that’s what we’ve got. My guess is that the last owner bought the 18 pages which someone had previously separated from the back of the larger original volume.

I haven’t made a study of it myself, but I do recognise the opera and its songs as very significant in the history of Scottish music – and this edition has particular importance.  So, if this gathering of pages was so important, it would benefit from a  decent catalogue entry.

The pages are numbered 1-18.  With no title-page, still less a cover, to give me further clues, it wasn’t a task for 4.30 on a Friday afternoon, but it very definitely was one for a Monday morning.

A bit of digging around soon found me another library’s catalogue record of Ramsay’s ballad opera in that very edition – a particularly significant edition, because it’s the most lavish, quite apart from having the complete vocal score section. RCS lecturer Brianna Robertson-Kirkland has researched the work in detail and written an article about it, which is on one of her class reading-lists. Dr David McGuinness, with whom I worked on the HMS.Scot AHRC-funded project a few years ago, has also recently published a book about it,  with Steve Newman.

The new Edinburgh Edition of The Gentle Shepherd

But the catalogue record didn’t exactly fit my purpose, because what I had in my hand was the appendix at the end of the book, containing all the songs. We didn’t have the text of the ballad opera at all.

No problem – I downloaded the catalogue record and adapted it to reflect what we did have. I made sure the words ‘Scottish songs’ appeared in the catalogue record, and I indexed every one of those songs. The appendix is only eighteen pages long – it wasn’t that arduous a task. I’m really happy that we’ve been given this, because – even though it’s fragile and will have to be handled with extreme care – it means the students will now be able to see the music that Brianna has written about, and lectures about.  (It still needs a nice stout card folder, and a secure storage space – but they’ll be sorted out soon.)

Informed Cataloguing

There’s one strange thing, though. It appears no other cataloguer has catalogued each song in The Gentle Shepherd – not in Jisc Library Hub, at any rate.  Well, although we at RCS might not have the whole magnificent text, a title page or a cover, we HAVE now got a catalogue record which indexes all the songs. Hooray!

Contents:-

  • The wawking of the fauld (1st line: My Peggy is a young thing)
  • Fy gar rub her o’er wi’ strae (1st line: Dear Roger, if your Jenny geck)
  • Polwart on the Green (1st line: The dorty will repent)
  • O dear mother, what shall I do (1st line; O dear Peggy, love’s beguiling)
  • How can I be sad on my wedding day (1st line: How shall I be sad when a husband I hae?)
  • Nansy’s to the green-wood gane (1st line: I yield, dear lassie)
  • Cauld kail in Aberdeen (1st Line : Cauld be the rebels cast)
  • Mucking o’ Geordie’s byre (1st line: The laird, wha in riches)
  • Carle, an’ the king come (1st line: Peggy, now the king’s come)
  • The yellow-hair’d laddie (1st line: When first my dear ladie gade to the green hill)
  • By the delicious warmness of thy mouth
  • Happy Clown (1st line: Hid from himself)
  • Leith Wynd (1st line: Were I assur’d)
  • O’er Bogie (1st line: Weel, I agree ye’re sure o’ me)
  • Kirk wad let me be (1st line: Duty, and part of reason)
  • Woe’s my heart that we shou’d sunder (1st line: Speak on, speak thus)
  • Tweed Side (1st line: When hope was quite sunk in despair)
  • Bush aboon Traquair (1st line: At setting day and rising morn)
  • The bonny grey-ey’d morn
  • Corn-Riggs (1st line: My Patie is a lover gay)

I struggled to explain to my family just how gratifying I find this.  But I think it’s really important not only that Brianna’s students can see which songs are in Foulis’s edition of The Gentle Shepherd, but also, anyone looking for one of those song titles will be able to see that it was one of the songs used in the famous ballad opera.

As a matter of interest, we do also have some items going back to the era when Cedric Thorpe Davie put on a performance of the opera. Anyone checking our catalogue will spot those too!

A wee Saturday Expedition: The Librarian-Researcher’s Afternoon Outing

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

After diligently doing my organ practice this morning, I felt like an outing this afternoon. Only a librarian/musicologist would decide to go library-visiting! However, I knew that Paisley has a new, exciting public library building in the High Street, and I also wanted to find out about an old Paisley publication, so where else would I go? The image above is one I found on Renfrewshire Libraries’ website.

Sean McNamara’s enthusiastic tweet about the library, on 23 November 2023.

The library is bright and modern, on three floors. The ground floor has a large children’s section at the back of the floor, with places for parents and children to sit, and steps the children could go up and down – very cheerful and user-friendly.

There are also facilities for making a hot drink. Whatever next?! Very nice, but an unexpected surprise for an old-school librarian who last worked in a public library, erm, 36 years ago! 

Plainly there wasn’t going to be anything of the kind I was looking for, on the ground floor. I headed up to the next floor, and the next. Places for computer use, an array of different seating arrangements, non-fiction …..

I asked, but I discovered that if I would find what I wanted anywhere in Paisley, then it was not here. I need to go the Heritage Centre (aka “the archives”), elsewhere in the city. That’s a trip for another day, since it’s not open at the weekend.

Shop front, Paisley High Street
Parlane’s former offices in Paisley High Street. Book sculpture right above the top dormer window.

All was not lost. I also wanted to find out where Parlane’s offices had been. I knew that they, too, were in the High Street – and they were two doors away, in fact. They looked a bit sorry for themselves. I took a photo, but a string of twinkly lights (not illuminated by day) obscured a decent photo of the book sculpture at the top of the building. 

Maybe I’ll find a better one online somewhere. Messrs Parlane might have been pleased to find a new library as their next-door-but-one neighbour, but I fear they would have been sad to see the High Street today. It wasn’t exactly bustling on a Saturday mid-afternoon.

Home I came, and spent several hours making lists of things I’d like to see at the Heritage Centre. (I hope they’re as welcoming as the website suggests, or they’ll find me a bit of a nuisance with my long list!!)

Scottish Songs Today: Airing my Opinions!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Yesterday was a bit unusual. I gave a talk about research using library resources – nothing unusual there. Then I sorted out arrangements for the Exchange Talk I’m giving online from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland on 29th January.  It’s all about how new educational and technological innovations affected the Scottish music publishing industry ca.1880-1951.

We’ll come back to the phone-call that I so nearly mistook for a cold call (luckily, I didn’t!), and then I finalised details for another lecture in the spring. this time about Scottish song books over an even longer era.

FOUR ‘appearances’ (or arrangements for appearances) in one day? Librarians don’t often get that.  But as it happens, only the first of them was really library related.  I wrote an article about my hybrid role, over the weekend, and yesterday simply underlined the truth of it.

The ‘cold call’ turned out to be from the BBC! Just before 7 am today, I was a guest of BBC Radio Scotland for their Good Morning Scotland programme, talking about the top ten most popular Scottish songs in Visit Scotland’s recent survey. You should have seen me last night, surrounded by song-books much more recent than my usual fare! I needed to get an idea of the chronology of that ‘top ten’. I now have a beautiful document, halfway between a mind-map and a spreadsheet, which I stared at until I had memorised an overview of what I might find myself talking about.

Here’s a link where the programme can be replayed. My bit is from 53:01 to 1:00:09.

The Evening Times published the top-ten list last night. One Burns song (‘My heart’s in the Highlands’), and one by Walter Scott – ‘Scots wha’ ha’e’. Visit Scotland’s recent survey rest were much more modern, but almost all combined a catchy tune and a humorous ‘story’.

Top Ten Tweeted by the Evening Times

Visit Scotland’s recent survey as reported in the Evening Times.

So Now What? The Book Revision is Done …

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

In the research part of my role (the 1.5 days a week when I am seconded to be a researcher), my path was very clear before Christmas – I was revising my monograph. Having submitted the revisions (on the Twelfth Day of Christmas, no less), what’s next?

Easy, I thought to myself. Whilst I wait for feedback, I’ll just put in a couple of article proposals, then get on with some more research about some interesting elements that I focused on in my book. I have a book to review. And in due course, there’ll be copy-editing and indexing – that’ll keep me occupied! Not to mention looking for grants for which to apply.

Things are Seldom what they Seem!

Four days later, and I now also have two peer-review tasks to do within the next three weeks, and I need to make a recording of my Exchange Talk, just as a back-up in advance of what I hope will be a live Zoom event …

I have 5.5 days in which to do all this. It’s just possible that anything without a deadline might get put to the end of the queue!

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Advance Notice! My latest Article is nigh!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Soon, very soon, all will be revealed! It’s been quite a quiet year, as far as publications go. Very quiet. But I have had one article and two chapters waiting at their publishers, and this weekend will at least see the article published in History Scotland. Featured on the cover, too.

Hooray!

Image by Belinda Cave from Pixabay

Missing in Caption

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

So here’s the thing, as we say in Glasgow.  Looking up Doris Ketelbey some weeks ago, I thought I saw an interesting heading in one of her books: it was the title or first line of a Scottish song.  And I did EXACTLY what I warn students not to do.

It made such an impact that I was sure I’d find it again. After all, her book titles weren’t that numerous. Of course I’d remember. Moreover, if I’d found it once …  right? (It’s possible that I found it by accident, with an unlikely set of search words, though.)

I bought a copy of her most popular school textbook, shelved it, and that was me. Sorted!

Until I looked at it more closely. This was European and a bit of world history. Post-Jacobite, I couldn’t see anything where a Scottish song title would have been a suitable caption. And – had there been an illustration above it? – or was I havering? (The caption might have been on a digital image, not searchable as text, maybe …)

Maybe I imagined the illustration, but I remained convinced about that caption. Just a pity that I couldn’t remember the song!

  • I started searching last night. In bed, I lay awake, agitated by my failure to source the mystery book.
  • Today, I searched Hathi Trust and Open Library. No luck. 
  • I looked at Jisc Library Hub and Worldcat, but they weren’t going to show me what I needed.
  • Finally, I made a list of any Ketelbey titles which might possibly have touched on Scottish history (given that she wasn’t first and foremost a historian of Scottish history), and came up with another pair of books possibly also aimed at secondary schools.

There’s only one problem: the nearest copy is in Edinburgh.  I had hoped to find it  in Glasgow’s epic Mitchell Library, but this time I had no luck.

So … Amazon and eBay

However, I’ve ordered the pair for about the cost of a return to Edinburgh. If what I’m looking for isn’t there, then I have to admit defeat. I still don’t understand how something I found before is now so very elusive…

Image by Pexels from Pixabay and by succo from Pixabay

Burns’ Songs – for his Centenary

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

You can imagine the enthusiasm with which publishers rushed to produce centenary editions of Robert Burns’s songs in 1896. We have a Bayley & Ferguson ‘new and revised’ centenary edition in the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland library: well-used over the years, bearing the scars of untold tussles, its paper almost skin-soft through repeated borrowing. This one was published in Glasgow and London. I wasn’t at all surprised to see vendor Frank Simpson’s stamp on it – the Sauchiehall Street shop was there for many years, where the now defunct BHS store later stood. I can’t imagine how many of our old scores came from there!

Today, I needed to compare it with a more lavish bound presentation copy, which we acquired as a donation. The imprint likewise had Bayley and Ferguson’s name, but in larger print above it, it had Hedderwick, of Citizen Buildings in St Vincent Street. Both firms gave Glasgow addresses, and no mention of London. I suspect it was the earlier of the two, since I found 1896 newspaper adverts for this one. Hedderwick was a long established firm. And Bayley and Ferguson did publish music on behalf of other firms, groups or individuals.

It’ll have to go into the special collection – it’s so heavy that I can’t imagine anyone wanting to borrow it.

Plain or fancy, I imagine this title was a bestseller for several decades. I’ll finish cataloguing it tomorrow.

Now – have we got the Mozart Allan centenary Burns edition … ? Of course we have!

You can’t have too much of a Good Thing

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Saturday frivolity, not research. But it does give a bit of insight into the fin-de-siecle publishing trade.

This came in a donation; we have the low voice version, but it was also available for high voice – that’s perfectly normal. Inside, there’s ukulele tab as well as the piano accompaniment, and instruction as to which notes you should tune the strings to. The publisher clearly thought he was onto a winner, and issued it in as many formats as he could think of. Just look! Oh, and he published it both sides of the Atlantic, for maximum exposure.

Just a trivial song, but it must have been a hit – in my family there are still memories of it being sung!

A Fellow Back in 1901

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

This is the third week of my Ketelbey Fellowship, and I arrived at St Andrews in pouring rain yesterday morning. Fortunately, it had subsided to a drizzle by the time I made my way to Martyrs Kirk, where materials from the Library special collections can be consulted. I didn’t get wet enough to risk dripping onto rare Victorian pamphlets! (I only know they were Victorian by the fact that the earlier numbers included God Save the Queen rather than the King – so they were published before January 1901.)

I had a ball! They each began with an editorial introduction – I love these. They’re so informative about the thinking behind whatever is in the book. Intriguingly, the editor seemed not to be the prime contributor, but all was revealed when I did some Googling later. Good old Baptie (Musical Scotland) informed me that the editor had two middle names, and used them as a nom de plume. No mystery after all! Moreover, one particular collaborator, more involved than most, was …

His daughter.

I didn’t quite get through the pile I’d called up, but I’m making good progress. And I encountered some interesting glimpses into social and political history. What’s more, if ever I needed proof that little girls’ education had a subtle difference to that of little boys, I found it today. It shouldn’t come as a surprise – I know it happened. But I wasn’t expecting to find this in a Sol-Fa song book!

It is such a luxury to have a desk in an office just a couple of minutes from a big university library. This morning, I snatched a quick coffee before I went back for another session with more of these instruction books. What’s more, I feel more a dedicated researcher here, compared to being ‘the librarian that also does research’ in Glasgow. It’s easier to focus, somehow. And tonight, I’m going to a research seminar, so I’ll get to meet some more historians then. Good times.

Find me at KarenMcAMusic.threads.net

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

What’s all this about? Everyone perhaps having to pay to be on Twitter? No, Sir! I’m not actively leaving just yet, but if failure to pay results in accounts disappearing, then I’m afraid I will disappear from Twitter.

I’m on Threads: KarenMcAMusic.threads.net – maybe I should be asking my Twitter followers to follow me there?

And of course, I’m here on my blog.

I know – a blog is not the same as the casual, friendly conversations we used to have on Twitter. It’ll be interesting to see what we’re all doing in a year’s time!