Still True 170 Years Later: James Davie’s Well-Chosen Words

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
The Wighton Collection's logo - various musical instruments

If you’ve made any kind of study of Scottish songs and fiddle tunes, you’ll know that collector Andrew Wighton (1804-1866) bequeathed his fantastic music collection to the City of Dundee. As the Friends of Wighton website says, ‘Andrew J Wighton (1804-1866) was a merchant in Dundee. He built a music collection which is now of international renown and importance. After his death, his Trustees donated the music to the then Free Library in Dundee’. The Friends of Wighton is a charity which exists to promote the collection and the performance and study of Scottish music. I’m proud to be the honorary librarian.

On 31 December 1855, Wighton’s Aberdonian friend James Davie wrote to him observing that Wighton must, by now, have,

… the finest collection of old [Scottish] music in the three kingdoms.

You only have to look at the online catalogue today to see that Davie was perfectly accurate in his observation!

Friends of Wighton website

A Working Weekend?

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

 

Try as I will to avoid the temptation, my research interests overspill into my weekends. Saturday saw me inventorising the late Jimmy Shand’s less-antiquarian accordion music at the Wighton Collection in Dundee.  I had much amusement looking at the accordion instruction books!  There might be mileage in a wee general-interest article about these, so I can see I’ll have to look at them more closely when I return to finish my “honorary librarian” duties another time.  (I’m obsessed with paratext for its value as cultural context, and music instruction books are a bit of a spin-off from this – even if they’re not from the Georgian era!)

Back at home on Sunday, I did a little more work on my Sir John Macgregor Murray paper.