St Patrick’s Day! Take a Look at Irish Songs Published in Scotland …

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

In honour of the fact that my McAulay in-laws originated from Ballymoney in Northern Ireland, moving to shipbuilding work in Greenock in the mid-19th century, I thought that this St Patrick’s Day I’d highlight my writing about Irish songs published in Scotland.

Chapter 3 in my latest book (A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity), deals with ‘The Saleability of Scottish (and Irish) Songs’. The chapter ‘functions as a guide-map to a large genre of national songs published by Scottish music publishers.’  With many Irish workers in industrial Scotland, and another eye on both the Scottish and Irish diaspora, our Glasgow publishers eagerly produced a number of Irish songs books of various kinds, alongside the Scottish books.

Let me share the chapter abstract with you:-

Abstract (A Social History, Chapter 3, pp.56-92)

Examining first the afterlife of Wood’s Songs of Scotland, the chapter next examines the growth of Glasgow firm Bayley & Ferguson, demonstrating how a combination of new works and reprints of saleable older ones built up a significant catalogue, and also noting their involvement with song-collectors and arrangers Afred Moffat and Frank Kidson. It highlights their interest in Highland collections, and also closely examines two of their popular titles, the Scottish Students’ Song Book and subsequent British Students’ Song Book.

The chapter assesses the various Scottish as well as Irish songbooks produced by Scottish publishers, appealing to emigrants as well as British music-lovers, and indicating their clear resolve to produce Irish books which would appeal to both sides of the sectarian divide.

Whilst the primary focus has been on the main Scottish music firms, this chapter concludes by shedding light on some of the lesser ones, and those for whom publishing was a sideline to a primarily retail business.

It may be of interest to note that Robert Wallace, the second owner of James S. Kerr’s, had a connection with Northern Ireland himself: his parents had married in Belfast. His father was Glaswegian, but as I recall, his mother was Irish. (There’s more about the piano-tuner turned publisher Robert Wallace in Chapter 1.)  Kerr’s The Orange Songster is distinctly sectarian, but the much-reported and decidedly humorous court-case between Kerr’s and Mozart Allan hinged on just one particular song: ‘The Ould Orange Flute’.  Wallace published this song first.  Mozart Allan was accused of plagiarism.  You’ll have to read the book for the full story!

A Century Earlier

Irish songs also got a mention in Chapter 5 of my first book (Our Ancient National Airs: Scottish Song Collecting from the Enlightenment to the Romantic Era), too. It’s a chapter on early 19th century metaphor in song book paratexts: ‘Which many a bard had chanted many a day’: Paratextual Imagery and Metaphors in Romantic Celtic Song Collections (pp. 129-148). There are no orange flutes here – but a lot about bards and minstrels, with references to broken harp strings in the context of the United Irish movement.

Silent Harps

The harp that once, thro’ Tara’s halls, the soul of music shed, now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls as if that soul were fled …

Oh! Blame not the bard, if he fly to the bowers […] The string, that now languishes loose o’er the lyre, might have bent a proud bow to the warrior’s dart …

The minstrel boy to the war is gone […] and his wild harp slung behind him. […] The minstrel fell! […] The harp he loved ne’er spoke again …

Two songs by Thomas Moore, and a souvenir from a research trip to Dublin!

The People’s Song Book No.2 (published by John Leng)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

It stands to reason. If I’m researching the John Leng Scots Song competitions, then I might also be interested in this firm’s publications. Not, of course, that there’s any direct link between Leng’s trust fund and the firm’s later publications.  They published general material, magazines and newspapers, and only a handful of music titles.  However, this means that what music they did publish would be of a kind suited to the mass market. 

‘For the people’

Is it any surprise that, amongst the ‘Aunt Kate’s’ housekeeping and embroidery books, there might also be dance music and national songs? Which of course indicates their recognition of how popular national songs actually were.

The mythical ‘Aunt Kate’ enjoyed a song!

This week, I bought the second volume of The People’s Song Book, published in 1915. It’s quite an attractive little book, containing 32 Scottish, 33 English, 35 Irish and 34 Welsh songs.

There’s also a section with 32 of the now distasteful genre of ‘minstrel’ songs at the back – blackface minstrelsy, not the homegrown wandering minstrel variety. They are described more insultingly than that, as was the unfortunate custom of that era.

Curiously, these are indicated as a third series of English songs, lower down the page.  (The second series appeared after the Scottish songs.  Remember, this was the second book, so the ‘first series’ of English songs is presumably there.)

Today, we recognise the English and American origins of the minstrelsy repertoire, but I doubt the compilers were hinting at that.  I have written at some length about such songs in my recent monograph – what’s in the present book is no different to those in the collections I’ve already examined.

Notwithstanding this – because we have to recognise that the book is a product of its age, whatever our more informed modern opinion – it would be a strange scholar that acquired book 2, but wasn’t curious about book 1, so I’m excited now to be repatriating the first volume from Virginia.  Perhaps some expat took it with them in their trunk, or had it sent to them as a keepsake?  And now it’s coming home – it feels appropriate.

First song in the 2nd book – emigration!

The funny thing about Virginia  – on a completely unrelated note – is that, a quarter of a century ago, I attended a librarianship interview in Richmond. I didn’t succeed  – but I did start my doctoral studies at home in Glasgow, a year or two later.  None of what I’ve subsequently done, would have been done at all, if I’d become yet another emigrant like those of a century before.

And now a little national song book is making its way home to me.  I’ll be sure to make it welcome!

And More?

Book 1 may answer an intriguing question that arose yesterday. I’m impatient!

Related Post:

You may also like to read my blog post of 20 March, Repatriated to the UK: the first People’s Song Book