Follow my Leader! Napoleon, Victoria and Albert …

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I’m just leaving this thought here, as a general observation. I was reading recently about Victoria and Albert, tartan and the phenomenon of “Balmorality”. It would be glib, and wrong, to pronounce that everyone loves tartan, but a lot of people certainly do.

Today, I’m reviewing a book about James Macpherson’s Ossian and its pervasive influence on culture not just in Scotland or Great Britain, but on the continent, too. Again, the actual facts are far more nuanced than this bald statement, but it is clear that, because Napoleon was an enthusiastic fan, a lot of people followed him.

So, there’s a parallel, isn’t there? How often has the approval, or disapproval, of a head of state led to a craze for something cultural, be it the warp and weft of a type of cloth, or the exploits of a misty distant hero?

Image: Child in a Scots Costume, sourced via Art UK. Painting by W H Prape, and now curated by Enfield Museum Service

Revisiting the Achievements of Song-Collector Alexander Campbell

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I recently wrote a blog-post about Alexander Campbell, for the Romantic National Song Network. Campbell was one of “my” song-collectors, who occupied a good bit of my time whilst I was writing my PhD thesis and subsequently my book. (And I learned a whole lot more about his “trip-advisor”, Sir John Macgregor Murray, when I was writing a paper for that seminar at the Sorbonne last year!)

Here’s the link to the blogpost, which went live this evening. Get yourself a cuppa and settle down for a read …

https://rnsn.glasgow.ac.uk/song-collector-alexander-campbell/

Image:- Lanrick Castle Gatehouse, entrance to Sir John Macgregor Murray’s home (Campbell’s trip-advisor!)

Post Script! By the way, James D Hobson has just posted a great blogpost, A Guide to the Georgian Coaching Inn. Read about the kind of experience Alexander Campbell may have had, on the occasions he travelled by coach or stayed at an inn!

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