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Broadside ballad entitled 'Parody on M'Gregor's Gathering' |
CommentaryThis ballad begins: 'While there's beef in the pat, / And there's soup in the brae, / There's twenty four hours, / In a nicht and a' day'. A 'pat' translates as a 'pot' in English. 'Brae' normally means 'hill', as this is a nonsense song it could possibly be meant as a joke. It was published by the Poet's Box of Dundee and sold for a penny. This is a parody of Sir Walter Scott's 1816 poem, 'MacGregor's Gathering'. Scott's famous lines, 'While there's leaves in the forest / And foam on the river, / MacGregor, despite them, / Shall flourish forever!' have been altered in this version to, 'While there's leaves in a tammy book / Want we will never / Hurroo for Scotch Haddies / An parritch for ever.' A 'tammy book' is an account book held by a shop, and the lyrics imply that while you could get credit you would never go without haddock (haddies) or porridge (parritch). It is not clear what the connection between the different Poet?s Boxes were. They almost certainly sold each other?s sheets. It is known that John Sanderson in Edinburgh often wrote to the Leitches in Glasgow for songs and that later his brother Charles obtained copies of songs from the Dundee Poet?s Box. There was also a Poet?s Box in Belfast from 1846 to 1856 at the address of the printer James Moore, and one at Paisley in the early 1850s, owned by William Anderson. The National Library of Scotland also holds a copy of the original Scott poem, also published by the Dundee Poet's Box. Scott is not credited as author, however.
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Probable period of publication:
1880-1900 shelfmark: L.C.Fol.70(27a)
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