Glen Collection of printed music > Printed music > Popular songs of Scotland with their appropriate melodies

PEELIMINARY NOTE.
The present volume contains the popular songs of Scotland ; not those only which are usually sung at
the present time, for they unfortunately are few, but in addition a large number which, though now
seldom heard, ought on account of their quaintness, their wit, or the beauty of their melody, to be ever
held in remembrance. To a large extent they have been extracted from the earlier collection known as
"Wood's Songs of Scotland," edited by George Farquhar Graham, whose illustrative notes were a
leading feature of the work, and who, it may be mentioned, was selected on account of his learning and
musical ability to write the article Music in the seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It
is scarcely necessary to say that wherever in these notes he expressed his own opinions they have been
scrupulously adhered to in the present edition ; but quotations and remarks from other sources have had
to be reconsidered, and frequently to be set aside, in favour of more recent and accurate information.
Of all the annotators of Scottish Song the most copious was Mr. William Stenhouse, who supplied the
" Illustrations " for Messrs. Blackwood's re-issue of Johnson's Museum; that great repository of Scottish
music, for which Burns did so much, and which he predicted would make the publisher famous for all time.
In many ways Mr. Stenhouse was well fitted for the work which he undertook, being a zealous antiquary,
no mean musician, and indefatigable in the prosecution of his self-imposed task. Having, however, to
gather his materials from a very wide field, it is not surprising that he should have frequently fallen into
error. David Laing and Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe — who in revising added considerably to his notes —
pointed out and corrected many of his literary and historical blunders, while G. Farquhar Graham did the
same in regard to many of his musical mis-statements. ,It is at best doubtful whether Mr. Stenhouse was
able to decipher the Lute tablature of the Skene MS. his references to it therefore are usually erroneous.
Even his quotations from the " Orpheus Caledonius " are seldom correct; and, with regard to Playford's
"Dancing Master," he cannot have seen the rare edition of 1657 which he so often quotes, for, with two or
three exceptions, the airs he refers to are not included in it, though they are to be found in the enlarged
edition of 171S, which he probably possessed. Mr. Stenhouse had besides a notion, not uncommon in the
earlier part of the present century, that England possessed little if any true national music ; a tune
therefore which was current in both countries, he contended must be of Scottish origin, and only imported
into England since the "union of the crowns." This belief was to some extent fostered by the want of any
collection of English airs that could be referred to ; for Kitson's is an Anthology of lyric poetry set by learned
musicians, rather than a collection of national melodies, though it does contai n a small modicum of real
folk-music ; and Dr. Crotch, in his " Specimens of various styles of Music," is equally meagre, and often not
at all correct in his ascriptions of nationality to the tunes. In Scotland, on the other hand, during the
previous century, numerous collections had appeared, in which was included every tune well known
in Scotland, whether really Scottish or not. To these uncritical collections Mr. Stenhouse was in the habit
of appealing in corroboration of his otherwise unsupported assertions, as if an error could be turned into a
truth by mere iteration. Unfortunately his erroneous opinions have by frequent quotation been so
widely spread that it may now be difficult for the actual facts to obtain a hearing.* In making this
statement, it would be manifestly unfair to Mr. Stenhouse to omit that by his zeal and perseverance he
gathered together a mass of antiquarian matter bearing on the songs, their writers, and the incidents on
which they were founded, that could not now be collected by any amount of industry : many of those from
• It is unaccountable how so scrupulously accurate an editor as Mr. Scott Douglas should have accepted Mr. Stenhonse's
erroneous statements regarding the airs of many of Burns's songs without making any attempt at verification. Stenhouse'a
blunders are the only blot on a work otherwise excellent and beautiful, every page being marked by painstaking and good faith.