Inglis Collection of printed music > Printed text > Story of the bagpipe

Story of the Bagpipe
the melody given in the Skene MS., and its first
appearance in print was not until the year 1759,
when Oswald published it in the eleventh book of his
Caledonian Pocket Companion .
Dauney was of opinion that the tune of "The
Souters of Selkirk" was a genuine bagpipe-melody
coeval with the battle of Flodden Field, but
e « . ,,, this statement was merely borrowed from
Tytler, who, in his Dissertation, sought to
prove that the song was founded on the circumstance
of the Town Clerk of Selkirk conducting a band of
eighty Souters to fight at Flodden. Ritson properly
scoffs at this statement, and nobody now believes it.
It is sufficient to add that the tune is not older than the
first half of the seventeenth century, and it was first
printed by Playford, in 1687, as a " Scotch hornpipe."
As a distinctively Scotch tune under its own title it did
not appear until 1730, when Adam Craig published it in
his Scots tunes. Probably it will surprise some readers
to learn that the words of "The Souters of Selkirk"
are by Robert Burns, and were published in the Scots
Musical Museum in 1796.
As to the tune of " The Bonny Earl of Moray" being
coeval with the murder of the Earl of Murray by the
Earl of Huntley in 1^02, I fear the tradition
(l R onnv ...
_ 'is distinctly unsafe. Stenhouse, who had a
Earl of . .
„ „ wonderful inventive faculty for ancient Scots
tunes, is ominously silent as regards "The
Bonny Earl of Moray." Possibly it may be of the late
seventeenth century, but it is beyond doubt that its
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