Inglis Collection of printed music > Printed text > Early Scottish melodies

62 EARLY SCOTTISH MELODIES.
8. ROSLIN CASTLE.
This tune has been ascribed to Oswald as one of his own compositions,
but he never claimed it. It was inserted in his Caledonian Pocket
Companion, book iv. ; also in the collection which he dedicated to the Earl
of Bute, but both of these were published subsequent to " William
M'Gibbon's second collection of Scots Tunes," 1746, where it appears under
the name of the " House of Glams," page 31. Whether M'Gibbon's music
preceded Hewitt's song of Roslin Castle we have not been able to ascertain.
This is one of two tunes ascribed to Oswald in an obituary notice of
date 1821.
9. SAW YE JOHNNIE CUMMIN ? QUO SHE.
The first Scottish collection in which this air appears as it is now sung,
is Robert Bremner's Thirty Scots Songs, 1757, page 6, under the name of
" Fee him, Father, Fee him." A bastard copy of both words and music was
published some years earlier by John Walsh, in a work entitled, A Collec-
tion of Original Scotch Songs, with a Thorough Bass to each Song for the
Harpsichord, part iii., under the title, " Saw ye John a coming," a Scotch
song. Its Scottish origin is not denied, though published in London
probably ten years or more before Bremner.
10. WOO'D AND MARRIED AND A'.
Stenhouse remarks, " This humorous old song was omitted by Ramsay in
his Tea-Table Miscellany, 1724, although it was quite current on the
Border long before his time." In the absence of any evidence we are very
doubtful of this assertion. For further remarks on this melody we refer
the reader to page 53.
11. SAW YE NAE MY PEGGY.
Stenhouse remarks, " The melody, however, is inserted in an old MS.
music book in the editor's possession, before alluded to, and was also
printed in the first edition of the Orpheus Caledonius, 1725." We have
little or no knowledge of the MS. which is occasionally referred to by
Stenhouse, and we have no idea what has become of it. The air is con-
tained in Margaret Sinkler's MS. Music Book, dated 1710, in our possession,
and it is more melodious than the version given in the Museum. We are
not aware of its presence in any earlier collection, though it is probably
somewhat older than the earliest date here mentioned.