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

144 EARLY SCOTTISH MELODIES.
250. TAK' YOUE AULD CLOAK ABOUT YE.
We are unable to trace this Scottish song in print to a more remote
period than the first volume of Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany, though it
is said to be of a much more ancient date. Shakespeare gives a snatch of it
to Iago in Othello, but gives King Stephen in place of King Robert. The
air we find first printed in Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion, book
ii., page 29, circa 1745, but not in the first edition. Bremner afterwards
gives a much better version in his Thirty Scots Songs, 1757. The tune
has long been a favourite one. In a footnote given by Chappell in " The
Popular Music of the Olden Time," page 505, he states, " I may here remark
that the tune to Take thy old cloak about thee (one of the ballads quoted by
Shakespeare) is evidently formed out of Given Sleeves. The earliest known
copy of the words is in English idiom in Bishop Percy's folio manuscript,
and I have little doubt that both words and music are of English origin."
We may remark that there is not the least affinity between the tunes, as a
comparison of the two versions of Green Sleeves printed by Chappell with
the air of " Tak your auld cloak about you " will satisfy any candid reader.
251. HAPPY CLOWN.
The song in the Museum was written by Allan Ramsay for his Pastoral
" The Gentle Shepherd " ; he had also another in The Tea-Table Mis-
cellany, — both are in vol. ii. The tune, however, is no doubt an English
one, which does not appear in any of our collections before The Caledonian
Pocket Companion, book vii., 1755, and five years later in Bremner's Songs
in the Gentle Shepherd. Stenhouse says it is contained in Mrs Crockat's
MS., 1709.
252. DONALD AND FLORA.
Stenhouse informs us that this song was written by Hector Macneill on
an officer who fell at the Battle of Saratoga, in America. He also says,
" The words are adapted to a fine old Gaelic air." The song with the same
words as the Museum appears with the music in " The Musical Miscellany,"
printed by J. Brown, Perth, 1786.
253, 254. BY THE DELICIOUS WARMNESS OF THY MOUTH.
These two numbers are but one song with chorus, though Stenhouse says,
" Both these songs were inserted without music in- the Pastoral of ' Patie
and Peggy,' which was published some years before Ramsay wrote his
comedy of the Gentle Shepherd." Ramsay, however, printed it in his