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

228 EARLY SCOTTISH MELODIES.
550. 'TIS NAE VEEY LANG SINSYNE.
The tune to which the words of this song have been adapted, is erroneously
called by Stenhouse, "We'll kick the world before us." The air, however,
appears in book xii. of Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion, page 4,
under the title of " We'll kiss the world before us." It consists of six
strains, and the song is sung to the first and fourth. Stenhouse seems to
have confounded the name of this tune with that of " Kick the world before
you," contained in the Caledonian Pocket Companion, book x., page 15.
The song is taken from Herd's Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, 1776.
551. ONCE I LOV'D.
This song is said to be Robert Burns's first attempt at lyric, and he
directed it to be sung to a reel tune, a favourite of his heroine, called, " I am
a man unmarried." Stenhouse tells us, so the story goes, that Burns
abandoned the idea of using this tune, " and had it set to the beautiful
slow melody in the Museum, which he picked up and transmitted to the
publishers of that work ; it is said to be very ancient." We are afraid
Stenhouse's story cannot be trusted. Why was the song, with its beautiful
melody, not published before the death of the poet and of Stephen Clarke ?
It may be remarked that the sixth volume of the " Scots Musical Museum "
did not appear till March 1804, though its preface is dated 4th June
1803. We have failed to find any tune whatever bearing the name of " I
am a man unmarried." It might have been a local name for some well-
known reel, which cannot now be discovered The supposed ancient air
given in the Museum is, we are disposed to think, from the style of its con-
cluding cadence, composed for that work by some precentor.
552. WHEN I THINK ON MY LAD.
This song was written by Allan Ramsay. Stenhouse tells us, " Ramsay
published it in his Tea-Table Miscellany under the title of ' Her Daddy
forbad, her Minny forbad,' in 1724." This is another of his mistakes,
it did not appear in that year. Ramsay named his song " My Dady forbad,
and my Minny forbad," and made no reference to any air. The tune adapted
to the words in the Museum is an English melody composed by Jeremiah
Clarke, a musician who lived at the end of the seventeenth and commence-
ment of the eighteenth centuries. It is contained in Oswald's " Cale-
donian Pocket Companion," book x., page 1, called "Hark, the cock
crow'd."*
* We possess a copy of " The Tea-Table Miscellany, or a Collection of Scotch Sangs. The
Tenth Edition. Being the Whole that are contain'd in the Three Volumes just Published. By