[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>.....
> And the letter
> was about Auld Lang Syne! Just days before he died, Burns wrote to George
> Thomson, ....
> "One Song more, & I have done. - Auld lang syne - The air is but mediocre;
> but the following song, the old Song of the olden times, & which has never
> been in print, not even in manuscript, untill I took it down from an old
> man's Singing; is enough to recommend any air-"
> ........
> in the SMM. (Lucky the Library lets you xerox stuff.)
Not 18th and 19th century stuff in the music section (where they have a
lot of 18th century Scots music very poorly cataloged). [Performing Arts
Reading Room].
> --Cynthia Cathcart
Davidson Cook's article in 'Annual Burns Chronicle & Club
Directory', Jan. 1922 (reprinted with Dick's 'Songs of Robert
Burns' and 'Notes on Scottish Songs' in 1962) contains a
facsimile of the song from a copy in the Interleaved Scots
Musical Museum' in Burns' hand. In that the heading is shorter
than the heading in the letter to Thomson, and is as follows:
"The original & by much the best set of the words of this Song is as
follows".
As to whether Burns actually wrote any of the song, we'd have to
compare that in 'The Scots Musical Museum', #413 (where there is
no claim that Burns wrote it or that it was old), that in the
Interleaved SMM, that in the letter to Thomson, and that which
Thomson published, and see where they differ. I've long been a
doubter that much of any of these is by Burns, but haven't done
the comparison. [James Dick reprints the text published by
Thompson, so the version I'm missing is that in the letter to
Thomson.]
Old "Auld Lang Syne": That which Wm. Motherwell printed from a
broadside of c 1700 in 'The Paisley Magazine', p. 377, 1828, (6
verses of 8 lines) is given in the Scarce Songs 2 file on my
website. I one saw, but didn't copy the text in Watson's 'A
Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems', III, p, 71,
1711, and this is apparently the same, but with a second part of
four additional verses. The tune is, besides in 'Balcarres', in
Playford's 'A Collection Original Scots Tunes', 1700, and the
Sinkler MS, 1710. [Richard Darsie published 'The Balcarres Lute
Manuscript: Selected Pieces' (in tablature) in 1997, but "Auld
Lang Syne" wasn't among the tunes given. [The ones given are
noted in the SCOTMS file on my website.]
This seems to have been supplanted by a song in Allan Ramsay's
'Scots Songs', 1720. It is this song that appears later as "Auld
Lang Syne". It is with the tune and called 'Auld Lang Syne' in
both editions of 'Orpheus Caledonius', c 1725 and 1733, and also
with the tune, and called 'The Soldier's Welcome Home' in Walsh's
'The British Musical Miscellany', III, n.d. (1735). It's also #25
in 'The Scots Musical Museum'. [Partly from this and partly from
another (not old) version is the one termed 'original' in the Digital
Tradition database, file AULDLNG3]
[Rob, how about translating the "Hallow my Fancy" tune into
normal music notation? I can't translate the tablature, and I
need the tune for the song.]
Bruce Olson
Old English, Irish and, Scots: popular songs, tunes, broadside
ballads at my website (no advs-spam, etc)- www.erols.com/olsonw
or click below <A href="http://www.erols.com/olsonw"> Click </a>
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