> A while ago I played >'The Birks of Invermay' from Bremner's 1758 guittar tutor - where it is >written without much 'snap', and for an instrument which is best played >delicately and with use of sustain. A Scottish country dancer friend >liked it and asked what it was - after I told him, he immediately >recognised it, but said playing at such a slow speed had hidden the tune >from him. To me, the slow speed brings out the beauty of the tune (which >has a very song-like melody and is no doubt a song too) and the dance >tempo just makes it sound like everything else!
I find the strathspification of that tune annoying, too. The problem with it is that it doesn't have any singable text; the known eighteenth century words are all of the Strephon-and-Lydia-in-the-busky-glade variety. (Presumably it must have had something better once, but it's lost). So it can only survive as an instrumental slow air, and there are so many of them about that "Birks" doesn't often get an airing in that form. Perhaps the one really good effect of Burns's adaptations, unsingable by normal humans and abandoned by the tradition as they often are, was that he made it respectable to carry on playing old song tunes at singing speed, despite the massive adaptation-for-dance industry going on round him. It may not be too late. I may get a knock on the door from the Trad Coolness Police for saying this, but "Birks" is a tune I could imagine Celine Dion singing if somebody fitted the right text to it. =================== <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> =================== Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
