No More Learning

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REMARKS

ON

SCOTTISH SONGS AND BALLADS.

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[The following Strictures on Scottish Song exist in the handwriting of
Burns, in the interleaved copy of Johnson's Musical Museum, which the
poet presented to Captain Riddel, of Friars Carse; on the death of
Mrs. Riddel, these precious volumes passed into the hands of her
niece, Eliza Bayley, of Manchester, who kindly permitted Mr. Cromek to
transcribe and publish them in the Reliques. ]

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THE HIGHLAND QUEEN.

This Highland Queen, music and poetry, was composed by Mr. M'Vicar,
purser of the Solebay man-of-war. --This I had from Dr. Blacklock.

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BESS THE GAWKIE.

This song shows that the Scottish muses did not all leave us when we
lost Ramsay and Oswald, as I have good reason to believe that the
verses and music are both posterior to the days of these two
gentlemen. It is a beautiful song, and in the genuine Scots taste. We
have few pastoral compositions, I mean the pastoral of nature, that
are equal to this.

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OH, OPEN THE DOOR, LORD GREGORY.

It is somewhat singular, that in Lanark, Renfrew, Ayr, Wigton,
Kirkudbright, and Dumfries-shires, there is scarcely an old song or
tune which, from the title, &c.
, can be guessed to belong to, or be
the production of these countries. This, I conjecture, is one of these
very few; as the ballad, which is a long one, is called, both by
tradition and in printed collections, "The Lass of Lochroyan," which I
take to be Lochroyan, in Galloway.

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THE BANKS OF THE TWEED.

This song is one of the many attempts that English composers have made
to imitate the Scottish manner, and which I shall, in these
strictures, beg leave to distinguish by the appellation of
Anglo-Scottish productions. The music is pretty good, but the verses
are just above contempt.

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THE BEDS OF SWEET ROSES.

This song, as far as I know, for the first time appears here in
print. --When I was a boy, it was a very popular song in Ayrshire. I
remember to have heard those fanatics, the Buchanites, sing some of
their nonsensical rhymes, which they dignify with the name of hymns,
to this air.

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ROSLIN CASTLE.

These beautiful verses were the production of a Richard Hewit, a young
man that Dr. Blacklock, to whom I am indebted for the anecdote, kept
for some years as amanuensis. I do not know who is the author of
the second song to the tune. Tytler, in his amusing history of Scots
music, gives the air to Oswald; but in Oswald's own collection of
Scots tunes, where he affixes an asterisk to those he himself
composed, he does not make the least claim to the tune.

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SAW YE JOHNNIE CUMMIN? QUO' SHE.