The family songs may be aptly characterised by what Pickering and Green describe as a vernacular ‘hotchpotch’, reflecting a diverse set of song traditions that in themselves are hybrid, intersecting with borrowings and crossovers, deriving from the diverse song culture of Scotland. The songs were borrowed from a range of different sources including those that came from the family’s local social world and those that had a wider reach. Some are part of the traditional song culture of Scotland - folk songs, ballads, children’s songs, street songs, and national songs - notably those of Robert Burns. Others bear more recent hallmarks, in the tradition of Scottish music hall and variety, like the songs of Harry Lauder, Will Fyfe and Jimmy Shand, and other twentieth century Scottish popular singers and performers, like Robert Wilson and Andy Stewart. Some of the older songs were the popular hits of their time in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and have continued as the core of the national song repertoire. The more recent songs, like those of Lauder, Fyfe, Shand, Wilson and Stewart were also significant hits of the twentieth century and continue to provide the mainstay of contemporary popular collections of Scottish songs.18
Of all the songs that formed my family’s repertoire, those evolving from two song traditions, in particular ‘national’ songs, and those of the music hall tradition have made a significant contribution. Others, like the street songs and children’s rhymes that my family sang, drew the attention of early collectors as part of a wider effort to imagine the nation through its folk heritage, and in subsequent revivals of interest in folk culture, its collection and documentation, and in general studies of children’s lore. Scottish children’s rhymes of the street and playground have thus been collected and published,
but less so been the subject of wider contemporary cultural analysis.19 These songs will be considered in Chapter 8 in the context of family singing.
National Songs
Many of the songs that my family sang were drawn from what Pickering and Green, and others characterise as ‘invented’ song traditions, in particular the assemblage of Scotland’s national song tradition. Songs such as, My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose, The
Banks o’ Doon, Charlie He’s My Darlin’, Farewell to the Highlands, The Campbells are Comin, and A Hundred Pipers, once the outstanding ‘hits’ of their time, have since
become ‘standards’, finding a permanent place in Scotland’s song culture, and generating hosts of other songs of a similar type and style.20 Created, disseminated and popularised as quintessentially Scottish, songs such as these played a central role in defining and shaping Scottish song culture, and through it, Scottishness.
According to Francis Collinson, Scotland’s national heritage of song is made up of two types of songs: the ‘traditional’- folk song, and the ‘national’ - songs of known authorship, ‘written for and disseminated by the printing press and not by oral or aural transmission’.21 The latter, ‘national songs’, were composed or ‘patched’ from old songs by song writers like Allan Ramsay and Robert Burns, and later Lady Nairne, James Hogg, and Sir Walter Scott. These ‘national songs’, as Collinson, and later, David Johnson describe them were a literary creation and invention of the eighteenth century:
“… a kind of pseudo-folk-song, designed for a genteel class of people … to which they can attach the feelings of tradition and national identity. A national song is usually made by taking a folk-song and rewriting the words and then the tune … However the dividing line between the two genres is sometimes indistinct, and it is not unknown for national songs to be sucked back into oral circulation and so become new folk songs in their own right.” (D Johnson, 2003, p 131)
In the light of other recent popular song scholarship, Collinson’s and Johnson’s distinctions may seem too polarised, but they do serve to emphasise the constructed nature of a ‘national song tradition’. Thomas Crawford, while not accepting a sharp divide between ‘folk song’ and ‘national song’, does acknowledge that national songs were a ‘deliberate, creative and systematic attempt by the professionals’, notably Ramsay and Burns, ‘to produce a new corpus of song for the whole people of Scotland’. He sees Ramsay and Burns as ‘cultural engineers’, who set about ‘consciously preserving and recreating the nation’s songs’.22 In that process, national songs drew upon, and became part of, the ‘live tradition’ of Scotland’s rich lyric song culture - a song culture that was part of the daily lives of people of all classes.23 It is this music of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, made up of the interplay between folk songs and ‘composed’ songs, that has continued to feature in the popular song culture of Scotland, and which made a significant contribution to my family’s singing.
According to Richard Middleton, the music that arose out of this period was one in which ‘old and new elements were articulated into a variety of patterns and meanings’, leading to ‘the development and eventual predominance of new musical types associated with the new ruling class’. In this ‘bourgeois revolution’, the new popular music, which started as ‘heroic’ and ‘progressive’, shifted over time towards ‘a stifling, oppressive conservatism’.24 This period also saw the permeation of the market system through almost all musical activities, in particular, music printing. Music publishing became a significant part of a growing Scottish publishing industry. Regular music publishing started in Edinburgh in the early part of the eighteenth century and developed into a major business by the middle of the following century, by which time Edinburgh was producing the second largest number of titles of any city in Britain.25 It was also at this time that a new national vision would be widely disseminated through songs in print, making it possible for the creation of a national ‘vernacular space’ through print capitalism.26 As Leith Davis, Ian Duncan and Janet Sorensen observe, it was during this period, when Scotland was establishing itself as a literary cultural centre, that its poets, song writers and scholars:
“… began to invoke the national past, ancestral origins, and regional popular traditions in a series of attempts to reimagine Scottish identity in the conditions of imperial Union.” (Davis, Duncan and Sorensen, 2004, p 3)
Scottish songs were sought out by collectors, poets, musicians and publishers for song collections that were to form the basis of what was to become Scotland’s national song repertoire. Scottish song traditions were swept up by urban lowland Scotland in a publishing bonanza. At the end of the eighteenth century, something like 74 song books and song collections were published in Scotland, all nationalistic in spirit, and comprising approximately 3,000 separate songs. Fifty years later the number of song books had risen to closer to 200.27 This was part of what Johnson describes as the ‘self conscious wholesale documentation of the folk tradition’, that also manifested itself in antiquarian collections of folk songs, ballads and children’s rhymes. Many song publications included detailed discussion of Scottish song asserting its antiquity and authenticity, as hallmarks of the nation’s unique heritage, especially in contrast to English song:
“Our Scottish songs have already been published in so many and so varied forms, that any further issue may well seem superfluous. Our intention, however, is not to add to the number of these editions, but to reclaim Melodies which primarily and properly
belong to Scotland, and to renounce others erroneously supposed to be Scottish
productions. The necessity for such a work will be apparent when it is understood that a considerable number of our National Melodies have been claimed for England, while on the other hand many Anglo-Scottish tunes manufactured in London and elsewhere for the English market, have found admittance into our national collections, and so given rise to perplexities and misunderstandings.” (Glen, 1900, p vii)
But even the scale of song book publication is dwarfed by the mass sales of cheap song sheets, broadsides and chapbooks. It is estimated that in Scotland, from about 1750 to 1850, during the period of their greatest popularity, over 200,000 chapbooks were
produced each year. Cheap mass produced broadsides and chapbooks were the staple reading material of a very large proportion of the population of Scotland for over a century, and by the eighteenth century, this type of publication was one of the few pieces of non-religious reading available to the poor. By the end of the eighteenth century, every provincial town had its printer of broadsides and chapbooks.28 Typically, the same sort of songs that appeared in the song book collections were published in broadsides and chapbooks. Folk songs from oral tradition made their way into printed song collections and mass produced broadsides and chapbooks, and composed or national songs, in turn, made their way back into oral tradition.29
In the earlier part of the eighteenth century, however, it was London that was taking the lead in publishing collections of Scottish songs. A flourishing genre of popular song, ‘Scotch songs’, dominated the market. These ‘Scotch songs’ were, as Johnson describes them, ‘somewhat debased popular songs of allegedly Scottish origin, some with fake tunes, all with fake words’, and where the subject matter was either political satire, or sexual comedy with stock Scottish characters Jockey and Jenny:30
A Scotch Song 31
‘Twas within a furlong of Edinborough Town, In the Rosie time of year when the Grass was down; Bonny Jockey blith and gay,
Said to Jenny making hay, Let’s sit a little (Dear) and prattle, ‘Tis a sultry day:
He long had Courted the Black-Brow’d Maid,
But Jockey was a Wag and would ne’er consent to Wed; Which made her pish and poo, and cry out it will not do, I cannot, cannot, cannot, wonnot, monnot, Buckle too.
These early collections took Scottish songs as popular commodities into a wide British market. According to Leith Davis, they also served to place Scottish songs and Scotland
within a London-based British culture. ‘Scotch songs’ were designed to appeal to a metropolitan interest in the ‘novelties’ of the ‘rustic’ provinces:
“Such Scottish identity as is acknowledged in these collections is designed to appeal to an audience interested in a distinctive but harmless Scottish or ‘Highland humour’ … For the most part this ‘humour’ is characterized as natural, simple and rural, in opposition to the artificiality of metropolitan culture.” (Davis, 2004, p 189)
Out of this early bonanza in song book publication, the first to be published in Scotland was to eclipse all others. Allan Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany became the best seller of the century both in genteel Edinburgh and across Britain.32 Johnson describes Ramsay’s motives as a combination of regional pride and identity, and competitive publishing interests to compete with the English popular publications of ‘Scotch song’. Ramsay’s approach was to take existing Scots tunes and add new words, producing what Johnson describes as ‘an oil-and-water mixture of London fashionable verse and Scots folk-song’.33 Many of the songs that have come to epitomise Scottish traditional music can be attributed to the work and legacy of Allan Ramsay, ‘the man, who more than anyone else, was responsible for the creation of the national song genre’.34 Ramsay’s work came to be regarded all over Britain as synonymous with Scots song and formed the basis of many other popular collections. Its significance to the history of Scottish song is such that writers such as Johnson have suggested that:
“Scholars ever since have had great difficulty in forming a picture of Scots folk-song prior to 1723, largely because Ramsay’s work obliterated the traces of it.” (D Johnson, 2003, p 134)
Recent re-appraisals of Ramsay suggest that his idea of Scottish culture is more complex than his critics have suggested. Leith Davis, for example, argues that Ramsay did not cater merely to a London audience, and that he represented Scottish songs in a very different context to those of the London-based ‘Scotch songs’. Ramsay’s songs were an attempt to assert a positive contemporary identity for Scotland, one that was not attached
simply to a nostalgic past or a rustic identity. Unlike the dominant antiquarian impulse of the time, that emphasised a fixed oral culture in print as word and poetry, Ramsay represented Scottish song ‘not as fixed corpus, but as part of a dynamic and ever- changing tradition’.35 As Davis stresses, ‘it is important to keep in mind that Ramsay was establishing this repertory in conjunction with maintaining aspects of the oral tradition’.36 Drawing upon both oral and print sources, and newly composed songs, Ramsay represented Scottish songs as an accessible and ‘unique combination of words and music’ that emphasised performance and familiarity over the fixity of text. These songs were ‘designed for a population who take pleasure in singing’ who have knowledge of the song culture from which the songs derive:37
The Highland Laddie by Allan Ramsay 38
The lawland lads think they are fine; But O they’re vain and idly gaudy! How much unlike that gracefu’ mien, And manly looks of my highland laddie?
Chorus
O my bonny, bonny highland laddie, My handsome, charming highland laddie; May Heaven still guard and Love reward Our lawland lass and her highland laddie.
If I were free at will to choose To be the wealthiest lawland lady, I’d take young Donald without trews, With bonnet blue, and belted plaidy.
The brawest beau in borrows-town, In a’ his airs with art made ready, Compar’d to him he’s but a clown; He’s finer far in’s tartan plaidy.
O’er benty hill with him I’ll run, And leave my lawland kin and dady; Frae winter’s cauld and summer’s sun, He’ll screen me with his highland plaidy.
A painted room, and silken bed, May please a lawland laird and lady; But I can kiss, and be as glad, Behind a bush in’s highland plaidy.
Few compliments between us pass, I ca’ him my dear highland laddie, And he ca’s me his lawland lass, Syne rows me in beneath his plaidy.
Nae greater joy I’ll e’er pretend, Than that his love prove true and steady, Like mine to him, which ne’er shall end, While Heav’n preserves my highland laddie.
Like Davis, Steve Newman argues that while Ramsay did elevate songs from the ‘street’ to the ‘tea table’ they were not turned into ‘reliques’. Ramsay placed his work in the world of the present, ‘in the songs that circulate in the streets and country lanes of the United Kingdom’ and not in the misty world of bard and minstrel.39 Ramsay intended his songs to be sung, to be a participatory medium. Unlike the prevailing fashion for Italian classical musical treatments, Ramsay’s idea of Scots songs was that they were ‘ideal catalysts of sociability … not demanding the connoisseurs ear’, and ‘with hearing and singing songs they do not need to be taught because they are simple and familiar’. In this way, according to Newman, Ramsay’s songs ‘engender an ‘imagined community’ and realize that community in performance’.40 In Ramsay’s songs is a ‘cultural
nationalism’, in which the past and the present, and Scotland’s relationship with England, are in a dynamic relationship. Ramsay also had a wider community in mind, with the songs being Ramsay’s ‘vehicle for making Scottish culture a profitable export’.41 Newman suggests that Ramsay’s songs play an important but neglected part in
the history of the complex relationship between popular and elite cultures, and that Ramsay’s work testifies to the ‘unpredictability’ in this ‘high-low’ dialogue. As such, it challenges recent theorisations of the elite appropriation of popular culture as a one way street.42 Ramsay’s work enabled ‘imagined communities’ beyond the polite audiences targeted by his song collections. Not only did his songs become widely popular on the street as well as in the drawing room, but his songs were also taken up by the Jacobites and Robert Burns. For Newman, this points to the ‘residual power of songs to generate alternate, even radical communities’.43
Ramsay’s work was to have a considerable influence on the course of Scotland’s national song repertoire and its fuller expression through Robert Burns, and the more recently recognised contribution of other song writers, particularly women, such as Lady Nairne.44 Burns extended the national song repertoire established by Ramsay by hundreds of songs, largely through his work for The Scots Musical Museum, and according to Johnson, ‘national songs in Scotland have been identified with Burns, and no one else, ever since’.45 Carol McGuirk acknowledges that ‘when we hear any Scottish song … the chances are better than fifty percent that it was written by Burns’. But her work also sheds light on the fact that ‘most of the lyrics that have been preserved and
remembered as Scottish’ were the work of both Burns and Nairne, although Burns’
output far exceeded that of Nairne.46 Johnson’s and T Crawford’s earlier accounts give Burns the credit for reintegrating the oral and literary tradition in Scottish song, that Burns ‘summed up and transcended’.47 For T Crawford, Burns was the Allan Ramsay of the end of the eighteenth century, but a musically more successful one. Through his composition in the ‘folk mode’ and wide lyric range, Burns took traditional melodies and borrowed lines and verses ‘from here there and everywhere’, drawing upon all of eighteenth century Scottish song: broadside, folk song, bacchanalian, love songs, pastoral, rustic courtship, comedy, Jacobite, art lyric, propagandist parody, and national songs. As he notes:
“Burns’ work especially fed back into the tradition that nourished him, so that some of his songs are now thought of as folk song, and indeed, it is nearly impossible to
separate what Burns took from tradition and what tradition took from Burns.” (T Crawford, 1979, p 185)
A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns 48
O my Luve’s like a red, red rose, That’s newly sprung in June. O my Luve’s like the melodie That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonie lass, So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my Dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my Dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun: And I will luve thee still, my Dear, While the sands o’ life shall run:
And fare thee weel, my only Luve! And fare thee weel, a while! And I will come again, my Luve, Tho’ it were ten thousand mile!
A similar point, in relation to both Burns and Nairne, is made by McGuirk: ‘what we think of today as Scottish folk song is precisely the kind of hybrid text that they popularized’.49 As ‘active ‘reconstructors’, Burns and Nairne brought together art song and folk song, dialect Scots and standard English, lowland and highland cultures. Their blend of Scots vernacular and English diction, made up of an ‘overlay of the parlor language of standard English … with a vivid graffiti of demotic Scots’, produced a