Burns Clubs and Burns's Songs-J. Jeffrey Hunter Glenriddell-Dr J. Maxwell Wood 64 78 PREFACE. To avoid disappointment, we again impress upon the Secretaries of Clubs the necessity of ordering their copies of the Chronicle as early as possible, so as to secure delivery shortly after the date of publication. Though the supply has been increased, it is still scarcely equal to the demand; and most of the back issues have been sold out. We have again to thank our correspondents and contributors for their kindly assistance in compiling the present volume, and trust its contents will be found interesting by our readers. BENRIG, KILMAUKS, January 1st, 1922. D. M'NAUGHT. ANNOTATIONS OF SCOTTISH SONGS BY BURNS: AN ESSENTIAL SUPPLEMENT TO CROMEK AND DICK, In which, on the authority of an important Burns Manuscript now in the Edinburgh University Library, many Notes hitherto deemed Spurious " and " Garbled," are restored to textual currency as authentic emanations of the Poet's song-lore. 66 WH 'HEN R. H. Cromek, in his Reliques of Robert Burns, 1808, included the writings of the Bard as a song annotator, he prefaced them thus: "The chief part of the following Remarks on Scottish Songs and Ballads exist in the handwriting of Robert Burns, in an interleaved copy, in four volumes octavo, of Johnson's Scots Musical Museum. They were written by the Poet for Captain Riddel of Glenriddel, whose autograph the volumes bear. These valuable volumes were left by Mrs Riddel to her niece, Miss Eliza Bayley, of Manchester, by whose kindness the Editor is enabled to give to the public transcripts of this amusing and miscellaneous collection." For years, editor after editor, in edition after edition, copied the "Strictures on Scottish Songs," as printed by Cromek; for the whereabouts of the Interleaved Volume being unknown to them, they had perforce to lean upon the Reliques. A second edition of that work appeared in 1809, and the following year Cromek published, in two volumes, his Select Scotish Songs. This is how he begins his preface :-"The following Remarks from the pen of Burns appeared in the publication of the Reliques." That statement is a bit wide of the truth, The "Remarks in many cases do not follow the order of their first publication, thus making comparison awkward, but persistent collation shews that though Stenhouse and other authorities From a Frontispiece Drawing in one of his Manuscript Volumes now in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries, London, to whose courtesy we are indebted for this, probably the first published, portrait of the friend of the Poet. cite the Reliques of 1808 in quoting a comment by Burns on "The boatie rows," that note, and twenty-one others printed in the 1810 volumes, did not appear in the Reliques; and of those which did make their debut in that work, two are omitted in Select Scotish Songs. At long last J. C. Dick, the scholarly editor of that invaluable volume, The Songs of Robert Burns, 1903, got access to the veritable Interleaved Copy of The Scots Musical Museum-a book so enriched by Burns that when it passed through Sotheby's it fetched £610. It is now in the collection of Dr John Gribbel, of Philadelphia, to whose splendid generosity Scotland owes its possession of two other treasure-books which link the names of Burns and Glenriddell for ever with his own. The results of Mr Dick's careful scrutiny of the Interleaves appeared in a volume-of which only 255 copies were printed-published posthumously in 1908, exactly a hundred years after The Reliques of Robert Burns. Dick's book (another splendid contribution to real Burns literature) is entitled Notes on Scottish Song by Robert Burns, &c. In it he dissects Cromek's Reliques version of Burns's "Strictures," and sets forth (1) the Notes found in the actual handwriting of Burns; (2) Notes written by Riddell and interspersed among those in the Poet's holograph, all of which (Riddell's) had for a century been accounted the legitimate prose offspring of Burns; (3) Notes which could not be verified, as the Interleaves, where presumably Cromek found them, have been abstracted from the volume. It would be a great find if they could be located, especially that leaf with the note on Highland Mary. Dick, in further introducing his volume, says: "The last part (4) consists of a series of Spurious Notes, also printed by Cromek in the Reliques. These are not in the (Glenriddell) volumes, and never were there." Referring to Cromek's 1810 additions, he says: "All the additions were written either by himself or by his friend in deception Allan Cunningham." Mr Dick branded fifteen Notes as "Spurious," and others, he says in his Appendix, "Cromek has garbled." By a lucky chance a friend sent me three cuttings from the Kilmarnock Standard (v.d. May, 1921) of an article |