Complete Songs Of Robert Burns - online book
360+ songs with lyrics, sheet music, historical notes & glossary.
| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
IX. MISCELLANEOUS 483 |
||
|
of Life and the progress of his Dayes from Seaven to Seaventy. To the tone of Jane Shore' known to Shakespeare as Live with me for Marlowe's delightful song Come live with me and be my love.
Peggy Bawn, for which Burns marked his ballad, is an Irish melody. It is written throughout in the major mode, and not in the minor as might be expected from the character of the verses it interprets. It was very popular in Burns's time, but in many musical collections of the period, and subsequently, it is disfigured by tasteless adornments. The present copy is from the Scots Musical Museum, No. 509. The Isle of Kelt, the tune of Bnrns's original ballad, is also known as Hardy Knute. In the Pepysian Library is a black letter ballad—a Scottish version of the Hunting of Chevy Chase—directed to be sung to The Isle of Kyle. The following is a copy of the music from the Caledonian Pocket Companion, 1753, v. 31.
 No. 325. The wintry west extends his blast. Commonplace Book, 1872, 12, entitled Song. Tune, MTherson's farewell, with the following note: ' I have various sources of pleasure and enjoyment which are, in a manner, peculiar to myself, or some here and there such other out-of-the-way person. Such is the peculiar pleasure I take in the season of winter, more than the rest of the year. This, I believe, may be partly owing to my. misfortunes giving my mind a melancholy cast; but there is something even in the
"Mighty tempest and the hoary waste Abrupt and deep, stretch'd o'er the buried earth"
which raises the mind to a serious sublimity, favourable to everything great and noble. There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more—I don't know if I'should call it pleasure, but something which exalts me, something which enraptures me—than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood, or high plantation, in a cloudy, winter day, and hear a stormy wind howling among the trees, and raving o'er the plain. ... In one of these seasons just after a tract of misfortunes, I composed The wintry wind extends his blast.' The tune M°Pher-son's farewell or rant is noted in Song No. jii.
No. 326. But lately seen in gladsome green. Scots Musical Micseum, 1796, No. 486, signed ' B,' entitled The winter of life. Scotish Airs, 1801, ijg. The MS. is in the British Museum. On October 19, 1794, a- copy was sent to Thomson. The verses illustrate one of the poet's mental phases. His hair was showing a silver streak, and Time told him that the meridian of his days was past. He describes the melody to Thomson in these words : ' I enclose you a musical curiosity—an East Indian air which you would swear was a Scots one. I know the authenticity of it, as the gentleman who brought it over is a particular acquaintance of mine. Clarke has set a bass to it, and I intend putting it into the Musical Museum.' If the tune in our text, which is copied from the Museum, is the East Indian Air referred to, it is very remarkable, because it looks like a make-up of the Scottish Chevy Chase of Song No. 26j.
No. 327. "Wee 'Willie Gray and his leather wallet. Scots Musical Museum, 1803, Written for this work by R. Burns,' for an original
Ii 2 |
||