Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts

Subject: Origins: Sir Walter Scott tunes MSS
From: Dunlace
Date: 21 Dec 04 - 04:57 AM

Does anybody know what might have happened to the manuscripts of ballad airs that Sir Walter Scott had in his library? Where would they be kept these days?

Subject: RE: Origins: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: GUEST,susu
Date: 21 Dec 04 - 11:56 AM

Try the National Library of Scotland. Good Luck

Subject: RE: Origins: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: Dunlace
Date: 22 Dec 04 - 03:31 AM

Thanks!

Subject: RE: Origins: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 08:44 PM

Did we ever get a definitive answer to this? Are Scott's song manuscripts available online anywhere?

I just got back from Jim & Susie Malcolm's Scotland Borders tour, and we spent a lot of time in the haunts of Sir Walter Scott and of Robert Burns. We visited Scott's home, Abbotsford; and also Smailholm Tower, which has dioramas depicting a number of the more popular ballads Scott collected. When I came home, I found that Google Books and the Gutenburg Project have online copies of Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, but I haven't yet determined whether this work is two volumes or three. I hadn't had any knowledge of Scott's work with music before this, so now I have a new world to explore.

So, back to my original question: Are Scott's song manuscripts available?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 09:05 PM

Do you mean C.K. Sharpe's stuff? Easy to access physically in the NLS, they may have put it online.

Scott was tone-deaf and couldn't tell one tune from another. He couldn't have made any direct personal use of notation.

Subject: RE: Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: GUEST,Starship
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 09:13 PM

See #1, iten two.

http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/links/library.html

Subject: RE: Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 09:14 PM

Jack, can you tell us any more about Scott and his song collecting? I know nothing, except from what I read in the very nice displays at Smailholm Tower. What was the process he used in producing Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, if he didn't collect the songs himself? I do know that he depended greatly on Percy's Reliques.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: GUEST,Starship
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 10:21 PM

Darn and drats. The link I suggested you look at is deddernadoornail. Sorry.

Subject: RE: Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Oct 19 - 10:31 PM

http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/links/library.html is a treasure trove, Starship.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 04:42 AM

He relied on other people to do the collecting. Sharpe was the best at documenting his work. (Scott does not seem to have been aware that Sharpe regarded him as a pompous twat).

Subject: RE: Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: GUEST,Starship
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 06:49 AM

Joe, the link I meant is

Bernard C. Lloyd Collection, Aberdeen University Library (#1, item 2)

where I thought your search would have most success. However, Jack's suggestion looks good.

Subject: RE: Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: Joe Offer
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 06:01 PM

I was tempted to spend a few days in Aberdeen last month, but Belfast won out. Maybe next time. I feeling I could descend into the University of Aberdeen library, and not emerge until weeks later.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 14 Oct 19 - 06:42 PM

The Elphinstone in Aberdeen could tak you years, Joe! Hope Belfast was good too!
Could there be more Walter Scott stuff in the School of Scottish Studies? (Edinburgh Uni)

Subject: RE: Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Oct 19 - 12:09 AM

Our guide, Jim Malcolm, is a history major from the University of Edinburgh with a special interest in Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott. Since we've been on three tours with him and his wife Susie now, they are always available to us for consultation - and they've been a wonderful help. And if they can't help, it's likely we can get help from Jim's half-brother, Scott Gardiner.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Oct 19 - 04:44 AM

I am pretty sure the SoSS has nothing relating to Scott except in print - I've trawled for c.1800 tune sources pretty thoroughly. Not much more in the University of Edinburgh special collections department. The NLS is your best bet.

It would help to know exactly what you're hoping to find. If you're after manuscripts of the Minstrelsy with notation for the tunes, be assured they don't exist and never did.

Subject: RE: Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Oct 19 - 12:18 PM

Have any of you seen the displays at Smailholm Tower? They led me to believe Scott was a major collector. Not so?

Subject: RE: Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Oct 19 - 01:50 PM

No. He was a packrat with other people's collections of texts and didn't have the brain circuitry to write down a tune.

Subject: RE: Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Oct 19 - 03:17 PM

Last I heard all of Scott's mss were still at Abbotsford.

Subject: RE: Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Oct 19 - 03:10 PM

A packrat, Jack? Boy, you ain't a-kiddin! Abbotsford gave me the impression that Scott had a serious hoarding problem - rooms full of armor, guns and other weapons, dead animals, a huge and perfect library, and whatnot.

This page (click) from Abbotsford gives the impression that a lot of Scott's papers are there, but perhaps not catalogued yet:

Work is currently ongoing to catalogue Abbotsford’s extensive archive of family letters, diaries, photographs and other written materials. If you would like to enquire about the archive, please contact the Heritage Team.

In the evening after our visit to Abbotsford last month, Steve Byrne and Fiona Hunter of Malinky gave us a concert of songs from Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and it was a delightful evening. Byrne has been collaborating on a Walter Scott Minstrelsy Project. See more at http://walterscott.eu/ - The Resources page is particularly interesting.

Subject: RE: Info: Sir Walter Scott song manuscripts
From: Allan Conn
Date: 17 Oct 19 - 03:00 AM

Joe re the sources of the ballads in Scott's Minstrelsy - I have "The Illustrated Border Ballads" by John Marsden which features a selection of the better known of the ballads and many of them do seem to have come simply from existing published texts which Scott has put together into a collection. Many of them were already published in the likes of Caw's "Poetical Museum"; in Allan Ramsay's "Evergreen"; in the Bannatyne MS etc. So he gathered these together and put them in a single collection - perhaps it is claimed adding some from his own hand with the likes of "Kinmont Willie" being one possible example.

Others were collected for him. Scott stated that the version of "Hughie the Graeme" was procured by his friend Mr W Laidlaw in Blackhouse.

That is not to say that he didn't also go looking for ballads though. In his diary for Thursday 9th July 1829 he writes "Heard of the death of Bob Shortreed the companion of many a long ride among the hills in quest of old ballads"

I think they would more often be visiting people to pick up texts though rather than some field excursion to hear the recitations. One "ballad raid" was to Dr John Elliot of Newlands in Liddesdale. He was an antiquarian who had previously lived nearer to Scott at Cleughead and who had seemingly previously provided Scott and Shortreed with various texts. Seemingly they expected the same again but this time was notable in that rather than simply having a text this time it was a live performance. An old man had been brought from 15 miles away. Jonathan Graham, the lang quaker, was seemingly a man in his 80s and according to Shortreed "gaunt and of terrifying mien" Scott wrote that he was "by profession an itinerant cleaner of clocks and watches and, perhaps, the last of our professional ballad reciters".

Graham was then said to have been lavishly plied with brandy before he started to perform "a sort of wild recitative....which swells into a long and varied howl, not unlike to a view hallo" This was Scotts first acquaintance with "by far the most uncouth and savage of all the ballads that have fallen into his hands" The Fray of Suport.

So I think this as such a specific event for Scott because there must have been a huge difference between being given a manuscript by a learned gentleman to actually confronting the common man of the country. Especially a frightening one who seemingly then collapsed through consuming too much brandy!