Sir Grant taught those dreadful Scots something...to harmonize! Amazing how a drunken cross-eyed farm hand, deep in the Missouri Ozarks would know the tune Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk's Reel!



Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk, Aberdeenshire, was a great 18th-century 'improver', who set up new and far-sighted farming methods. A President of the Aberdeen Musical Society (see JSS0652 - JSS0662), he employed a singing teacher, Thomas Channon, to teach his estate tenants to sing harmonised psalms, a skill almost unknown anywhere in Scotland. The laird was celebrated by a practice-verse - secular words to a sacred song - so it could be practised outwith the church: 'How lovely is thy dwelling-place, / Sir Archie Grant to me; / The home-park, and the policies, / How pleasant, Sir, they be.'