Online: Scottish music manuscript 1812

Subject: Online: Scottish music manuscript 1812
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 04 Aug 11 - 05:08 AM

This has just gone online, as a free PDF download. Many thanks to my friend Keith Sanger of Edinburgh for the heads-up.

THE ELIZABETH ROSS MANUSCRIPT Original Highland Aires Collected in Raasay in 1812 By Elizabeth Jane Ross
 
Edited by Peter Cooke, Morag MacLeod and Colm O'Baoill
 
For the University of Edinburgh School of Celtic and Scottish Studies on-line publications, 2011. A Facsimile of the manuscript is now available in PDF from the same site. The edition and translations may be freely downloaded for study or performance, (including commercial recordings) provided that they are properly acknowledged.

http://www.celtscot.ed.ac.uk/documents/RossMS.pdf

The whole website is well worth a look too:

http://www.celtscot.ed.ac.uk

There's a bit more related info in the Boswell thread:

Did Boswell (Johnson's biog) play music?
http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=139536&messages=15

Subject: RE: Online: Scottish music manuscript 1812
From: maeve
Date: 04 Aug 11 - 05:47 AM

Thank you very much, Bonnie!

Subject: RE: Online: Scottish music manuscript 1812
From: GUEST,kenny
Date: 04 Aug 11 - 06:09 AM

Thanks very much for bringing this to our attention , Bonny. There's a very fine bagpipe tune named "Eliza Ross", recorded by Iain MacInnes, and "Lunasa", among others. Can't help but wonder if it's the same person.

Subject: RE: Online: Scottish music manuscript 1812
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 04 Aug 11 - 06:18 AM

Could well be - she was often referred to as "Eliza". I'll have to find that tune & give it a listen! Keith is a piper so I'll fly it past him when we next speak.

Subject: RE: Online: Scottish music manuscript 1812
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 04 Aug 11 - 06:22 AM

[From the introduction]

Compiled around 1812, this is the earliest unpublished collection of Highland vocal and instrumental music and unique in that it apparently represents the wide-ranging musical repertory known to Gaelic-speaking inhabitants of one Hebridean island, Raasay, including the aristocratic Highland home of James MacLeod, laird of Raasay. ...

We have little information on life in Raasay house during the time that Elizabeth Ross was living there but it was probably still the hospitable, happy and musical home about which both Johnson and Boswell had written so enthusiastically during their travels around Scotland in 1773, some forty years earlier. ...

There's an account in the Boswell thread I cited above of his & Dr. Johnson's visit to the house where this manuscript was written.

Subject: RE: Online: Scottish music manuscript 1812
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 04 Aug 11 - 11:12 AM

Thanks for the link, Bonnie. I'm having a good time playing the tunes.

Subject: RE: Online: Scottish music manuscript 1812
From: GUEST,Garbage on "thesession.org"
Date: 04 Aug 11 - 03:16 PM

Rubbish version posted on that website, but I had commented from Iain MacInnes' sleeve notes :

".... a reel from the so-called Lady D'Oyley manuscript, produced on the Isle of Raasay in 1812. The music was set on paper by Eliza Ross, a grand-daughter of MacLeod of Raasay, and the manuscript contains a number of tunes taken from the playing of the family piper, the famous John MacKay of Raasay [ Iain MacRuaridh, Aoighre ].
In the original, the tune is simply called "Uist Reel". Eliza emigrated to India, where she married Charles D'Oyley."

Subject: RE: Online: Scottish music manuscript 1812
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 04 Aug 11 - 04:31 PM

Uist Reel is tune No. 146 in the Ross Ms. (PDF page 180, among some other pipe tunes) and the notes mention that it bears some resemblance to one of the reels in the Patrick McDonald Collection* (No. 17 in the "North Highland Reels or Country Dances" section at the back), as indeed it does.


*Highland Vocal Airs, Country Dances or Reels of the North Highlands and Western Isles, 1784