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Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany
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Subject: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Steve Gardham Date: 04 Jan 21 - 03:06 PM Can any kind researcher please point me at a definitive history of the different editions of this influential set of books? 1740 10th edition seems to be earliest I can find that has the full 4 volumes, and I need to consult earlier editions that might have Vol 4, if such exists. |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Mick Pearce (MCP) Date: 04 Jan 21 - 05:21 PM According to the BL catalogue the 9th ed 1733 was only 3 volumes, which suggests 10th ed may be the first with 4 vols. Mick |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Jack Campin Date: 04 Jan 21 - 07:33 PM A rummage through the KVK union catalogue at Karlsruhe will tell you exactly which copies are known to exist. Though it would be nice to piggyback on somebody else's research. KVK is a bit of a bugger to work with. |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Steve Gardham Date: 05 Jan 21 - 08:33 AM Thanks, both of you, for responding. Mick, that 3 volume only in 9th edition info clinches what I need. Basically I'm just trying to establish the earliest appearance of Gypsy Laddie, Child 200, and unless something else crops up that makes 1740 the earliest. Mick, as you're not a member of TSF would you like a copy of my latest spreadsheet edition of all the earliest appearances of the English folk songs, those from oral tradition up to c1940? I would appreciate your scrutiny anyway, please. |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Mick Pearce (MCP) Date: 06 Jan 21 - 06:31 AM Hi Steve Yes I'd love a copy of the spreadsheet. Thanks Mick |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Jim McLean Date: 06 Jan 21 - 09:24 AM I have the full four volume set and a previous owner has made many remarks everywhere. At the beginning of volume there this appears: In 1740 was published the 10th edition, with the addition of 150 songs. These form the fourth volume. See D. Laing. Museum x393. The books were owned by Mary S Carrithers, Glasgow 1892. |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Steve Gardham Date: 06 Jan 21 - 09:43 AM Thanks, Jim I think that clinches the earliest date of Johnny Faa then. Is that David Laing of mid-nineteenth century, Edinburgh fame? |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Jim McLean Date: 06 Jan 21 - 01:04 PM I would think so, the note is in pencil at the foot of the page. I don’t know what the reference Museum small superscript cross followed by 393 means. I have checked Johnson’s museum but no obvious link. David Laing may have produced a work called “museum”. |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Jack Campin Date: 06 Jan 21 - 07:19 PM Stenhouse's notes in the SMM? An early copy of the tune alone is McGibbon in 1742. |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Joe Offer Date: 06 Jan 21 - 08:08 PM Oh my, another treasure to explore. I haven't figured out if the entire publication is available online. Here's what's at the British Library: And the National Library of Scotland: |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Jack Campin Date: 07 Jan 21 - 04:31 AM 393 is the page number where Laing's notes start in the 1839 edition of SMM. |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Steve Gardham Date: 07 Jan 21 - 07:33 AM Joe, the entire 4 vol set is online in several editions. Anything after 1740 should have the complete 4 volumes included. Jack, I only have access to the Amadeus edition which would appear to be a facsimile of the 1792 edition but I can't see any notes of David Laing's anywhere. In fact there are no notes in the actual song section at all. I also have Stenhouse's Illustrations which do mention Ramsay in various places but not on p393. What I have spotted though which I hadn't had a good look at before are all the appendixes at the back of the second volume of The Museum. Thanks anyway. |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Jack Campin Date: 07 Jan 21 - 08:22 AM Laing's notes first appeared in the 1839 edition. Which is probably online but won't be easy to read on my phone. Stenhouse may have known something relevant to your question and Laing could have filled in the details. |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Jim McLean Date: 07 Jan 21 - 09:28 AM These are the notes from Stenhoise, page 393, in my copy dated 1853. THERE’S THREE GUDE FELLOWS AYONT YON GLEN The title and tune are all that remains of the old song, which is taken from McGibbon’s First Collection of Scots Tunes, p. 18. Oswald afterwards printed it under the new title of “There’s Three Ood Fellows down in yon Glen,” in the fifth book of his Caledonian Pocket Companion, p.1. The four lines in the Museum, beginning “It’s now the day is daw’ing,” introduced in the solo, were hastily penned by Burns at the request of the Publisher, who was anxious to have the tune in that work, and the old words could not be discovered. The word fa’ in is erroneously printed fain in the Museum. This beautiful old air, however, well merits a better set of verses than those in the above-mentioned work. |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Steve Gardham Date: 07 Jan 21 - 02:33 PM I have the same edition but no mention of David Laing there. 'The first to come in was a tinker.....' Perhaps not:) |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Jim McLean Date: 07 Jan 21 - 03:04 PM I know what you mean, Steve, but credits for contributions to Johnson’s Museum always include Laing. Maybe Jack can clarify |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Steve Gardham Date: 08 Jan 21 - 08:42 AM I have read the 1839 intro by DL now and it's full of references to obscure music publications from the earliest to just before SMM was published, but very little of actual oral tradition I suspect. That seems to be a big problem for those wanting to study Scots songs from oral tradition; until Greig and Duncan came along the overlap between folksong and artsong was very hazy and of course Burns rewriting everything obscured that distinction even further. |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Jim McLean Date: 08 Jan 21 - 10:14 AM I also have been researching Scottish poetry/song and I found that Greig Duncan didn’t pick up on Hugh McWilliam’s The Lass Among the Heather which was the source for all their references about songs with Ballymena, various spellings, Jeannie Robertson actually sings a verse from this song along with a verse from Tannahill’s Breas of Balquhither and names it as such. No one seems to have noticed and the tape of Jeannie singing this amalgamation is in the library of the School of Scottish Studies under that title of The Braes o Balquhither. |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Steve Gardham Date: 08 Jan 21 - 04:09 PM I don't think Greig or Duncan professed to know a lot about the songs and their histories. Greig was influenced by the likes of Wm Walker who persuaded him Peter Buchan's ballads were from oral tradition. Greig was an avid collector and did a magnificent job rivalling Sharp but he wrote little on the histories and background. He didn't have time. |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: GUEST Date: 09 Jan 21 - 08:34 AM According to ESTC, there is a copy of Volume 4 dated 1737 in the Huntington Library: The tea-table miscellany, or, a collection of choice songs, Scots and English. Published by Allan Ramsay. Vol. IV. Edinburgh : printed for and sold by the publisher, and all the other booksellers in Britain, 1737. I can't get a link to the catalogue record to work, but you can go to the ESTC search page and search on the ESTC no N46034. So it looks as if vol 4 was published separately before being incorporated into the 10th edition. This edition of the volume doesn't seem to be available online. |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: MartinNail Date: 09 Jan 21 - 08:48 AM GUEST was me. Didn't realise I needed to reset my cookie. |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Steve Gardham Date: 09 Jan 21 - 09:29 AM Thanks, Martin If we can confirm this it will be very useful. There is every likelihood Ramsay got it from another printed source but until that surfaces Ramsay is our earliest point for Johnny Faa. I seem to remember he is also the earliest source of the 'Scotch' version of Barbara Allen but I think that's in an earlier volume. It's such a pity Pepys didn't just give us the first line of what Mrs Knipp sang. My theory is that the Scotch version is what she sang, i.e.,what Ramsay published. Much of what appears in Ramsay comes from the London stage and pleasure gardens. I'm pretty convinced both early versions originated in London. |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: MartinNail Date: 09 Jan 21 - 10:53 AM I've checked the Huntington Library website: the item is there in the catalogue, and their annual report for 1957-58 refers to the acquisition of "the hitherto unknown first edition of Volume IV of Allan Ramsay's The Tea-table Miscellany (Edinburgh, 1737)". And it's the only location given in ESTC, so it looks to be a unique copy. The Huntington doesn't seem to have digitised it, so the only way of checking the contents would be to email them, or find someone in Los Angeles who could go and look, when COVID allows. (Unless some Ramsay researcher somewhere has already got a scan.) |
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Subject: RE: Ramsay Tea-table Miscellany From: Steve Gardham Date: 09 Jan 21 - 03:11 PM I'll pass this on to SteveR who's doing the corrections at the moment. |
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