Origin: Piper o' Dundee

Subject: Burns song?????
From: Susanne
Date: 11 Jan 00 - 03:45 PM

Could anyone tell me if the song "Piper O'Dundee" was written by burns??

Thankyou lots.

Subject: RE: Help: Burns song?????
From: Murray on Saltspring
Date: 11 Jan 00 - 04:42 PM

The short answer is, no. It seems to appear first in Hogg's Jacobite Relics, tho I can't check that right now. However, William Donaldson, in "The Jacobite Song"(Aberdeen, 1988), 108) gives it as among the songs attributrable to Hogg himself, and he comments: "{The above songs] approach the very summits of the popular art-song as a form. If they are indeed Hogg's, then he has only one rival as a songwriter in Scotland--Robert Burns."

Subject: RE: Help: Burns song?????
From: GeorgeH
Date: 12 Jan 00 - 08:31 AM

Much that's attributed to Burns wasn't actually written by him. As a collector he was sometimes "careless" about attributing his sources!

G.

Subject: RE: Help: Burns song?????
From: Bruce O.
Date: 12 Jan 00 - 06:19 PM

I don't believe that. Most of it's from careless Burns enthusiasts who incorrectly attributed things to him.

Subject: RE: Help: Burns song?????
From: Barry Finn
Date: 12 Jan 00 - 08:53 PM

Don't rub it in Bruce, (he, he). Barry

Subject: RE: Help: Burns song?????
From: GeorgeH
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 10:20 AM

Bruce O: My informants say otherwise. But since I've not researched it myself that's as much as I know.

G.

Subject: RE: Help: Burns song?????
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 05:58 PM

So we have one Scottish poet appropriating songs he didn't write, and one passing his own works off as traditional. We ought to be grateful to them. After all, what would we argue about otherwise?
BTW, welcome, Susanne. Have you been around for long? I hadn't noticed. Hope you'll stay! - Susanne

Subject: RE: Help: Burns song?????
From: Jeri
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 06:04 PM

Did Burns write "Parcel o' Rogues" or did he collect it? (Sorry if this is a dumb question.)

Subject: RE: Help: Burns song?????
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 06:14 PM

Jeri, I don't think it's a dumb question. As far as I know the jury's still out. I found the following quotation in Ailie Munro:
[1984:] Thomas Crawford suggests that the original may have been one of the Jacobite songs which Burns altered or touched up, although as always "it is extremely difficult ... to say where tradition leaves off, and Burns ... begins". (Munro, Scottish Folk Revival 154f)
Now, someone tell me, who is Thomas Crawford? A trustworthy authority? Maybe we ought to start a new thread on this one! - Susanne

Subject: RE: Help: Burns song?????
From: Murray on SS
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 11:50 PM

Ref. is to Thomas Crawford, "Burns: A Study of the Poems and Songs" (Edinburgh-London: Oliver & Boyd, 1960), p. 239. He goes on to to say that the song is "in character", as sung by an opponent of the Union of Parliamjents in 1707, "and it shows Burns working in the spirit of his source-material to produce an imaginative reconstruction of a patriot's feelings in 1707", etc. He doesn't go much into what "source material" there might be. I should add maybe that the editor of B's complete poems, James Kinsley (Oxford, 1968), notes that in the MS. it's labelled "Mr B---- words", BUT in the Scots Musical Museum is left unsigned, "perhaps because the theme and the refrain were not Burns's own".

Subject: RE: Help: Burns song?????
From: T in Oklahoma (Okiemockbird)
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 11:59 PM

I got the following quotation from Sir Walter Scott out of the archives of the cni-copyright forum. I think it might be of interest:

"Neither would it be easy to mark [Burns's] share in the individual ditties. Some he appears to have entirely re-written; to others he added supplementary stanzas; in some he retained only the leading lines and the chorus; and others he merely arranged and ornamented. For the benefit of future antiquaries, however, we may observe that many of the songs, claimed by the present editor [Cromeck] as the exclusive composition of Burns, were, in reality, current long before he was born. Let us take one of the best examples of his skill in imitating the old ballad,--McPherson's Lament was a well known song many years before the Ayrshire Bard wrote those additional verses which constitute its principal merit." (_Quarterly Review_, Vol. 1, Number 1, February 1809, p. 30.)

T.

Subject: RE: Help: Burns song?????
From: Bruce O.
Date: 14 Jan 00 - 12:03 AM

And the tune "A Parcel of Rogues in a Nation" had been around since about 1752, but no one has ever found any verses for it. Hogg in 'Jacobite Relics', I, merely said the song and air were well known (and didn't mention Burns). James Dick in 'The Songs of Robert Burns' also touches on the Act of Union, and the 31 Scottish Union Commisioners, the rogues. Dick also quotes the entry in Grey's MS list, 'Mr. B-- words'.

Subject: RE: Help: Burns song?????
From: roopoo
Date: 14 Jan 00 - 02:09 AM

Just a little aside - the aforementioned Hogg: is he James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd?

mouldy

Subject: RE: Help: Burns song?????
From: Susanne no 1!!
Date: 14 Jan 00 - 01:48 PM

Hiya y'all! Well thanks very much for your help. Im kinda upset its not a burns song as I was asked by my school teacher to arrange a few songs for the 'burns supper' unfortunately Piper O'Dundee was one of them I have already began - but I guess I can still include it as it works really well. Thanks again!

Subject: Obscure Scottish history question
From: Abby Sale
Date: 09 Nov 15 - 10:49 AM

Someone may know this.   
I've finally gotten around to learning "Such a Parcel o' Rogues in a Nation." In the first verse:

Now Sark runs to the Solway sands
And Tweed runs to the ocean
To mark where England's province stands
Such a parcel o' rogues in a nation

I know the two rivers form the boundary between Scotland & England. But the song lines imply to me that Burns was saying this had been fiddled. That is, to increase English territory after the Union, perhaps other, more southern rivers had been renamed or perhaps Sark and Tweed had actually been rerouted. Or maybe something completely different. Anyone know?

Subject: RE: Origin: Piper o' Dundee
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Nov 15 - 11:20 AM

Hi, Abbey.

It means - as far as I can tell - that the Sark and Tweed are flowing as always (to the Solway Firth and the North Sea respectively) but now they mark not a national but a provincial boundary, Scotland having been turned into a "province" of England.

Subject: RE: Origin: Piper o' Dundee
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 09 Nov 15 - 04:31 PM

There were fluctuations in the where the border lay over the years: the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed (where the River Tweed meets the North Sea (or ocean) changed hands no less than 13 times, and is now (and since 1482) in Northumberland, England.

As for Scotland being a province of England...................yes, well, discuss!

Subject: RE: Origin: Piper o' Dundee
From: Abby Sale
Date: 10 Nov 15 - 10:22 AM

Both reasonable, thanks.

After posting, I found this FWIW page:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Scottish_border

All I get from it is that before 1707 there was no clear border, just wild border territory. Now it is "marked." And if Burns is pissed off about this specific thing, could it have been determined at the north extreme of the disputed lands?

This would have settled several issues for locals - which law and which religion they fell under. Perhaps which tax structure? But I just had the feeling there were wider issues as well.

Oh well.

Subject: RE: Origin: Piper o' Dundee
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Nov 15 - 10:26 AM

Parcel of Rogues (album), an album by Steeleye Span which includes this song.
A Parcel of Rogues (album), an album by The Dubliners which also includes this song. Wikipedia

A personal recollection:- Just to mention, as we have drifted to this phrase of Burns's, that these two albums were issued three years apart, 1973 & 76. I recall, way-way back in my folk record reviewing days for The Times Educational Supplement, denouncing the company who produced the second of them for reusing a title that had already been pre-empted. I still think they should not have done so; but there is, alas, apparently no © on titles.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Origin: Piper o' Dundee
From: Tootler
Date: 24 May 17 - 08:04 AM

Going back to the original topic of the thread, who exactly was the Carnegie, Piper O' Dundee?

All I've been able to find was that he was supposed to have responsible for raising the army for Graham of Claverhouse, aka "Bonnie Dundee" for the Jacobite uprising of 1689.

As the last line of the song says "But wha's Carengie, the Piper O' Dundee?"