Fretted instruments in traditional music

Some people think of fretted instruments as newcomers to traditional music in Scotland and Ireland. The tenor banjo and mandolin started to appear around the beginning of the 20th century. The Greek bouzouki appeared in the 1960s, and quickly metamorphized into various types of citterns, blarges, octave mandolins, etc. So it's a common assumption that fretted instruments are somehow not quite as "traditional" as fiddles, flutes, or even accordions.

But interestingly enough, we have documentation that fretted instruments were playing traditional music in Scotland before fiddles and flutes (at least of the modern type) had even been invented!

The BanjoA Short History by Mick Moloney

The early origins of the instrument, now known as the banjo, are obscure. That its precursors came from Africa to America, probably by the West Indies, is by now well established. Yet, the multitude of African peoples, languages, and music make it very difficult to associate the banjo with any specific African protoype. From various historical references, however, it can be deduced that the banjar, or bangie, or banjer, or banza, or banjo was played in early 17th century America by Africans in slavery who constructed their instruments from gourds, wood, and tanned skins, using hemp or gut for strings. This prototype was eventually to lead to the evolution of the modern banjo in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Until 1800 the banjo remained essentially a black instrument, although at times there was considerable interaction between whites and blacks in enjoying music and dance—whites usually participating as observers. What brought the instrument to the attention of the nation, however, was a grotesque representation of black culture by white performers in minstrel shows.

The very essence of minstrelsy was black-face caricatures which became increasingly popular toward the end of the 18th century, leading to fully fledged black-face skits and songs on stage throughout white America by the middle of the 19th century. [Note 1.] It was during this time that the banjo in all probability was first introduced to Ireland, when the Virginia Minstrels toured in England, Ireland and France in 1843, 1844 and 1845. The leader of the Virginia Minstrels was Joel Walker Sweeney who was born in Buckingham County, Virginia, in 1810. Sweeney, whose antecedents came from Co. Mayo, has become one of the most controversial characters in the history of the banjo, having been credited widely with introducing the fifth string, or chanterelle, to the instrument. In fact, there are early watercolour paintings well before Sweeney's time that show the fifth string on plantation banjos. [Note 2.] So Sweeney most certainly did not invent the 5-string banjo. What he did, however, with his minstrel show was extend the popularity of the banjo to an enormous audience all over the United States and Europe.

This leads to the question of what kind of banjo was initially introduced to Ireland. The overwhelming likelihood is that it was the 5-string banjo of the minstrels and not the earlier three or four string variety which was common on the plantations. This is supported by a late 19th century sketch in Captain Francis O'Neill's Irish Minstrels and Musicians of piper Dick Stephenson and banjoist John Dunne, where the fifth string and peg on Dunne's banjo is clearly visible. By this time the banjo had undergone several transformations of a technological nature...

The minstrel banjo also lacked frets and as a result, playing above the fifth string peg posed a lot of severe intonation problems. It wasn't until 1878 that frets were added to the commercially produced banjo, a development credited to Henry Dobson of New York State. It took three decades of animated controversy for the idea to catch on. So the earliest Irish banjos were also, it appears, definitely fretless. Up to the turn of the 19th century, banjos were plucked and strummed by the fingers. So the evidence, though it is circumstantial, would indicate that originally the banjo was used in Ireland for rudimentary accompaniment of

songs and tunes, with perhaps some of the simpler melodies being plucked out by the fingers.

This all changed dramatically at the turn of the century when steel strings were invented. Influenced by the use of the plectrum in mandolin playing, banjo players started to experiment with different plectral playing styles. The idea of tuning the banjo in fifths, just like the mandolin, caught on around this time as well. Many players started to remove the short drone fifth string from the banjo and before long banjo makers started manufacturing four string banjos, originally called plectrum banjos, which were full sized, 22 fret banjos just like the 5-string banjo, but lacking the fifth string. Then around 1915, the tango, or tenor banjo, was invented, coinciding with the popularity in America of this new dance form imported from Latin America, which was sweeping the nation at the time. The tenor banjo had 17 or 19 frets, a shorter neck tuned in fifths, just like the mandolin or fiddle, though not necessarily at the same pitch, and was played with a plectrum. The plectrum and tenor banjos became the preferred form of the instrument in Vaudeville, Music Hall, in Dixieland Jazz, Ragtime [Note 3.] and Swing [Note 4]. In fact, the 5-string banjo languished for years, except in Appalachia, until it was restored to popularity through Bluegrass and the revival of Old-Time traditional music [Note 5].

Undoubtedly, the first Irish banjo player to record commercially was Mike Flanagan, born in County Waterford in 1898, who emigrated to the United States at the age of 10. Like many of the Irish banjo players in this century, he started on the mandolin and learned on his own simply because there was nobody to learn banjo from. Mike, who at the time of writing [1986] is very much alive in Albany, New York, recorded prodigiously with his brother, Joe, accompanied during the early years by another brother, Louis, who passed away at a young age. Other banjo players to record in the 1920s were Michael Gaffney from New York and the late Neil Nolan from Maine,

who played with Dan Sullivan's Shamrock Band in Boston. There was great life and exuberance in those early recordings, in part because the music was designed for lively dancing, but also because the banjo was at that time traditionally tuned higher than nowadays—still in fifths, but with the top string pitched at B or sometimes even at C. There are a few players in America who still favour the old tuning, most notably Jimmy Kelly in Boston. Most of the younger players, however, favour the GDAE tuning, which is by now "standard" for Irish music on the tenor banjo.

It's not hard to pinpoint when this "standardization" occurred. Before 1960, a number of styles and instruments co-existed in the modest fraternity of banjo players in Ireland. Some players favoured the 5-string banjo, some the banjo-mandolin, while others favoured varieties of the 4-string instrument. Some players used a pick, while others used a thimble.

In the early 1960s, the meteoric rise to commercial success of The Dubliners in the Irish and English folk revival was to have a profound effect on the fortunes of the banjo in Irish music. Bearded, affable Barney McKenna, ace tenor banjoist in the group, became a household name among traditional music fans. [Note 6.] Barney's skill and wide visibility helped bring scores of new devotees to the instrument, almost all tuning their banjos as Barney did—GDAE, an octave below the fiddle.

Now in the mid-1980s, there are literally hundreds of accomplished Irish banjo players in Ireland, England and America. The instrument has most certainly come of age, after years of occupying a marginal position in the traditional music.

The Lute in Scotland

The first Scottish collections

Many a lute, viol and virginal 'whispered softness in the chambers' of the Scottish gentry during the turbulent years. Many an educated hand inscribed favourite airs in French or Italian tablature in manuscript tune books. Some of these books, of great interest today, have been preserved: we have the compilations of Sir William Mure of Rowallan; John Skene of Hallhills; Robert Gordon of Straloch (lost, but copied); Rev. Robert Edwards, minister of Murroes Parish near Dundee; Alexander Forbes of Tolquhan; William Sterling of Ardoch; William Ker of Newbattles; and the Rev. James Guthrie.

Of these, the Rowallan (c. 1612-28), the Skene (1615-20) and the Straloch (1627), are the earliest. They are for the lute [The Skene MS was actually written for the mandora, a small high-pitched relative of the lute] and contain many Scottish airs, the earliest forms indeed of some tunes current in later years, such as 'Flowers o' the Forest', 'John Anderson my Jo', 'Adieu Dundee', 'Good Night and God be with You', 'My Jo Janet' and 'Green Grow the Rashes'. The Rowallan also contains a tune entitled 'Ane Scottis Dance', and the Stirling (sometimes called the Leyden) 'New Hilland Ladie'.

George S. EmmersonRantin' Pipe and Tremblin' String: A History of Scottish Dance MusicDent & Sons, London, 1971page 30

Early Scottish music cannot be classified in terms of simply 'classical' or 'folk' music. In past times, music in Scotland fell into three categories—'notes of noy' (sadness); 'notes of joy'; and 'sleep music'. Lutaris and clarsaris would have familiar with all three... The lute manuscripts are the obvious starting point. The complete Scottish lute repertoire runs to some 400 pieces. Many are settings of clarsach, fiddle or pipe tunes popular all over Scotland in the 16th and 17th centuries and contain the earliest settings of such classic airs as 'Grein Greus ye Rasses' and 'The Flowers of the Forrest'. The Golden Age of the lute in Scotland, however, had all but vanished by this time, and, sadly, because of the Reformation and a self-exiled Court, almost nothing survives it. But by looking at musical performance practice in other European courts at this time, especially the French, with whom Scotland shared an 'auld alliance', one can get a picture of what might have taken place.

Robert Phillips, William TaylorNotes toThe Rowallan Concert, Notes of Noy, Notes of Joy

The formal classification of music according to its function, of which the Irish goltraige (music of lamentation), gentraige (joyful music) and súantraige (sleep music) are examples, is of great antiquity and occurs in many civilizations.

Joan RimmerThe Irish Harp/Cláirseach na hÉireannCló Mercier, Corcaigh, 1977p. 24

Only a few isolated pieces of the great body of Irish traditional music can be regarded as purely instrumental, in the sense of music played solely to delight the ear and not for dancing or marching. In olden times the contrary was the case, as many references in the ancient literature attest, and that the three thirds, suantraí, geantraí and goltraí, into which music was divided refer only to instrumental music, is evident from the ancient legends which purport to examine the origin of these terms. In the account of the battle of Magh Tuireadh fought between the Tuatha dé Danann and the piratical Formorians it is related how the Dagda (the good god) effects the release of Uaithne, his harper, who had been carried off by the retreating pirates. He pursues the fleeing band to their retreat, where he sees his harp hanging from a wall on which they have placed it, and the harp comes to him, killing in its passage nine of the pirates. The Dagda plays upon the harp the three musical feats which give distinction to the harper. He plays the goltraí until their women weep; he plays the geantraí until their women and youths burst into laughter; and he plays the suantraí until the entire host falls asleep.

Breandán BreathnachFolk Music and Dances of IrelandMercier Press, 1977pp. 2-4

Flanders was linked to Scotland by commercial ties, and this land also played its part in influencing the music of Scotland. The Netherlands School of composition was already swaying the world of music, and Scotland, like the rest, was sitting at her feet, as the solitary Scottish book which has been preserved on the didactics of music so completely proves. For practical instrumental instruction, Flanders was also the place for tutelage. In 11473, a certain Heroun, "clerk of the chapel," received money for his passage to the "scholis," seemingly in Flanders. We find a lutar of the court being sent there to "lerne his craft" in the same year. Another lutar journeyed to Bruges this year, whilst a further entry tells of a court minstrl receiving a gift while there. In the next year we read of the king's "litil lutar" being sent to the latter city, and in 1512 a "Flemys lutar," with so good a Scots name as Rankine, as well as "foure scolaris menstralis," all from the court, were in Flanders. It is worthy of note however, that there was some give and take between the two countries, since there is a record of three "joueurs de hautbois et sachottes [sacbuts?] ... venant d'Écosse" being employed at Malines in 1504-5. The fact that James II (1437-60) married a daughter of the Duke of Guelderland in 1449 may have strengthened ties with Flanders.

Henry George FarmerA History of Music in ScotlandLondon, 1947pp. 67-68

At the court of James IV, harpers were particularly encouraged... Lutars were the next to receive royal approval. The ordinary lutars seem to have had 14s. a quater. Some of them are named, Warlaw, Lindores, Rankine, Robert Rudman, Adam Dikeson, Robert Hay, John Ledebetar, Craig, and Gray Steil who was called "soutar lutar" i.e. the "shoemaker lutar."

Henry George FarmerA History of Music in ScotlandLondon, 1947p. 74

One Irish air can with certainty be assigned to an earlier period. The jumble "callen o custure me" in Shakespeare's Henry V (IV 4) has been deciphered to read Cailín ó Chois tSiúre mé (I am a girl from the Suir-side). In a poem beginning Mealltar bean le beagán téad (a woman is wooed with a few strings) found in a late seventeenth-century manuscript from Fermanagh, Cailín ó Chois tSiúre is mentioned with the names of other songs, the singing of which, the poet declares, would have been a more profitable occupation for him than writing poetry. Malone, the great Irish eighteenth-century editor of Shakespeare, in his effort to restore the correct reading, has drawn attention to the appearance in A Handfull of Pleasant Delites, published in 1584, of a song entitled 'A Sonet of a lover in the praise of his lady, to Calen o custure me, sung at every line's end'. The air is found among a collection of songs and other pieces bound together with William Ballet's lute book (belonging to the last quarter of the sixteenth century) now preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. It is the earliest known annotation of an Irish song and will be immediately recognised as a variant of that to which The Croppy Boy ('Good men and true in this house who dwell') is sung.

Breandán BreathnachFolk Music and Dances of IrelandMercier Press, 1977pp. 18-19

William Byrd (1543-1623), the noted English composer, created a version of this tune for virginal, under the title "Callino Casturame". There is an excellent website, The Keyboard Music of William Byrd by John Sankey, which has MIDI versions of Byrd's music. Among these is "Callino Casturame". You must visit the site to hear it; the server refuses links.

This lute still retained its Oriental features and shape, and was the favourite of almost all Scotland's rulers from James I to Mary. It was played with a plectrum, as we see from the sculptured example given by Dalyell ... One of the songs in Wedderburn's Complaint of Scotland (1549) is entitled, Bille vil thou cum by a lute. The jovial lines in Christes Kirk on the Grene tell us about—

"Tam Lutar was their minstrel meetGude Lord how he could laus."

Henry George FarmerA History of Music in ScotlandLondon, 1947p. 91

The lute had been the chief instrument of this group for a century of more, and Burel recognizes it as "of instruments the only king." According to Brantôme and Melville, the lute was played by Mary Queen of Scots, and Melville says that it was in the hands of the students at St. Andrews.

Henry George FarmerIbid., p. 91

Another Scots poet, Sir William Mure of Rowallan (1594-1657), never left Scotland. Nephew of Alexander Montgomerie, he is important for us not only as author of several new song-texts, e.g. to the music of The flaming fire, Joy to the person and the so far unidentified folk-song Pert Jean, but also as compiler of two manuscript anthologies marking the two ways of Scots music—the first representative of that dualism that was to remain at the heart of Scottish music from this time on. His set of part-books of about 1630, now surviving only in a cantus part, originally contained a wide selection of French, Italian, English and Scottish part-music of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. His lute-book of 1615 includes alongside about twenty arrangements of English and European ballad or dance tunes, twenty versions of Scots songs and dances in the native air tradition, and a transcription of the part-song setting (by Lauder?) of his uncle's Before the Greeks (Musica Britannica XV, 50), almost certainly another Castalian piece from the 1580s.

Two other instrumental sources of about the same period record similar instrumental repertories: the collection of about 1620 by Sir William Skene of Hallyards of over one hundred pieces for the mandora (a small lute) includes native airs and dances and their courtly counterparts, one of which, Hutchesouns Galyiard, was probably written by or for one of the Hudsons. And the playing book for lute of Robert Gordon of Straloch of about 1628 (now unfortunately only surviving in a partial transcript of 1847) contains a dance measure with divisions and a variatio, according to contemporary practice, entitled Ostende—another European tune, known elsewhere (by Praetorius for instance) as La Bourrée.

Kenneth Elliott & Frederick RimmerA History of Scottish MusicBritish Broadcasting Corporation, 1973p. 43

Noted female Scottish lutenists

Despite the statement above, part of the Rowallan lute manuscript was probably compiled by two sisters, Anna and Mary Hay, daughters of the eighth Earl of Errol.

Here are some related links from the Early Music Women Composers pages.

Mary Queen of Scots Jane Pickering Lady Margaret Wemyss

[Discussion of arrangements of the song Peggy I must love thee]

Text B is an arrangement for lute in 'Princess Anne's lute-book' ... it is more successful than Purcell in many ways: the sketchiness of lute-style allows the arranger to leave great melodic arcs unsupported in mid air, and harmonic ambiguities are not forced upon the listener's attention but remain dormant. The awkward E at the beginning of the tune is dealt with imaginatively: it is displaced an octave, Stravinsky-like, so that the opening suggests, without actually stating, a chord of E minor, and the whole tune is cross-barred so as to throw the stress off the note on to the next-but-one-following G, so reinforcing a sense of G major tonality.

David JohnsonMusic and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth CenturyOxford University Press, 1972pp. 161-163

The background for this page is an example of lute tablature like that used in the Scottish manuscripts.

Graysteil—music from the middle ages and renaissance in Scotland, Dorian DIS-80141, Rob MacKillop … medieval and renaissance lutes, William Taylor bray harp and clarsach, Andy Hunter traditional ballad singer, Paul Rendall tenor.

We are all aware of the surviving Scottish lute manuscripts and the type of music contained therein: traditional/folk influenced or rooted pieces. Yet records show that the lute first appeared in Scotland in the 13th century and was soon associated with the so-called art music of the royal courts. None of the music from this period (13th century to 1603, the year that the Scottish James VI became James I of England as well, removing his court to England) survives. My edition of Scottish lute music (Music for the lute in Scotland, Kinmor Press) contains details of payments to lutars (the favoured Scottish term for lutenists) and quotes from many poems of the period to show how central and common the lute was to music making in mainly Lowland Scotland of the period already mentioned. Instead of lamenting the loss of repertoire of this period I decided to engage in a little creative detective work to reveal the type of music which was played.

The recording begins with five pieces from the 13th century, two songs with medieval lute and clarsach decoration, and three clarsach solos arranged from the Saint Andrews Music Book. Both the songs are rooted in Orkney: The Orkney Wedding Song and the Hymn To Saint Magnus, and are sung by an Orkneyman, Paul Rendall.

Then come five renaissance lute solos intabulated from The Art Of Music, Edinburgh c.1580 (not the 13th century as the back of the CD packaging says!). These are beautiful, rhythmically complex pieces of polyphony—a world away from Gypsies Lilt etc.

Then follows something very ambitious: an arrangement for lute and bray harp of Robert Carver's Mass for three voices. For those of us who are unaware of the sound qualities of the bray harp—be prepared for a shock. Basically the brays are little blocks of wood which gently touch each string by the soundboard making the string buzz. It sounds similar to a sitar or, as someone once pointed out, much to the player's annoyance, like a harp through a fuzz box! But this instrument was the standard throughout the 16th century, yet how rarely do we here it in early music performances today. The composer, Robert Carver, is undoubtedly the finest ever to flourish in Scotland. If you don't know his music then PLEASE check this out—amazing, even in an arrangement for plucked instruments. The underlying harmonic structure hints at the so-called double tonic beloved of Scottish bagpipe and fiddle music and is highlighted, IMHO, by being performed on instruments.

The final track has the lute and clarsach (the true wire-strung instrument) joined by the great traditional ballad singer, Andy Hunter, in an extract of the great epic Romance of Sir Graysteil. I say extract—we perform around twenty minutes out of the three hours the piece should take. The tune is, thankfully, very seductive, is found in the Straloch manuscript of the early 16th century, yet the text contains pre-christian elements. It's a tale of knights and damsels and within that genre is of a very high quality.

Rob MacKillop Posted to the lute mailing list on Mon, 26 May 1997.

At the Reformation we find the Gude and Godlie Ballates, which were Presbyterian propaganda, eloquently recommending music and poetry for devotion. One ballad goes:

Play on your lute, and sweitly to it sing,Tak harpe in hand with monie lustie string,Tyrle on the ten stringit Instrument,And pryse our God with hart & haill intent.Sing na auld thing the quhilk is abrogate,Bot sing sum new plesand perfite ballat:Blaw up organis, with glaid & heuinlie sound,Joyfull in hart, quhill all the skyis resound.

David CraigScottish Literature and the Scottish People: 1680-1830Chatto & Windus, London, 1961p. 201

fairchill—Dwelly's Gaelic dictionary relates this to farch-chiùil and farch, meaning "lute" or perhaps "lyre". I am not aware of any recorded instance of the use of the lyre in the Celtic countries, other than in translating words found in the Bible. Note that unlike many other musical instruments the name is not derived from English. This would indicate a fairly early origin for the word.

Mac Dhughail Oig

Nuair bha mi 'nam oige'S tric mi 'g eisdeachd nan oran,Agus dain agus eigse luchd sgeoil;Bhiodh teudan nan cruitean,'S na fairchill 'gan itreadh Aig maighdeanan meoghail nan cuat.

When I was youthfulOft I listened to music,To the tales and traditions of yore;Harp strings were then twangingWhile maidens were tuningThe notes of sweet lutes to their loves.

Fhad 's bhios gobhair 'nam mhainnir,Beachan eirm na mo sgeapaibh,Cealloir marchain a'teagradh na ron;Ni mi neafag ri manachAgus faosaid ri sagart,Ni mi fireas ri anart breid srol.

While I've goats on my grazings,Honey combs in my bee-hives,And the abbot still shares out the seals,I'll contend with the friarsAnd confess to the abbot,Making ready for death's winding sheet.

Tha mi fada 'nam aonarAnn an ultas an saoghail;Deostair calma 'gam shuiridh air falbh.'S ann an Heisgeir an saileRugadh m'athair 's mo mhathair,Thug iad luigheachd gu Sionn nan sar.

I've been lonely a long timeIn this world that's so troubled;Strong the power that pulls me away.Heisgeir, gem of the oceanReared my father and motherNow they rest in the Heroes' Retreat.

This is the oldest and one of the most interesting Heisgir melodies to survive. The melody resembles that of the old Welsh song "Ton-y-botel"; which suggests a common ancient Celtic (possibly pre-Christian) origin for the two melodies.

The son of Dugald, the Younger, is now old and looks at the past and the future with philosophical calm. All the allusions are old. Though he is acquainted with Christian externals he seems to be equally at home with pre-Christian essentials. His parents have gone to the non-Christian Sionn of heroes and not the Christian Heaven of God, angels, and saints.

Donald Fergusson, Aonaghus Iain MacDhomhnuill, Jean GillespieBho Na H-Innse Gall As Iomallaiche(From the Farthest Hebrides)Macmillan, Toronto,1978pp. 7-8 (verses 4-6 and commentary)

The concept of a fully functionally Catholic (or perhaps even Celtic Christian) monastery in Gaelic-speaking Scotland indicates that this song must date back to the 16th century, at least. (There were no religious centres in Scotland after the Reformation of 1560.)

Farch, farch-chiuil, fairchil, a musical instrument, possibly the lute, probably the lyre. The 'farch' is mentioned in the 'Lay of Fraoch,' taken down in 1861 from Kenneth Morrison, Trithion, Skye:—

'B' fhaide do shleagh na slat shiuil,Bu bhinne na farch-chiuil do ghuth,Snamhaiche cho fàth ri FraochCha do shin a thaobh ri sruth.'

Longer thy spear than the yard of the sail,Sweeter than the lyre of melody thy voice,A swimmer as swift as FraochNever stretched his side to flood.

Alexander CarmichaelCarmina Gadelica, Vol. IIScottish Academic Press, 1972p. 289

Sorchar nan Reul The Lightener of the Stars Feuch Sorchar nan reulAir corbha nan neul,Agus ceolradh nan speurRi luaidh dha.

Behold the Lightener of the starsOn the crests of the clouds,And the choralists of the skyLauding Him.

Tighinn le caithrim a nuasBho an Athair tha shuas,Clar agus farcha nan duanRi seirm dha…

Coming down with acclaimFrom the Father above,Harp and lyre of songSounding to Him…

Alexander CarmichaelCarmina Gadelica, Vol. IScottish Academic Press, 1972pp. 44-45

There were many religious houses throughout the isles. Two of these were in Benbecula—one at 'Baile-mhanaich,' Monk's-town, and one at 'Baile-nan-cilleach,' Nuns'-town. These houses were attached to Iona, and were ruled and occupied by members of the first families of the Western Isles. Probably their insularity secured them from dissolution at the time of the Reformation, for these communities lingered long after the Reformation, and ceased to exist simply through natural decay.

It is said that two nuns had been visiting a sick woman. When returning home from the moorland to the townland, they heard the shrill voice of a child and the soft voice of a woman. The nuns groped their way down the rugged rocks, and there found a woman soothing a child in her arms. They were the only two saved from a wreck—the two frailest in the ship. The nuns took them home to Nunton. The woman was an Irish princess, and the child was an Irish prince, against whose life a usurper to the throne had conceived a plot. The holy princess fled with the child-prince, intending to take him for safety to Scandinavia. The two nuns are said to have composed the … following poems...

Ban-Tighnearna Bhinn The Melodious Lady-Lord Co i bhain-tighearna bhinn,An bun an tuim, Am beul an tuim ?

Chan alca [fhalc]Cha lacha,Chan eala,'S chan aonar i.

Who is she the melodious lady-lordAt the base of the knoll, at the mouth of the wave?

Not the alc,Not the duck,Not the swan,And not alone is she.

Co i bhain-tighearna bhinn,An bun an tuim, Am beul an tuim ?

Chan fhosga,Cha lona,Cha smeorach,Air gheuig i.

Who is she the melodious lady-lordAt the base of the knoll, at the mouth of the wave?

Not the lark,Not the merle,Not the mavis,On the bough is she.

Co i bhain-tighearna bhinn,An bun an tuim, Am beul an tuim ?

Cha tarman tuirimAn t-sleibh i.

Who is she the melodious lady-lordAt the base of the knoll, at the mouth of the wave?

Not the murmuring ptarmiganOf the hill is she.

Co i bhain-tighearna bhinn,An bun an tuim, Am beul an tuim ?

Cha bhreac air a bhuinne,Cha mhoineis na tuinne,Cha mhuirghin-mhuireNa Ceit i.

Who is she the melodious lady-lordAt the base of the knoll, at the mouth of the wave?

Not the grilse of the stream,Not the seal of the wave,Not the sea maidenOf May is she.

Co i bhain-tighearna bhinn,An bun an tuim, Am beul an tuim ?

Cha bhainisg na cuigeil,Chan ainnir na fuiril,Cha bhainnireach bhuidheNa spreidh i.

Who is she the melodious lady-lordAt the base of the knoll, at the mouth of the wave?

Not the dame of the distaff,Not the damsel of the lyre,Not the golden-haired maidOf the flocks is she.

Co i bhain-tighearna bhinn,An bun an tuim, Am beul an tuim ?

Who is she the melodious lady-lordAt the base of the knoll, at the mouth of the wave?

Bain-tighearna bhinn,Bhaindidh mhin,

Melodious lady-lord,God-like in loveliness.

Ighinn righ,Ogha righ,Iar-ogh righ,Ion-ogh righ,Dubh-ogh righ,Bean righ,Mathair righ,Muime righ,I taladh righ,Is e fo breid aic.

Daughter of a king,Granddaughter of a king,Great-granddaughter of a king,Great-great-granddaughter of a king,Great-great-great-granddaughter of a king,Wife of a king,Mother of a king,Foster-mother of a king,She lullabying a king,And he under the plaid.

A Eirinn a shiubhal i,Gu Lochlann tha fiughair aic,An Trianaid bhi siubhal leathH-uile taobh a theid i—H-uile taobh a theid i.

From Erin she travelled,For Lochlann is bound,May the Trinity travel with herWhithersoever she goes—Whithersoever she goes.

Alexander CarmichaelCarmina Gadelica, Vol. IIScottish Academic Press, 1972pp. 202-207

The first Scottish collectionsMany a lute, viol and virginal 'whispered softness in the chambers' of the Scottish gentry during the turbulent years. Many an educated hand inscribed favourite airs in French or Italian tablature in manuscript tune books. Some of these books, of great interest today, have been preserved: we have the compilations of Sir William Mure of Rowallan; John Skene of Hallhills; Robert Gordon of Straloch (lost, but copied); Rev. Robert Edwards, minister of Murroes Parish near Dundee; Alexander Forbes of Tolquhan; William Sterling of Ardoch; William Ker of Newbattles; and the Rev. James Guthrie.

Of these, the Rowallan (c. 1612-28), the Skene (1615-20) and the Straloch (1627), are the earliest. They are for the lute and contain many Scottish airs, the earliest forms indeed of some tunes current in later years, such as 'Flowers o' the Forest', 'John Anderson my Jo', 'Adieu Dundee', 'Good Night and God be with You', 'My Jo Janet' and 'Green Grow the Rashes'. The Rowallan also contains a tune entitled 'Ane Scottis Dance', and the Stirling (sometimes called the Leyden) 'New Hilland Ladie'.

Folk Music in Scottish Society

Scottish poetry, as Stevenson suggests, is peculiarly rich in all that has to do with social life. In the 17th and 18th centuries it is taken up almost exclusively with that, but socialness of a kind very different from, say, the equally 'social' English poetry of that time. Dryden and Pope lived admidst and wrote for an upper-middle and upper class metropolitan world of coffee-house, town mansion, and country estate … The Scottish contemporaries, Allan Ramsey, Robert Fergusson, and, later, Burns, could hardly differ more. They inhabit the ordinary pubs and market places, centres of gaming, drinking, eating, small business deals, the coming and going of farmers, chapmen (pedlars), and lawyers looking for work—but not, apparently, of literary connoisseuring and the discussion of new publications which could seriously influence a central government. They write in the manner of popular wise-acres, masters of repartee, in a language little different from that of the mass of their countrymen, not in that of an educated upper crust. 18th-century Scotland is of course famous for such an 'elite': men of letters such as Hume, Adam Smith, Henry Mackenzie, and (a little later) Scott, and the cultured law lords (Kames, Hailes, and later Jeffrey). But as far as these men were concerned, at least in the 18th century, the creative literature of the country—the poetry of Ramsay, Fergusson, and Burns—was virtually underground, or in the backwoods. Its comedy embodied a social life beneath the dignity of the 'polite' class. Yet that stratum of social life—lived out in the howffs (pubs), street markets, and tenement stairs—was in fact shared, even in the capital city, by all classes, aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and working folk alike, to an extent unthinkable in any later age. The society was close-knit in its physical conditions of life, if not in education, property, and outlook.

David CraigScottish Literature and the Scottish People: 1680-1830Chatto & Windus, London, 1961pp 19-20

The Seventeenth Century'Music of Castle, Burgh and Countryside'When the Scottish Court moved south in 1603, a younger generation of Castalian poets and musicians was growing up in the northern castles. This generation, however, inherited a fragmented culture than lacked the focus of a royal court to give it direction and purpose. The result for music was the the art of composition declined. Interest in contemporary English and European music continued, but when a Scottish musician wanted something of his own he either turned to music of an earlier generation or to folksong. Kirk and song-school provided some measure of opportunity, but the former dwindled to vanishing point by the mid-century, and the latter offered only fitful support throughout the whole century. Rather, this is the century of the gifted amateur and the collector. Manuscript anthologies of music were compiled throughout the country, some recording art music, some folk, and a few both. One of the fascinating things about seventeenth-century Scottish sources is the interest they display in folk-music. This had obviously existed in oral tradition long before, and there are many early references to it, but the seventeenth century saw the first attempts to record the tradition. Those musical amateurs could almost be described as Europe's first folk-song collectors. Curiously, only the music of the older songs was recorded, and was arranged for instrumental playing on the lute, cittern, keyboard, violin or lyra-viol. Either the

collectors assumed that in this traditional music everyone knew the words, or else the words were too frank to be recorded. It was not until the eighteenth century that texts began to appear along with the tunes; but, just as in the sixteenth century, new sets of words could be written to an existing tune. And the repertory of music in the folk style was continually being enlarged; alongside traditional and what must often be extremely ancient melodies we find that from this period onwards more and more new but still generally anonymous tunes were being composed in the folk-song style.

Kenneth Elliott & Frederick RimmerA History of Scottish MusicBritish Broadcasting Corporation, 1973pp 41-42

I include the following to demonstrate that dances that, nowadays, are mostly considered Renaissance French court dances were also popular dances among ordinary people in Britain. Note that an example in the Scottish Skene MS has been preserved in the folk tradition.

Branle (Fr.)

(l) A step in the Basse Danse, in which the body was swayed from side to side (branlé).

(2) A round dance in duple measure, which was very popular in France in the l6th century. The music of many Branles, and other old dances, is given in Arbeau's Orchésographie (Langres, 1588), a copy of which is in the British Museum.

(3) A French dance popular in England during the 16th century. Its figure is now doubtful, but it has been stated to have been a 'ring' or a 'round' dance in which the dancers join hands as round a maypole. It is identical with the Bransle or Brangill, and probably also with the Brawl, supposed to be so named from its similitude to an altercation. Shakespeare plays upon the word in a dance sense in Love's Labour Lost, Act iii. Scene 1. A description of the measure is given in Morley's Plaine and Easie Introd., 1597, p. 181.

That the Brangill was a round dance may be inferred from the fact that The Brangill of Poictu from the Skene MS, is the tune of We be Three Poor Mariners, a song in which the sentence occurs: 'Shall we go dance the round, the round'

It is also curious that a traditional remembrance of these words is sung to a round dance by street children to-day.

Frank KidsonGrove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. J A Fuller MaitlandLondon: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1910pp I:392-3 Reproduced at the Musical Tradition website

And a court poem entitled Old Long-Syne, very likely by Ayton, seems to have been matched with a native air towards the end of the century. The instrumental setting of it in the Balcarres Lute-Book

of about 1690 is perhaps the earliest extant version of the music for this famous poem. Burn's reworking of the text to another tune ousted it from popular favour in the early nineteenth century to become 'the best known song of Scotland'.

Kenneth Elliott & Frederick RimmerA History of Scottish MusicBritish Broadcasting Corporation, 1973pp 48

[ The tune Burns used was the old tune, not the one currently sung. It wasn't until the 19th century, well after Burns' death, that the new tune was adopted. Personally I rather prefer the old tune.]

Because of the way Edinburgh had grown up on a narrow ridge of volcanic rock, it had had to build perpendicularly, squeezing lofty, narrow buildings (as in Manhattan) onto the slim pier of building space available. The main streets, High Street and Cowgate, ran east and west along the ridge, and the poorer streets were tunnel-like wynds and closes piercing the ground floor of the lofty tenements of 'lands' and dropping in slopes and steps down the cliff to either side… Thus Edinburgh was not quartered off between the classes until the end of the century. This Scottish town housing was until the 1780's unique in the way it mixed the classes. In England even the poor usually had separate dwellings, whereas old Edinburgh was the only important British town in which tenement dwelling had been normal time out of mind, a condition it shared at this time with other old walled towns such as Stirling, and also with Glasgow, where most of the well-known, well-off citizens lived in tenement flats.

David CraigScottish Literature and the Scottish People: 1680-1830Chatto & Windus, London, 1961

Sweeps or messengers and odd-job men from the Highlands lived in the cellars, aristocrats or professional people on the first floor, shopkeepers and clerks on the higher floors, and poor skilled workmen in the attics.

So conditioned by this small community were the townsfolk that their social life, even that of the cultivated, was very close…

Primitive conditions would by their nature throw people together. An Englishman observed of the narrow main street: "So great a crowd of people are nowhere else confined in so small a space, which makes their streets as much crowded every day as others are at a fair". There was no piped water until the '70's. Water was drawn from five public wells, which must have been great gathering points for the working-class. The gregarious habit was so strong that the modern Exchange, begun in 1754, was for some time little frequented because "the merchants always chuse standing in the open street, exposed to all kinds of weather"… Before the Bank of Scotland was founded, even important business would be done in little back shops or pubs and hardly any elsewhere.

Ibid.

If two parallel cultures can flourish in the same country without one dominating and absorbing the other, there must be some barrier which restricts their influence on each other. The common view as to how this occurs—at least among English readers who have been brought up on Cecil Sharp—is that the 'two species' are kept going by different groups of people, who are separated geographically (town-country) or socially (upper class-lower class) or possibly both. As these two groups of people never meet, their musics cannot come into conflict. This situation seems to have been true of England in 1900, when Sharp did his research. It is not true, however, of eighteenth-century Scotland, where to a considerable extent the same group of people ran both kinds of music simultaneously. One must assume since no assimilation took place that the two genres fulfilled different emotional needs, and so were not in

competition with each other. The political and economic origins of these emotional needs may be left to a later chapter; but I shall here state as an axiom that the leisured and professional classes of Scotland, who were responsible for the propagation of classical music, were also very much in touch with folk music.

Selfconscious, wholesale documentation of the folk tradition did not begin until the 1780s; yet there is a certain amount of earlier evidence that the Scottish upper classes shared the folk culture with lower classes. A number of seventeenth-century manuscript books have survived which include transcriptions of folk-tunes; and there are several manuscripts in existence dated c. 1700, whose contents are an intriguing mixture of classical and folk pieces.

David JohnsonMusic and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth CenturyOxford University Press, 1972

The arts, too, were carried on amidst the people's daily life. For example, Fergusson himself had fun seeing how many sheets of ballads he could sell in two hours in the High Street, plying as a street singer. Before the Musical Society was formed, gentlemen met weekly in a pub whose proprietor was a great lover of music, and a good singer of Scots songs, and played Handel and Corelli. In the great hall of Parliament House which was used as a common promenade, there were bookstalls against one wall, just as there were jewellers' booths against one wall of St. Giles's Cathedral.

David CraigScottish Literature and the Scottish People: 1680-1830Chatto & Windus, London, 1961

It also seems to have been common practice for upper-class ladies in Edinburgh to sing folk-songs after supper. In 1723 Allan Ramsay published a collection of fashionable verse set to pre-existing popular tunes, the Tea-Table Miscellany, which was an attempt to cash in on this custom. Ramsey printed no music, and his collection uses seventy-two different tunes; therefore one can suppose that

the Edinburgh ladies had a large repertory at this time, which he knew he could rely on. ... Upper-class ladies also sang traditional ballads. In 1755 'Edom of Gordon', 'an ancient Scottish Poem. Never before printed', was brought out by the Foulis brothers of Glasgow: it had been supplied to them by Sir David Dalrymple 'as it was preserved in the memory of a lady'. An outstanding upper-class ballad singer was Anna Gordon, daughter of Professor Thomas Gordon of King's College, Old Aberdeen, and wife of Andrew Brown, minister of Falkland in Fife. … Mrs. Brown's ballads were taken down by a nephew, who sent them to Sir Walter Scott, who used them as a main source of material for his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border in 1802.

David JohnsonMusic and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth CenturyOxford University Press, 1972

Here it will be enough to note how the native songs were taken up by contemporary taste. The beginnings of the fashion for folk-songs among the gentry are recorded by Ramsay of Ochtertyre (Scotland and Scotsmen, I, p. 19 and n.) and Chambers (the fashion for Scots songs in England as well as Scotland: Domestic Annals under 1718, pp. 473-5). Pinkerton mentions folk tunes which were fashionable as full of 'feeling' (Scottish Tragic Ballads, London: 1781, p. xxxi). The communication of songs also worked in the opposite direction socially. William Chambers describes Peeblesshire farmers at home in the evening telling stories and singing the songs of Ramsay and Hamilton of Bangour while the women spun (Memoir of Robert Chambers, p. 41).

David CraigScottish Literature and the Scottish People: 1680-1830Chatto & Windus, London, 1961

It cannot always be said, strangely enough, that Ramsay made all the old themes more decorous, or even improved them at all; but he had a droll wit and, at his best, a jovial touch. There is every indication, too, that toleration of indecency at that time, was greater than it was over a century later. One need only notice some of the titles of the traditional tunes published for that market and consider how they would be received even today: 'Geld him Lasses', 'Piss on the Grass' (in J. Walsh's Caledonian Country Dances, c. 1744. The tune is later called 'Nancy Dawson'.), 'Maggie's wame is fu' I trow', "She's sweetest when she's naked' and so on.

George EmmersonRantin' Pipe and Tremblin' String: A History of Scottish Dance MusicJ. M. Dent & Sons, 1971

Even professional classical musicians had strong roots in the folk tradition. Every single professional violinist in eighteenth-century Scotland, apart perhaps from some of the foreign visitors, had to earn his living part of the time by playing folk-fiddle music. ... The same roots are noticeable with music publishers. William Thomson, James Oswald, and William Napier all went to London and published collections of Scots tunes there. Each of them included in his collections folk-songs, or versions of folk-songs, which has not appeared in print before, and no one knows what their sources for this material were if not direct

personal knowledge. It seems indisputable that they had learned the songs years before, and taken them to London in their heads.

The folk tradition in eighteenth-century Scotland was thus available to all classes of society; the reason why it was not documented earlier than 1780 must therefore have been, not that educated people were not interested in it, but that they knew it all already.

David JohnsonMusic and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth CenturyOxford University Press, 1972

The guitar in Scottish traditional music

"The psaltery, the sytholis, the soft sytharist,The croude and the monycordis, the gittyrnis gay;The rote, and the recordour, the rivupe, the rist,The trumpe and the talburn, the tympane but tray;The lilt pipe and the lute, the fydill in fist,The dulset, the dulsacordis, the schalme of Assay;The amyable organis usir full oft;Claryonis lowde knellis,Portativis and bellis,Cymbaclanis [cymbaelanis] in the cellis,That soundis so soft."

RICHARD HOLLAND: Buke of the Howlate (ca. 1450).

Henry George FarmerA History of Music in ScotlandLondon, 1947

The guitar, the "gittyrn gay" of Holland, was different from the lute in many respects. It had a flat sound-chest like the fiddle, and indeed it could be called a plucked fiddle, for such nomenclature obtained in Spain where the two types of instrument were called the vihuela de penola and vihuela de arco. The sythol of the poets was the instrument known in England as the citole. It was pear-shaped and vault-chested, but its head was straight, not turned back at a right angle like the lute. There is a sculptured example at Roslyn Castle (15th cent.). Both the gittyrn and the sythol seem to have had four strings and, like the lute, was played with the fingers or a plectrum.

Ibid

We have four instruments of the lute class delineated by Wood in his psalter (1562-66), all of which retain the ancient Oriental outline and mien. The first that occurs in the psalter's margin is a four string lute with its characteristic bridge-tailpiece or string-holder. The second instrument, with a smaller and hemispherical sound-chest, is probably a pandore. This also has four strings. The fourth instrument in the margin of the opposite page of the psalter might conceivably be the mandore, since its strings are not attached to a string-holder on the belly of the instrument, but seemingly to small pins underneath the bottom. All three instruments have convex sound-chests.

The "jocund" githorn of Burel was the same as Holland's gittyrn "gay" of the preceding century, and the similarity of the honorific adjective is passing strange. It had a flat sound-chest with incurvatures at the side like the modern guitar, which is its linear and lineal descendant. Again we read that the githorn was among the instruments of the students at St. Andrews in 1574. In the Donaldson Collection at the Royal College of Music in London there is a guitar which "is said" to have belonged to Mary Queen of Scots. The instrument itself reveals French workmanship although this does not necessarily exclude the Scottish queen's ownership of it. The gittern, gittyrn, or githorn also had four strings, as we know from Anthony Holborne's Cittharne School (1597).

Ibid

Closely allied to the lute were the mandore, pandore and gittern. The mandore, as we have seen, was a kind of treble lute mounted with four strings. Seemingly, the Skene MS. was written for this instrument, and it contains rules for "tuning the mandwr to the old tune [accordatura] of the lutt," from which we know that the lute formerly had four strings. The pandore was originally a long-necked instrument of the lute class, but by this time it was a flat-chested, large sized gittern, with incurvatures at the sides and mounted with 10, 12, or 14 strings fixed bicordally. Kellie, the Master of the Chapel Royal at Holyrood, when furnishing the palace musically in 1630-31, supplied two pandores. We know much about the instrument generally from Thomas Robinson's School of Musicke (1603). Its meaner brother was the gittern but, unlike the lute and mandore, it had wire strings, as Mace tells us in his Musick's Monument (1676), although the lower strings were of gut covered or "wreathed" with wire, as Lord Bacon describes them. It must have had wide approval in

Scotland among both the masses and classes, since we find a master of the Haddington Sang School teaching it in 1610 to the bairns of the people at large, whilst music for it, in the Panmure MS., as Dr. Whillsher informs me, gives proof of its popularity with the leisured folk.

Ibid

The guitar seems to have overtaken the lute and, like it, was an instrument of the classes rather than the masses, as the frontispiece to Bremner's Instruction for the Guitar (Edin., 1758, London, c. 1762) so amiably reveals. It is also figured in the pages of Corri's Select Collection of the Most Admired Songs (Edin., c. 1779). Although James Oswald published The Pocket Companion for the Guittar: Containing ... Italian ... and Scots Songs (Lond., c. 1755), Bremner's guitar tutor was probably the earliest of its kind in English, and he himself says that the guitar was "but lately introduced into Britain." The craze came from Italy, but the instrument was rightly called the "English guitar" since it was practically identical with the old cittern, as we know from John Playford, which had fallen into disuse a half century earlier. Dalyell assures us that this English guitar "long continued in repute in Scotland," and that its practice "was a regular branch of female accomplishment." Frank Kidson looked upon it was "the feminine substitute for the German flute." Corri's picture of the instrument presents it with five double strings. On the other hand, the guitar in the lap of Mrs. Henry Erskine (Christian Fullerton) in Willison's portrait (c. 1772) has twelve tuning pegs, eleven of which are visible (Fergusson's Henry Erskine, 1882), and Preston's arrangements was an accordatura of C E G c e g, the two lower strings being single, and the four others double, although Longman's and Broderip's Compleat Instruction for the Guitar (Lond., 1780) makes all the strings double. That the instrument found acceptance well into the 19th century is apparent from the fact that almost every piece of sheet musci published in Scotland from about 1780 to 1810 had appended an arrangement for the "guittar," and even Bremner's Songs in the Gentle Shepherd (1759) was issued specially for this instrument.

The Spanish guitar was also to be found in Scotland in the 18th century, although in England, according to Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1940), it did not make its appearance until 1813-15. It was known in England so early as the Musical Entertainer (Lond., 1737-38) of George Bickham. In Scotland, Joshua Campbell of Glasgow was teaching it in 1762, and we see the instrument in the hands of Lady Caroline, Fourth Marchioness of Lothian, in her portrait painted by Allan Ramsey (d. 1784), now in the National Gallery of Scotland. Unlike the pear-shaped English guitar, the Spanish type had a contour somewhat similar to that of the violin but with the belly and back quite flat. Another dissimilarity from the former was that there was no bridge, the strings, which were five, being fastened to a combined bridge-tailpiece as in the lute.

Henry George FarmerA History of Music in ScotlandLondon, 1947

Scottish traditional music has been played on the guitar for well over two hundred years, at least that is, since the publication in Edinburgh of Robert Bremner's Instructions for the Guitar of 1758. Not only does this little gem of a book contain technical instructions on how to play the 18th century guitar, it also contains many traditional tunes, some of which are still being performed in folk and traditional music clubs throughout Scotland, and indeed, the world today. ...

The guitar as used by Robert Bremner in many ways resembles a modern folk cittern as used by Scottish groups such as the Battlefield band as well as many Irish groups, and was in that day often spelled guittar. It has ten strings—four unison trebles and two single basses, that is, six 'courses' in all. (A course can be single or double, although the 17th century cittern had up to four strings to one course.) The string length from nut to bridge, i.e. the playing length of an open string, is generally around 42 cms, compared to a modern guitar's average of around 64 cms. The tuning from the bass upwards is CEGCEG, that is, two major triads, the second an octave higher than the first, which gives a very warm, resonant sound, ideal for Scottish traditional music which, in Bremner's day, rarely if ever ventured from its home key. ...

A short list of tunes from Bremner's Instructions will give a good impression of the contents: 'Lochaber no more', 'Tweedside', 'Port Patrick', 'The Birks of Endermay', 'Up w'it, Eli, Eli' and many others. The C major tuning of root, third, fifth, root, third, fifth would be difficult to reproduce on the modern guitar with changing the strings.

Rob MacKillopScottish Traditional Music for GuitarThe Hardie Press, 1999

Although Smollett refers only to the men, women were no less active. Some played the flute (like the young Susannah Kennedy, later countess of Elgin), or even the violin (like Suphy Johnston), and of course the spinet of virginals and harpsichord. But the pear-shaped 'English guitar' was very fashionable with young ladies at this time; the Spanish 'guitar' is also mentioned, Daniel Dow advertising to teach it.

Such is the instrument held by Lady Caroline, fourth Marchioness of Lothian, in the portrait of her by Allan Ramsey, son of the poet. The vogue of the English guitar was so great that harpsichord and spinet

makers faced economic difficulties. It is said that one of the Kirkmans, English harpsichord makers, broke the vogue by supplying cheap guitars to milliner girls and street ballad singers whom he taught to accompany themselves. G. Jones, article 'Music' in Encyclopedia Londinensis, 1810-29.

George EmmersonRantin' Pipe and Tremblin' String: A History of Scottish Dance MusicJ. M. Dent & Sons, 1971

The following extract from Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (published 1785), describes events taking place on the Isle of Skye during Dr. Johnson's 1773 tour. The area mentioned in Sleat (the southern part of the island) is now the location of the Gaelic college at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig.

Tuesday, Sept.28.—... We set out about four. Young Corrichatachin went with us. We had a fine evening, and arrived in good time at Ostig, the residence of Mr. Martin M`Pherson, minister of Slate. We were received here with much kindness by Mr. and Mrs. M`Pherson, and his sister, Miss M`Pherson, who pleased Dr. Johnson much by singing Erse songs, and playing on the guitar.

James BoswellThe Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

At Banff by the far-off Moray Firth around 1783 Isaac Cooper provided for a distinguished clientele in the traditional dual role of musician and dancing master. In publishing his collection he observes that the public had been 'so much imposed upon by people who have published reels, and called them new and at the same time they were only only reels with new names'. He advertised himself as the teacher of an impressive list of instruments—the harpischord, violoncello, psaltery (viol), clarionet, pipe and taberer, German flute, Scots flute, fife 'in the regimental style' and hautboy; and of

'... the Irish Organ Pipe, how to make flats and sharps and how to make the proper chords with the brass keys. And the Guitar, after a new method of fingering (never taught in this country before) which facilitates the most intricate passages.'

George EmmersonRantin' Pipe and Tremblin' String: A History of Scottish Dance MusicJ. M. Dent & Sons, 1971

An account of their singing at a slightly later period, in about 1760, has survived:

The ladies of Edinburgh used to sing those airs ['Lochaber no more' and others] without any accompaniment (indeed they scarce admitted of counterpoint, or any but a slight and delicate accompaniment) at tea and after supper, their position at table not being interrupted as now by rising to the pianoforte.

Mackenzie was born in 1745 and wrote these memoirs in 1831. The 'delicate accompaniment' may have been a cittern, which could easily be played sitting at table.

David JohnsonMusic and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth CenturyOxford University Press, 1972

An Aberdeen newspaper of 1758 reads:

"Mr. Roche, Music Master, just arrived from Germany ... proposes to teach the following instruments, viz., the Fiddle, the German Flute, Hautboy, Bassoon, Violoncello, French Horn, etc. He likewise teaches Singing and the Guittar."

A Glasgow advertisement of 1762 says with naïvete:

"Joshua Campbell, Musician, proposes to teach the guitar having been at some expense at Edinburgh in perfecting himself with the best masters there."

Henry George FarmerA History of Music in ScotlandLondon, 1947

The Guitar in England

In view of the current popularity of the guitar in traditional Irish and Scottish music, it is interesting to speculate whether the guitar was used at all in centuries past. While I know of no reference to the guitar being used in Ireland, there are a few references from 18th century Scotland. Probably at this date the greatest cultural influence in this regard came from England.

While England was never really at the centre of the guitar world (before the 20th century anyway), the guitar was known and played there. However, we must be careful to point out that the nature of the guitar itself has changed radically over the centuries.

An excellent source for such information is The Early Guitar: A History and Handbook by James Tyler, Oxford University Press, 1980. Of course, most of the interesting developments took place in places such as Spain and France, not in England, so this makes up the largest part of the book. However, I have quoted what information there is about the guitar in England, plus I have given a little background information.

The usual explanation for the origin of the guitar is that while the rest of Europe was playing lutes, the Spanish disliked the instrument because of its similarity to the Arabic oud, which reminded them that the Moors retained control over part of Spain until the late 15th century. Hence they invented a differently shaped instrument called the vihuela, which eventually evolved into the modern guitar. However, there are people who disagree violently with this theory.

The Origin of the Guitar

We must also be careful not to assume that before the sixteenth century the terms guitarra, chitarra, guiterne, gittern, etc., meant what they came to mean in later centuries, i.e. guitar, because this was not always the case. Laurence Wright, in his brilliant and highly original article 'The Medieval Gittern and Citole: A Case of Mistaken Identity', has shown that these terms (guitarra, chitarra, gittern,etc.), often meant not a guitar at all, but the tiny treble lute which, in the sixteenth century, became known as the mandora.

We have seen that the figure-eight shaped, plucked instruments under discussion cannot, with any certainty, be traced back earlier than the fifteenth century (given our present degree of knowledge);

that the terms guitarra, chitarra, etc., though often found in literary sources from the Middle Ages, cannot positively be taken to mean the 'guitar' until the sixteenth century; that we do, however, encounter the term viola or vihuela in the fifteenth century, and that these, aside from their use as generic terms to mean any stringed instrument, were often used specifically to mean a plucked instrument; that our earliest documentary information about the viola comes from Italian courts, such as those in Ferrara and in Spanish-influenced Naples; and that the Spanish called the instrument the vihuela, and from 1536 a fine repertoire of tablatures (in style and technical considerations virtually indistinguishable from lute tablatures) was published for it.

The English guitar

This instrument is vastly different from the gut-strung guitar, and was actually a revival of the cittern. Although not the kind of instrument I have been concerned with in this book, a brief discussion of it is necessary due to the large amount of music for it from the mid-eighteenth century, the title pages of which all say, either for 'guitar or 'guittar'. Hence, unless one is able to distinguish which music is for the 'English' guitar and which is for the Spanish guitar, much confusion can result.

The English guitar was known in France as the cistre or guittare allemande (indicating its German origin), and in Italy as the cetra. Italian musicians apparently introduced and started the fashion for the instrument in England. The earliest music for it in England is Pasqualinide Marzi's Six sonatas for

the cetra or Kitara ... (c. 1740; copy in London, British Library). It soon, however, became known simply as the 'guittar'.

The standard tuning for the instrument was to a C major chord, beginning with C below middle C: c, e, gg, c'c', e'e', g'g'. The strings were of brass and steel and were played with the right-hand fingers. At first, tablature was used, but this soon gave way to staff notation, entirely in the treble clef. The music relied upon the use of many open strings, and the use of parallel thirds, which were easy to play with this tuning. Hence, the things to look for in order to distinguish English guitar music from Spanish guitar music are: the predominant useof the key of C; much use of parallel thirds; the lowest notes as middle C on the staff (the instrument sounds an octave lower than written); and the typical configurations of chords, ...

Representative publications for the English guitar include: Anonymous, Ladies Pocket Guide or the compleat tutor for the guittar ... (c. 1750); G. Rush, Favourite lessons or airs for 2 guittars ... (c. 1755); Anonymous, The compleat Tutor for guittar ... (c. 1755); R. Bremner, Instructions for the guitar ... (1758); J.F. Zuchert, Six sonatas or solos for the guitar and bass ... (1759); F. Geminiani, The art of playing the guitar or cittra ... (1760); R. Straube, Lessons for two guittars ... (c. 1765), and Three Sonatas for the guittar... (1768); J.C. Bach, A sonata for the guitar... (c. 1775).

Music for the instrument continued to be published until the early nineteenth century.