The Scots Musical Museum

James Johnson (1750-1811) was born in Ettrick, the son of a herdsman.  He completed a printing apprenticeship as a copper engraver and went on to invent a process for engraving on pewter. He became one of the most famous music engravers in Scotland of his time, just as the pianoforte was becoming popular.  It has been argued that between 1772 and 1790 anything from half to almost all of the sheet music printed in Scotland was his work. In 1790 he opened a music shop on the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh, Johnson & Co., which continued on after his death in 1811 managed by his former apprentice until 1815 and renamed as Johnson & Anderson.

Johnson had printed his ‘Collection of Favourite Scots Tunes’ around 1770. This contains tunes with Scots names such as ‘Lassies Likes Nae Brandy’ and ‘Jocky was the Blythest Lad’, but no songs with lyrics are included in it. He had intended to print a two-volume collection of Scots, Irish and English songs by 1787 but in February of that year he met  Robert Burns and the Scots Musical Museum was born.

Burns had come to Edinburgh the same year to produce the next edition of his poetic works following his very successful debut ‘Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect’ published in Kilmarnock. It should be highlighted, particularly when speaking of the Scots Musical Museum, that Robert Burns was a fiddler, a songwriter, and a poet. In the Kilmarnock edition he had already published some of his more famous songs, such as ‘Now Westlin Winds’, and ‘The Rigs o Barley’, with ‘John Barleycorn’ and ‘Green Grow the Rashes’ to be published in the Edinburgh edition later that year.

Burns contributed three songs to the first volume of the ‘Scots Musical Museum’ but went on to contribute as many as 250, and collect over 400 of the 600 songs in the Museum.

This song collection was perhaps not what we would expect today with accurate recording of what was heard. Instead, the songs were often heavily edited or completely rewritten. Professor Fred Freeman often quotes what Burns wrote in Dumfries April 1791: ‘I am a Fiddler and a poet’  and ‘until I am complete master of a tune, in my own singing, (such as it is) I never can compose for it’. Burns would therefore edit the words of a song so that they would better fit the tune. In other cases he would write full new lyrics to tunes. One example is ‘Auld Lang Syne’, from Allan Ramsay in volume one:

Auld Lang Syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
Tho they return with scars
These are the noble hero’s lot
Obtain’d in glorious wars
Welcome, my Varo, to my breast
Thy arms about me twine
And make me once again as blest
As I was lang syne

Burns writes in his interleaved notes: ‘The original & by much the best set of the words for this Song is as follows’ and he then provides his own self-written lyric to the tune, as if it has historical precedence and taken from tradition. This is later published in volume V, the last one he edited.

Auld Lang Syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne…

Over 100 other people are known to have contributed to the ‘Scots Musical Museum’ including the poets Robert Fergusson, Thomas Blacklock and Susanna Blaimire as well as Burns’ paramour Agnes Maclehose, Robert Crawford, James ‘Balloon’ Tytler, and a significant number from Allan Ramsay himself (taken from his ‘Tea-table miscelleny’ lyrics and set to the recommended tunes.

One or two of Burns’ favourite contributions came from Reverend John Skinner.  Burns considered the lyric Skinner had put to the ‘Reel o Tullochgorum’, at the request of Mrs Montgomerie of Ellon, as ‘the best Scotch Song ever Scotland saw’. Those lyrics are very apt for the overall mission of the collection and celebration of Scots song in the Museum:

Tullochgorum (vol 3)

Come, gi’e’s a sang, Montgomery cried,
And lay your disputes all aside,
What signifies’t for folks to chide
⁠For what’s been done before them?
Let Whig and Tory all agree,
Whig and Tory, Whig and Tory,
Let Whig and Tory all agree,
⁠To drop their Whig-mig-morum;
Let Whig and Tory all agree,
To spend the night in mirth and glee,
And cheerfu’ sing alang wi’ me
⁠The reel of Tullochgorum…

Burns also took songs written before his time and collected them, such as ‘Were na My Heart Light I Wad Die’ by Lady Grizel Baillie (1665-1746) an accomplished Scots songwriter and author of ‘The Household book of Lady Grisell Baillie’ one of our best primary documents for domestic social history through the 17th into the 18th century.

The ‘Scots Musical Museum’ was the foundation of works such as Walter Scott’s ‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border’ (1802-1830) which has the big ballads, such as ‘Patrick Spens’, James Hogg’s ‘Jacobite Reliques’ (1819-1821) and works containing Caroline Oliphant, Lady Nairne’s songs like’ The Scottish Minstrel’ (1821-24).

Burns refused payment for the work he did in compiling and editing these volumes. He did it for its cultural importance, famously writing to James Johnson in his last letter:

‘Your Work is a great one; and though, now that it is near finished, I see if we were to begin again, two or three things that might be mended, yet I will venture to prophesy, that to future ages your Publication will be the textbook and standard of Scottish Song and Music.’