of "The Banks of Helicon," we have not only been so fortunate as to recover the valuable collection which forms the subject of the present publication, but several others of considerable interest and antiquity. They are written in the same kind of literal notation or tablature with the Skene MS.,—a circumstance which, as it most probably has had the effect of withholding them from general use, and from being introduced into other collections of a modern date, at this distant period serves greatly to enhance their value. When fully revealed, they cannot fail to put the public in possession of a large fund of ancient popular melody, which has long been considered as lost, and which, but for them, would have been irretrievable. The manner in which some of these MSS. have emerged has strongly impressed the Editor with the conviction, that, notwithstanding the acknowledged scarcity of such documents, if the archives of some of our ancient families were well and diligently sifted, other original MSS. of a similar kind might still be brought to light. And it is not one of the least pleasing anticipations of those who have interested themselves in the present work, that, besides the fine old airs which the Skene MS. has been the means of reviving, and the information which it affords as to the style of music which prevailed in Scotland during the sixteenth century, it will, in all probability, lead to a future series of accessions to our stock of Scotish melody from other quarters; while, along with these accessions, it cannot fail to shed a few glimmering lights over the early history of our literature, the manners and customs of our forefathers, and many features in their private lives and characters which, though not delineated in the pages of the historian, are not the less interesting to us who live at a time so remote, and in a state of society so different, from theirs.

a Supra, p. 4. The genuine copy of this tune is in a MS. formerly belonging to the late Mr Alexander Campbell, (the author of Albyn's Anthology, &c.) afterwards to Mr Heber, and now to the Advocates' Library, bearing date 1639. That of which Mr Ritson spoke was given to him by one Edward Williams, a Welshman, and had probably been noted by the latter from memory, as in a letter to Mr Campbell, 1st March 1801, Mr Ritson allows that the two were essentially different, and that the former," if noted in an ancient MS. promised to be the genuine air." It will be found in Dr Irving and Mr Laing's edition of Alexander Montgomery's Poems, p. 308. Edinburgh, 1821.

S

We can only spare room for a brief account of some of these MSS. and their leading contents. The earliest is certainly not more recent than the Skene Collection. It belonged to Sir William Mure of Rowallan, the author of "The True Crucifixe for True Catholickes," (Edin. 1629, 12mo,) and of several minor poems; and is partly, if not wholly, written by him, in lute tablature, upon a stave of six lines. Sir William Mure was born in 1594, and died in 1657; and from various circumstances with which we need not detain our readers, this small volume, which only extends to fifty pages, was most probably noted some time between the years 1612 and 1628. Its contents are too briefly told." For kissing, for clapping, for loving, for proving, set to the lute by me, W. Mure"" Mary Beatoun's Row"a" Corn yards"-"Battel of Harlaw”b

a "Row" is not a term known in music. Perhaps it may be a literal mistake for Roun," which signified a song ; (see Ritson's Ancient Songs, pp. 26,31,)—and Knox, in his History, (p. 374,) says, "It was well known that shame hasted marriage betwixt John Sempill, called the Dancer, and Mary Livingston, sirnamed the Lusty; what bruit the Maries and the rest of the dancers of the Court had, the ballads of that age did witnesse, which we for modestie's sake omit." Mary Beatoun is well known to have been one of the Queen's Maries, and this may be the tune of one of the ballads above spoken of by Knox, the words of which have been lost. There is a fulllength portrait of this Mary Beatoun at Balfour House in Fifeshire, and several of Buchanan's Epigrams are addressed to her; (see Monteith's Translation of these, p. 65.) She is mentioned as one of the four young ladies of noble families who accompanied Queen Mary to France, and afterwards returned to Scotland in her train. Their surnames were Livingston, Fleming, Seton, and Beatoun; but, as Sir Walter Scott (Border Minstrelsy, vol. iii. p. 302, ed. 1833) has remarked, from the accounts given by Knox, “ they formed a corps which could hardly have subsisted without occasional recruits ;" and in the ballad of "Marie Hamilton," although "Marie Beatoun" is introduced, the names of Livingston and Fleming are superseded by those of Hamilton and Carmichael.

"Yestreen the Queen had four Maries,

The nicht she has but three :

There was Marie Seton, and Marie Beatoun,

And Marie Carmichael, and me."

This very sanguinary conflict was fought betwixt the Highland forces under Donald of the Isles and the Lowland toops under the Earl of Mar, on the 24th July 1411, at the village of Harlaw near Inverury, in Aberdeenshire, with all the old and deep-rooted hostility of the Celtic and Saxon "It fixed itself," says Mr Tytler, in his History, (vol. ii. p. 177,) "in the music and the poetry of Scotland; a march, called the Battle of Harlaw, continued to be a popular air down to the time of Drummond of Hawthornden; and a spirited ballad, on the same event, is still re

race.

-"Magge Ramsay"_" Cummer tried "_" Ouir the dek (dyke?) Davy"" Katherine Bairdie"" Ane Scottish Dance"-several Volts, Currants, Gavots,-a " Spynelet"-another called "Spynelet reforme”—“ La Voici"-" Sibit Sant Nikla," &c. and a few airs with no name attached to them.

A considerable interval occurs between this and the next MS. which we proceed to notice; and to which, from its wanting a nominal, we are obliged, as in regard to some of the rest, to assign a conjectural date,not earlier, we should say, than 1670, or later than 1675 or 1680. It is only within these few months, and since these enquiries were instituted,

peated in our own age, describing the meeting of the armies, and the deaths of the chiefs," &c. Motherwell, in his “ Minstrelsy," (Introduction, p. 62,) having seen the Rowallan MS., speaks of the tune there given as that of the ballad. This is a mistake. It is the march, or rather pibroch, alluded to in the above passage in Mr Tytler's History, and which Drummond introduces among the "notes of preparation" to his " Polemo-Middinia," in a passage which has been already quoted, (supra, p. 120.) As one of those fast and furious movements descriptive of the onslaught of a battle such as that of Harlaw, it is well calculated to heighten the "hurly-burly" of the scene which the poet so amusingly describes. The air of the ballad will be found in Johnson's Museum, (vol. vi. p. 528,) though what may be its pretensions to antiquity, it is difficult to tell; especially, as it has been doubted whether the ballad itself, that is to say, the copy of it which we possess, though decidedly old, was coeval with the event.

a We suppose that this must be a Scotish version of the " Peg-a-Ramsey," alluded to in Sir Toby Belch's drunken ejaculation,-" My lady's a Catayan, we are politicians, Malvolio's a Peg-aRamsey,'" and "Three merry men we be"-(Twelfth Night, act 2d, scene 3d.) "Little Pegge of Ramsie" is one of the tunes contained in the MSS. of Dr Bull, which formed a part of Dr Pepusch's Library. See Ward's Lives of the Professors of Gresham College, (1740.) In " D'Urfey's Pills,” (vol. v. p. 139,) there is a song of this name beginning

"Bonny Peggy Ramsey, that any man may see,

And bonny was her face, with a fair freckled eye."

The tune there given is the same with that of " Our Polly is a sad slut," in the Beggar's Opera; but that given in the Rowallan MS. is different.

bi. e. "Tried friend."

c This tune bears a striking resemblance to " Tullochgorum.'

d See" Kette Bairdie" in Skene MS.

e Probably a piece for the spinet.

f Probably misspelt for " Sibyl St Nicholas." Sibyl" is the name of a tune.

See Jones's

Welsh Bards, p. 158. See also a tune called "The Old Cebell," in Hawkins, Hist. vol. v. p. 482. In Skene MS. there is an allemande called " Alman Nicholas."

that this collection accidentally presented itself to the attention of one whose perspicacity it was not very likely to have escaped, David Laing, Esquire, the Secretary of the Bannatyne Club-we say accidentallybecause it would have required something very little short of the secondsight for which some of our bardic ancestors have been so celebrated, to discover it in the corner where it had nestled-viz. in the midst of a little volume of very closely written notes of sermons preached by the wellknown James Guthrie, the Covenanting minister, who was executed in 1661 for declining the jurisdiction of the king and council-" a true copie of his last words on the scaffold at the Cross of Edinburgh"-a series of texts from Scripture, and notes and memoranda, “ ex thesibus theologicis a Doctoribus et Professoribus in Academia Leidensi Conscriptis," a "a &c. In this singular juxta-position we find nearly fifty of the

a The only copy of verses in this MS. is the following, which we here insert, not only as being a curiosity in its way, but that our Presbyterian neighbours may compare the anti-prelatical spirit here displayed with the very different feeling manifested in our times, when the most eloquent of Scotish Divines prefaces his lectures on church establishments by reading the collect of the day!

"Great newes we lately heard from Court,

A ruler great was turned out;

Draw billets.

Another did succeed his place,

He lost his lordship and got grace;

Take time o'd.

The ladies that the Court resort,

Ye know for what they seek the sport ;

Whip towdies.

The black coats they are sitting high,

The Crown itself they sit it nigh;

Sit sicker.

There is a coath that rides full sharp,

I heard a fidler play on harp,

Trot cozie.

There was a pyper could not play,

It is not half an hour to-day,

Its coming.

Sunday will be another day;

This week's near spent, and we'l away;

Provide yow.

popular melodies of Scotland, noted in tablature like the foregoing, of which we have spoken. Had they been of the "grave and sweet order" described by Mr Geddes, the author of "The Saints' Recreation," we should have supposed that the individual who inserted them had been like that reverend gentleman, an author.or amateur of sacred parodies; but they are rather of too miscellaneous a character to have been intended for any such purpose, and it is extremely doubtful whether the