LL-L: "Songs" LOWLANDS-L, 13.OCT.1999 (03) [E]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 13.OCT.1999 (03) * ISSN 1089-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk]
Subject: "Songs"

> From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
> Subject: Songs
>
> I am still somewhat confused.  These songs are virtually always
> presented as
> Robert Burns' own.  Are you saying that he had just "discovered" them and
> "jazzed them up" (like the Grimm Brothers did with the
> folktales)?

Yes, exactly.

Actually, I made a mistake in an earlier mailing - Burns didn't himself
publish the Merry Muses (so now I'll have to try and find out what the
"Libel Summons" poem is really about!). In fact, on his death a certain Dr
Currie was allowed to take Burns's papers. Amongst them he found a notebook
devoted entirely to bawdy songs, and various loose sheets of paper which
could be said to be part of the same collection. Unfortunately, Currie chose
to publish them as if they were a book by Burns, with fictional commentary
written as if by Burns. Burns himself didn't think of the name "The Merry
Muses" nor anything.

One thing that Burns & Shakespeare have in common is that they were both
great plagiarisers. A good example is the Sir Robert Ayton (1570-1638) love
poem I quoted some time ago:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never thought upon,
The flames of love extinguished,
And freely past and gone?
Is thy kind heart now grown so cold
In that loving breast of thine,
That thou canst never once reflect
On old-long-syne?

Obviously Burns nicked this! Many of Burns's songs were in fact part of a
large project of his to try and preserve Scottish folk tradition by using
his poetic abilities to write down known songs in versions of such high
quality as would assure their preservation. And surprise surprise, in this
notebook of Burns's we find bawdy versions of such famous songs as "A Man's
a Man for Aa That", "Green Growes the Rashes", "There wis a Lad wis Born in
Kyle" (i.e. Dainty Davie), "Comin throu the Rye", "Duncan Gray" and even
"John Anderson My Jo".

It's never easy to be sure which are Burns originals. I think Burns wrote "A
Man's a Man for Aa That" in both versions (it's hard to see how anyone but
the most accomplished poet could have written either version), but the
Oxford Burns Book (which claims to contain those Merry Muses poems that were
almost certainly written by Burns) doesn't have the bawdy version. On the
other hand "My Lass She is Airy" seems to have definitely been written by
Burns, but the words are rubbish! You can't be sure of anything!

> Could it be because men tend(ed) to find it more titillating to
> "hear" such
> things related from the point of view of a supposedly innocent girl gone
> astray, just like the stories and novels written by men through
> women's voices
> now and then, older examples being "Moll Flanders" and "The Story of O"?

Well, each to his own! Perhaps the Merry Muses just aren't suited to modern
tastes (or just aren't suited to mine!) - I find the worst of them just
tasteless and the best of them (such as "Wap an Rowe" that I quoted
previously) very tragic and compassionate.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org

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