By the way, I have met with a musical Highlander in Breadalbane’s Fencibles, which are quartered here, who assures me that he well remembers his mother singing Gaelic songs to both “Robin Adair,” and “Grammachree.” They certainly have more of the Scotch than Irish taste in them.
This man comes from the vicinity of Inverness: so it could not be any intercourse with Ireland that could bring them; except, what I shrewdly suspect to be the case, the wandering minstrels, harpers, and pipers, used to go frequently errant through the wilds both of Scotland and Ireland, and so some favourite airs might be common to both. A case in point—they have lately, in Ireland, published an Irish air, as they say, called “Caun du delish.” The fact is, in a publication of Corri’s, a great while ago, you will find the same air, called a Highland one, with a Gaelic song set to it. Its name there, I think, is “Oran Gaoil,” and a fine air it is. Do ask honest Allan or the Rev. Gaelic parson, about these matters.
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
CCLXV.
TO MR. THOMSON.
[While Burns composed songs, Thomson got some of the happiest embodied by David Allan, the painter, whose illustrations of the Gentle Shepherd had been favourably received. But save when an old man was admitted to the scene, his designs may be regarded as failures: his maidens were coarse and his old wives rigwiddie carlins.]
August, 1793.