§3. Peculiarity of the relation between English and Scottish Song in the Seventeenth Century. XIV. Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns. Vol. 9. From Steele and Addison to Pope and Swift. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IX. From Steele and Addison to Pope and Swift.

XIV. Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns.

§ 3. Peculiarity of the relation between English and Scottish Song in the Seventeenth Century.

The relations between English and Scottish popular music and song were, even at an early period, somewhat intimate, and there was a specially close connection between southern Scotland and the north of England, the people on both sides of the Borders being largely of the same race and speaking the same northern dialect of Early English. Chappell, in his Popular Music of the Olden Time, and in notes to the earlier volumes of the Roxburghe Ballads, Ebsworth, in his notes to the later Roxburghe and other ballads, and Furnivall, in introductions to various publications, have pointed out the trespasses of various Scottish editors—such as Ramsay, Thomson (Orpheus Caledonius 1725), Oswald (Scots Airs 1740) and Stenhouse (Notes to Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum 1853)—in rapaciously appropriating for Scotland various old popular English tunes and songs; but, on the other hand, the case against the Scottish origin of certain tunes and songs is not so clear as these editors sometimes endeavour to make out; and, in not a few instances, they can be proved to be in error. Several tunes and songs had an international vogue at so early a period that it is really impossible to determine their origin; moreover, the Scottish court, especially during the reign of the five kings of the name of James, was a great centre of all kinds of artistic culture, and probably, through its musicians and bards, exercised considerable influence on music and song in the north of England.