A Georgian country house set in lawns with a backdrop of forested hillside

Review: The Eliza Ross Collection

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Image: Raasay House, photo attribution John Darcy, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. . This, the material ancestral residence of Eliza Ross, was built 1747 after its precursor was burnt down by Hanoverian troops; here, the Macleods hosted James Boswell and Samuel Johnson in 1773, and it would have been in this residence that the collection reviewed here was compiled. Today, it’s a hotel.

Musica Scotica produce scholarly editions of early Scottish music that also aim to enable these to be used in practical performance. This collection – from a 1812 manuscript – is ‘early’ in the sense of it reflects ‘early’ fieldwork collection and transcription of previously oral repertoire and practice.

The introduction to this Gaelic music, collected by a 19th century Scottish lady who went on to have a life in colonial India, starts with a biography of the collector. Elizabeth Ross, later Lady D’Oyly, was born in Perthshire to a mother, Isabella Macleod, from Raasay. She was schooled in Edinburgh and evidently was musically literate.  Family connections with Raasay remained and we know from writers such as Alexander Campbell that the family there was deeply musical; visits to the Hebrides are assumed to have happened before Elizabeth left Scotland for India and marriage. After her husband died in 1845, Elizabeth returned to Britain, living mostly in Dorset but occasionally visiting her Hebridean relations. She was known to write poetry in Gaelic.

Her manuscript, discovered in Raasay House in the mid 20th century, was bought by the Edinburgh University School of Scottish Studies in 1952, where it was realised to contain a significant collection of music from the Gaelic world.  The manuscript contains 150 tunes, mostly vocal airs, but some suitable for dancing, and others reflecting the highly-prized art of pibroch piping. Where the editors can make a plausible match with a known Gaelic song lyric, they have printed the words under the tunes: this clearly required a bit of speculative research. They have also isolated bagpipe material in ways that make this edition easy to use for modern pipers.

The introduction provides an overview of the collection itself. For songs, the editors find that most (p.14) are romantic songs, possibly attractive to a young women like Eliza at the time of her collecting.  Some are ‘work songs’ (to use the later Tolmie categories), for waulking or rowing; both require regular rhythmic action and can be difficult from sound alone to distinguish. Some may be lullabies, and 3 tunes (pp.116-117) may be Ossianic. For vocal material, texts are provided underneath the tunes, alongside English translations. Some are anonymous – truly ‘oral’; others may be attributed to known Gaelic poets. Notable (p.14) are songs with a strong connection with family history events associated with the Macleods of Raasay.  Others, including pibroch and dance tunes, are connected with the famous bagpiper John Mackay of Raasay, who learned his art from the MacCrimmons of Dunvegan. There is some crossover of material with Patrick Macdonald’s Collection of Highland Airs (1784) – another collection made by someone who travelled from Scotland to India.

Musica Scotica editions have in both in their presentation and pricing a dedication to encouraging live music performance. Front apparatus includes a very comprehensive list of older sources for Gaelic music for those inclined to look further into this, and a description of editorial method, which considers ‘the kind of use we think readers may want to make of the material in the edition’ (p.25) (presumably, as a source of traditional music). Hence, we are given words, and the editors explain that in some cases, they have transposed melodies which sit too high for either ease of singing or bagpipe reproduction rather than for Ross’s preferred piano; they also amend rhythms where the transcription seems improbable against other sources (it’s possible these reflect inevitable idiosyncrasies in oral performance?). Ornaments have been interpreted (p.26) using comparisons with contemporary publications from e.g. Neil Gow and Clementi. The editors have made the decision not to include Eliza Ross’s harmonies for many of the melodies with suggested bass lines playable by harp or piano, which they deem (p.14) as either inappropriate or inept in the context of modal melodies. Instead, with a few exceptions (e.g. song 1, ‘Chrodh Chailein’, which is harmonised and rendered with treble and bass clef). For the most part, what we are given is a repertoire of melodies alone; if you wanted to research what a drawing room musician of the early 19th century might have done with these, you would need to consult the manuscript source and other sources reflecting drawing room style.  This edition is therefore useful as a record of oral culture transcription, intended for a ‘traditional music’ folk-inspired approach to performance.

Following these general introductory sections are detailed notes on each of the tunes, with sources suggested that correspond to these where other sources exist, and clear indication of editorial decisions.  For singers and players who would like to introduce a tune in live performance, these are absolutely invaluable, packed full of historical anecdote. Notes also tell us where songs became part of the diasporic repertoire in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton e.g. 47 ‘O mar tha mi s mi nam aonar’ (Alas for my plight, as I am so lonely) and 130 ‘San ma’n tachd seo’n dé‘ (It was around this time yesterday) which remembers events of 1645.

The main section of ‘Airs, Texts and Translations’ (pp.83-188) forms the core of the book.  The order of the material follows the order in the manuscript, and has none of the categorising “grouping” found in collections from later in the 19th century. Possibly, the manuscript order is simply the order in which Ross encountered the music for the most part, although the final sequence 140-150 are all written for the bagpipe, including the pibrochs with their urlàr (theme) and variation form.

The end material includes indexes and an appendix with the specific subset of tunes written for the bagpipe which would assist pipers to get quickly to that material, and which in this final section provide appropriate ornamentation for that instrument. This section was the particular innovation of the 2nd edition, as is discussed in the review of the collection that appeared in Bagpipe News, and a particular credit for this development goes to Peter Cooke, who died not long after this edition appeared in print.

Scattered throughout are photographs and images from the manuscript, which, together with the music, provide a window into Gaelic Hebridean culture. This is a carefully produced collection that reflects what the editors think will be helpful for practical performance.

Further reading

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