The Merry Muses of Caledonia is a collection of bawdy songs said to have been collected or written by Robert Burns, the 18th-century Scottish poet. [1]
The Merry Muses of Caledonia is a collection of bawdy songs said to have been collected or written by Robert Burns, the 18th-century Scottish poet. [1]
The poems and songs were collected for the private use of Robert Burns and his friends, including the Crochallan Fencibles, an 18th-century Edinburgh club, which met at the Anchor Close, a public house off the High Street. Robert Burns was introduced to the club by William Smellie, while setting the Edinburgh edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (Edinburgh Edition) in his shop in the same close. [2] [3] The songs in the collection were intended to be performed in a "convivial" atmosphere.
Discussion as to the provenance and compilation of the original text is ongoing. The original printer is unknown, but is agreed that it was first intended for the use of the Crochallan Fencibles. It has been suggested that the printer may have been Alexander Smellie, the son of Burns's friend and founder Crochallan Fencible William Smellie (1740–95), or another fencible, Peter Hill. [2] It was published three years after the death of Burns, in 1799, and was not attributed to him. The original manuscript is no longer extant. [4]
Two copies of the original are supposed to be extant. One is often named the 'Rosebery copy', and the other is in the G. Ross Roy Collection of Burnsiana & Scottish Literature at the University of South Carolina. [5]
The former was, by 1959, in the collection of Harry Primrose, 6th Earl of Rosebery. [4] It is damaged and has no printing date on the title page, although examination of the paper's Watermark has indicated a printing date of 1799. [4] A microform copy is available in the National Library of Scotland.
The latter is the only one with a complete title page, containing the following epigraph. [6]
Say, Puritan, can it be wrong,
To dress plain truth in witty song?
What honest Nature says, we should do;
What every lady does, - or would do. [2]
The text has gone through a number of editions, which vary in their content.
The edition printed after the initial publication was printed in Dublin, around 1804. It was entitled The merry muses : a choice collection of favourite songs. [4]
The "Giblet Pye" collection, printed in 1806, contained songs and poems from The Merry Muses as well as other ballads. [7]
in 1823, The Songs and Ballads of Robert Burns, including Ten never before published, with a Preliminary Discourse and Illustrative Prefaces was printed in London, containing ten songs from The Merry Muses. [7]
The '1827' is said to have been published in 1872 for John Hotten in London, with the numerals of the publication date reversed, which may have been done deliberately to confuse censors. [4] [8] [9]
In 1911 an edition was printed by the Burns Federation. The title page reads: The Merry Muses of Caledonia; A Collection of Favourite Scots Songs Ancient and Modern; Selected for Use of the Crochallan Fencibles. It also includes an essay, entitled A Vindication of Robert Burns in connection with the above publication and the spurious editions which succeeded it.. [1] This edition had a moral tone, and intended to challenge the collection's notoriety, and its identification as pornography. It also attempted to identify the authorship of some of the poems. [2]
A further edition of the poems was published in 1959, the title page reading: edited by James Barke and Sydney Goodsir Smith, with a Prefatory Note and some authentic Burns Texts contributed by John DeLancey Ferguson . Like the 1911 edition, this one contextualised the poems. [2] The Merry Muses was intended to be accompanied by music, and this 1959 edition was intended to include music. Unfortunately, it was left incomplete owing to the death of Barke. [10]
A 1965 edition: The Merry Muses of Caledonia. Collected and in part written by Robert Burns was edited by G Legman. [11]
In 2009, Luath Press published an edition with an additional essay by Valentina Bold and illustrations by satirist Bob Dewar. [10]
Ribaldry or blue comedy is humorous entertainment that ranges from bordering on indelicacy to indecency. Blue comedy is also referred to as "bawdiness" or being "bawdy". Like any humour, ribaldry may be read as conventional or subversive. Ribaldry typically depends on a shared background of sexual conventions and values, and its comedy generally depends on seeing those conventions broken.
Sydney Goodsir Smith was a New Zealand-born Scottish poet, artist, dramatist and novelist. He wrote poetry in literary Scots, sometimes referred to as Lallans, and was a major figure of the Scottish Renaissance.
William Smellie (1740–1795) was a Scottish printer who edited the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He was also a naturalist and antiquary. He was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, co-founder of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and a friend of Robert Burns.
Gershon Legman was an American cultural critic, folklorist, and author of The Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1968) and The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography (1964).
Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, commonly known as the Kilmarnock Edition, is a collection of poetry by the Scottish poet Robert Burns, first printed and issued by John Wilson of Kilmarnock on 31 July 1786. It was the first published edition of Burns' work. It cost three shillings and 612 copies were printed. The volume was dedicated to Gavin Hamilton.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
"Comin' Thro' the Rye" is a poem written in 1782 by Robert Burns (1759–1796). The words are put to the melody of the Scottish Minstrel "Common' Frae The Town". This is a variant of the tune to which "Auld Lang Syne" is usually sung—the melodic shape is almost identical, the difference lying in the tempo and rhythm.
"Halloween" is a poem written by the Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1785. First published in 1786, the poem is included in the Kilmarnock Edition. It is one of Burns' longer poems, with twenty-eight stanzas, and employs a mixture of Scots and English.
George Ross Roy was a Canadian scholar who specialized in Scottish literature, best known as editor of the long-standard edition of The Letters of Robert Burns, 2 vols. (1985), as a collector of Burns books and manuscripts, and as founder and for nearly 50 years sole editor of the journal Studies in Scottish Literature, the first refereed academic journal in the field.
The Crochallan Fencibles was an 18th-century Edinburgh convivial men's club that met in Daniel ("Dawney") Douglas's tavern on Anchor Close, a public house off the High Street. The 16th century doorway bore the inscription "O Lord In The(e) is All My Traist (trust)".
Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect is commonly known as the first Edinburgh Edition and the partial second setting has become known as the Stinking Edition. It is a collection of poetry and songs by Robert Burns, first "Printed for the Author" by William Smellie in Edinburgh and published or "Sold by William Creech" of Edinburgh on the 17 April, an announcement being made in the Edinburgh Advertiser on that date, although the date 21 April 1786 is given by a few authors. The Kilmarnock Edition made Robert Burns Caledonia's Bard whilst the 'Edinburgh Edition' elevated him into a position amongst the world's greatest poets.
Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect is commonly known as the Third or London Edition and sometimes the Stinking Edition. It is a collection of poetry and songs by Robert Burns, printed for A. Strahan; T. Cadell in the Strand; and W. Creech, Edinburgh. MDCCLXXXVII The date of publication for the London Edition was in November 1787, however Strahan and Cadell had previously advertised for sale the 'Second' or 'Edinburgh Edition' using the 500 or so copies that William Creech still had that were unsold. The successful selling of these made a truly new 'London Edition' a commercially viable enterprise.
The Glenriddell Manuscripts is an extensive collection written in holograph by Robert Burns and an amanuensis of his letters, poems and a few songs in two volumes produced for his then friend Captain Robert Riddell, Laird of what is now Friars Carse in the Nith Valley, Dumfries and Galloway. The two volumes of the manuscript were handsomely bound in calf leather. The first volume of poems and songs was completed by April 1791 and was presented to Robert Riddell, however their friendship ceased due to the unfortunate 'The Rape of the Sabine Women' incident and Robert Riddell died shortly after before any reconciliation could take place. The first volume is partly in Burns's hand with one main amanuensis contributing much of the text in a far neater hand than the author himself and a possible third person contributing to the text. The second volume is entirely in Burns's hand.
Duncan McNaught LL.D., J.P., was born in Alexandria, Dunbartonshire in 1845. He was the parochial school teacher at Kilmaurs in East Ayrshire from 1867 and served at the school for over fifty years, having served as assistant from 1865. He founded the Kilmarnock Conservative Association, jointly founded the Robert Burns World Federation, acted as the editor of the "Burns Chronicle" and was the president of what became the Robert Burns World Federation.
James William Barke was a Scottish novelist.
John DeLancey Ferguson was a writer and academic.
'Robert Burns's Interleaved Scots Musical Museum' or the 'Interleaved Glenriddell Manuscript' is a set of four octavo volumes of James Johnson's The Scots Musical Museum in which Robert Burns provided additional material to the original publication on interleaved sheets and which he eventually gifted to Captain Robert Riddell (1755–94) of Friars Carse, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.
James M'Kie or James McKie (1816–1891) was an apprentice of Hugh Crawford, John Wilson's successor at the Kilmarnock Cross printing business. In 1867, M'Kie published the first facsimile edition of the 1786 "Kilmarnock Edition" or Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect as well as various bibliographies, reprints, special editions, limited editions, etc. of Robert Burns' and other works for the Scottish, British, British Empire or North American markets. He became an avid collector of Burnsiana and put together the largest collection of published in the world at the time, that was eventually purchased by the local Kilmarnock Corporation and housed in the Kay Park Burns Museum.
Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect was the second "pirated" issue of Robert Burns's work, being published in Ireland at Belfast without permission from or payment to the author or publisher. It is a so-called Stinking Edition, carrying the error Stinking for the Scots word Skinking (watery) in the poem "To a Haggis" because the type setters copied from a 1787 Stinking Edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. It has been shown to be from the same print setting as the Belfast Edition but with a different title page.
Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect was a 'pirated' edition of Robert Burns's work, being published in Ireland without permission from or payment to the author or publisher. It is a so-called 'Stinking Edition', carrying the error 'Stinking' for the Scots word 'Skinking' (watery) in the poem "To a Haggis" because the type setters copied from a 1787 'Stinking Edition' of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect .
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