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Ballads.

 Subject
Subject Source: Local sources
Scope Note: Songs with rhyming verse and a narrative; also, slow, romantic songs (AAT). For all ballads of the kind collected by Child. Include Jacobite ballads, which will also be indexed under 'Jacobites'. The individual ballads of a group which is indexed as a group should either be mentioned individually in the catalogue description or be listed in the volumes (NLS).

Found in 44 Collections and/or Records:

Microfilm of three Gaelic manuscripts.

 Item
Identifier: Mf.Sec.MSS.654
Scope and Contents

The contents are as follows: Manuscript, 17th-18th century, of bardic fragments, containing a strong element of MacMhuirich poetry (Adv.MS.72.2.2);

Donald Smith’s Irish miscellany, [circa 1798] (Adv.MS.72.3.2);

Part of a Gaelic grammatical treatise, 17th century, (written in the traditional character) giving the paradigms of a number of nouns and verbs.(MS.1745).

Dates: 17th century-[circa 1798].

Microfilm of two manuscripts of ballads collected by Mrs Anne Brown, wife of the minister of Falkland.

 Item
Identifier: MS.15550 [Mf.MSS.29]
Scope and Contents

One ballad was given by Anne Brown to William Tytler in 1783, the other to Alexander Fraser Tytler in 1800; both were used by Sir Walter Scott for ‘The minstrelsy of the Scottish Border’, but only the latter was available to Francis J Child for his ‘The English and Scottish popular ballads’ (see volume 5, page 397).

Dates: 18th century.

Miscellaneous historical and topographical tracts, copied in the 17th and early 18th centuries.

 Series
Identifier: Adv.MS.20.6.1(i)-(xv)
Scope and Contents

There is a list of contents (folio i) in the same 19th-century hand which drew up the contents list in Adv.MS.22.2.10.

Dates: 17th century-circa 1754.

Miscellaneous papers.

 Series
Identifier: MS.1001

Original manuscript of "The Ship o' the Fiend", a ballad for Orchestra, Opus 5, composed by Hamish MacCunn.

 File
Identifier: MS.3365
Scope and Contents

The ballad is preceded by a version, in Hamish MacCunn's hand, of the verse ballad that inspired the music, i.e., 'The Daemon Lover', number 243 of ‘The English and Scottish popular ballads’. A pencilled note records two performances in 1888.

Dates: [1888, or before.]

Photocopies of ballads.

 Collection
Identifier: Acc.3640

Song book in simple treble notation containing songs and ballads, including several Scottish ones, and operatic arias, sung in London (many of them by John Braham) and Edinburgh.

 Item
Identifier: MS.21758
Scope and Contents Most songs appear to have been carefully copied from printed sources, the general appearance of the words and music resembling printed or engraved pieces, and the publishers' names being equally carefully transcribed.The owner is unidentified, but may have been a resident of Edinburgh (folios 4, 8, 29). The only date in the book appears to be 1834 at folio 82, but folio i is watermarked 1828, and several of the pieces appear to have been composed about these years.A...
Dates: 1834, undated.

Songbook containing the words of 150 popular Scottish, Irish, French and Dutch ballads.

 Item
Identifier: MS.6299
Scope and Contents There is an index on folio 1; the songs begin on folio 5.The Scottish songs appear to come mainly from Allan Ramsay's ‘Tea table miscellany’ and David Herd's ‘Ancient and modern Scottish songs’ (1776), though some of the songs may have been picked up by ear, as they include a very debased version of Henry Carey's 'Sally in our alley' (folio 17 verso) and "My heart's in the Highlands" in an apparently unknown version different from that of Burns (folio 81 verso)....
Dates: 18th century.

Three notebooks of William Findlay.

 Collection
Identifier: Acc.8310
Scope and Contents

Containing:

ballads collected by William Findlay

lectures, 1861-1862, of the Reverend Robert Buchanan on logic and rhetoric

correspondence, 1952-1958, of William Montgomerie.

Dates: 1861-1958.