Merry_Muses_of_Caledonia_1799_Title_Page

Title Page of The Merry Muses of Caledonia published by The Burns Federation in 1911

The Merry Muses of Caledonia is a collection of

bawdy 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". Sex is presented in ribald material more for the purpose of poking fun at ...

songs said to have been collected or written by

Robert Burns Robert Burns (25 January 175921 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who hav ...

, the 18th-century Scottish poet.

Original text

The poems and songs were collected for the private use of Robert Burns and his friends, including the

Crochallan Fencibles 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 (part of the Royal Mile). The 16th century doorway bore the inscription ...

, an 18th-century

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

club, which met at the Anchor Close, a public house off the High Street.

was introduced to the club by William Smellie, while setting the Edinburgh edition of

Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (Edinburgh Edition) ''Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (Edinburgh Edition)'' 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, fir ...

in his shop in the same close. 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

. 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. 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. 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. The former was, by 1959, in the collection of

Harry Primrose, 6th Earl of Rosebery Albert Edward Harry Meyer Archibald Primrose, 6th Earl of Rosebery, 2nd Earl of Midlothian (8 January 1882 – 31 May 1974), styled Lord Dalmeny until 1929, was a British liberal politician who briefly served as Secretary of State for Scotland i ...

. It is damaged and has no printing date on the title page, although examination of the paper's

Watermark A watermark is an identifying image or pattern in paper that appears as various shades of lightness/darkness when viewed by transmitted light (or when viewed by reflected light, atop a dark background), caused by thickness or density variations ...

has indicated a printing date of 1799. A

microform Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. ...

copy is available in the National Library of Scotland. The latter is the only one with a complete title page, containing the following epigraph.

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.

Editions

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.'' The "Giblet Pye" collection, printed in 1806, contained songs and poems from ''The Merry Muses'' as well as other ballads. 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''. 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. 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

.'' It also includes an essay, entitled ''A Vindication of Robert Burns in connection with the above publication and the spurious editions which succeeded it.''. 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. A further edition of the poems was published in 1959, the title page reading: ''edited by James Barke and

Sydney Goodsir Smith Sydney Goodsir Smith (26 October 1915 – 15 January 1975) was a New Zealand-born Scottish poet, artist, dramatist and novelist. He wrote poetry in literary Scots often referred to as Lallans (Lowlands dialect), and was a major figure of the S ...

, with a Prefatory Note and some authentic Burns Texts contributed by

John DeLancey Ferguson John DeLancey Ferguson (November 13, 1888 – August 13, 1966) was a writer and academic. Early life Ferguson was born at Scottsville, New York in 1888. Academic career Ferguson attended Rutgers University, where he achieved a Bachelor of Arts d ...

''. Like the 1911 edition, this one contextualised the poems. 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. A 1965 edition: ''The Merry Muses of Caledonia. Collected and in part written by Robert Burns'' was edited by G Legman. In 2009, Luath Press published an edition with an additional essay by Valentina Bold and illustrations by satirist Bob Dewar.

Performance

* Ewan MacColl ''Songs from Robert Burns's Merry Muses of Caledonia''. Sung by Ewan MacColl. Edited and annotated by Kenneth S. Goldstein. Dionysus, 1962 * Gill Bowman, Tich Frier et al. ''Robert Burns - The Merry Muse''. Glasgow: Iona Records, 1996 * Jean Redpath. ''Songs of Robert Burns''. Arranged by Serge Hovey, 7 volumes. First published 1976-1990 * ''Robert Burns. The Complete Songs''. 12 vols. Various artists. Ed. Fred Freeman (Glasgow: Linn Records, 1995–2002)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Merry Muses of Caledonia, The Robert Burns British poetry collections Scottish folk-song collectors Scottish literature Scottish songwriters Social history of Scotland