BIB_ID
293757
Accession number
MA 47.29
Creator
Burns, Robert, 1759-1796.
Display Date
[1793 Sept.].
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1906.
Description
1 item (11 p.) ; 25.3 cm
Notes
"The Primrose -- Tune, Todlin hame" first line: Don't ask me, why I send thee here.
"The Primrose -- Tune, Todlin hame" here with edits but as published in Kinsley.
"The Primrose -- Tune, Todlin hame" is based on Robert Herrick's "Hesperides."
Address panel with seal and postmarks (Dumfries and SE ...) and addressed to "Mr. George Thomson / Trustees Office / Edinr."
Localization and dating from postmarks.
Part of a large collection of letters from Robert Burns to George Thomson. Items are described individually; see collection record (MA 47 and MA 50) for more information.
Verses beginning "The other night with all her charms" are based on Tom Brown's "Coelia's Rundlet of Brandy" (otherwise known as "Song" beginning "To charming Celia's arms I flew").
Verses for "The Collier's Dochter" based on an anonymous eight-line song in John Watts's Musical Miscellany (London, 1730), IV, 98-99, beginning "Boast no more, fond Swain, of pleasure."
With a headnote in Thomson's hand, reading "Nothing in this letter for the general eye, nor are any of the Songs Mr. Burns's own, except the first which is too warmly coloured. G.T." and with a note alongside the first song, reading "Unpublishable surely!"
"The Primrose -- Tune, Todlin hame" here with edits but as published in Kinsley.
"The Primrose -- Tune, Todlin hame" is based on Robert Herrick's "Hesperides."
Address panel with seal and postmarks (Dumfries and SE ...) and addressed to "Mr. George Thomson / Trustees Office / Edinr."
Localization and dating from postmarks.
Part of a large collection of letters from Robert Burns to George Thomson. Items are described individually; see collection record (MA 47 and MA 50) for more information.
Verses beginning "The other night with all her charms" are based on Tom Brown's "Coelia's Rundlet of Brandy" (otherwise known as "Song" beginning "To charming Celia's arms I flew").
Verses for "The Collier's Dochter" based on an anonymous eight-line song in John Watts's Musical Miscellany (London, 1730), IV, 98-99, beginning "Boast no more, fond Swain, of pleasure."
With a headnote in Thomson's hand, reading "Nothing in this letter for the general eye, nor are any of the Songs Mr. Burns's own, except the first which is too warmly coloured. G.T." and with a note alongside the first song, reading "Unpublishable surely!"
Summary
Suggesting already published songs or poems for specific tunes. Suggesting a six-stanza set of verses (beginning "The other night with all her charms") for the tune "Nansy 's to the green-wood gane;" Ramsay's "Song Complaining of Absence" for the tune "Whistle & I'll come to ye my lad;" Ramsay's Song (beginning "What means this niceness now of late") for the tune "John Anderson my jo;" Crawford's Song (beginning "Beneath a beech's grateful shade") for the tune "Peggy I must love thee;" Ramsay's "To L.M.M." for English verses to the tune "Geordie's Byre;" an abridgment of Hamilton's "Ode. To Mrs. A.R." for the tune "Take your auld cloak about ye;" Hamilton's "Horace, Book I. Ode II [for XI] to W.D." for "Willie was a wanton wag;" Burns's "The last time I came o'er the moor" (i.e., later revised and published in Kinsley (no. 405) as "Song" to the tune of "Nansy 's to the green-wood gane") for the tune "The tither morn as I forlorn;" "The Primrose" (an "old English song ... but little known") for the tune "Todlin hame;" Ramsay's "Where Helen lies" for the tune "Muirland Willie;" an old anonymous song greatly altered by Burns (now beginning "Deluded swain, the pleasure") for the tune "The Collier's Dochter." Giving an edit for Lines 29-30 of his "Song -- Tune, Logan Water." Regretting that Thomson has rejected a set of verses (to "The Quaker's wife," possibly i.e., his "Song -- Tune, Liggeram cosh," see Kinsley, no. 408, n.) discussing other airs for inclusion in the collection, and disparaging Thomson's taste, noting "That very Stanza you dislike ... is to me a piece of charming native humour. What pleases me, as simple & naïve, disgusts you as ludicrous & low."
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