Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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fyrst hed ane drone bag pipe, the nyxt lied ane pipe
maid of ane bleddir and of ane reid, the tliird playit on
ane trump, the feyrd on ane come pipe, the fyft playit
on ane pipe maid of ane gait home, the sext playt on
ane recordav, the seuint plait on ane fiddil, and the last
plait on ane quhissil. "
. . . Corn-pipe, Lilt-pipe, and others are alike
versions of Psalms, with some hymns chiefly
from the German ; the third, which gives its
peculiar character to the collection, may be described
as sacred parodies of secular songs. They
were to be sung to well-known melodies of the
time, which were indicated usually by the first
line or the chorus ; but as Dr. Laing points out
that not one of the secular songs of which these
parodies were imitations has come down to us,
a few only of the tunes can be ascertained.
Three of them are certainly English, 'John
cum kiss me now,' Under the greenwood '
tree,'
and The ' huntis up. ' A fourth is Hey now the
'
day dawes,' which Sibbald and Stenhouse have
attempted to identify' with Hey tuti taiti '
SCOTTISH MUSIC SCOTTISH MUSIC 393
The second instrument seems to have been a
bagpipe without the drone ; the third, a jew'sharp,
and the last a shepherd's-pipe or flUte a
bee. Sir J. Graham Dalyell says
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: Neither the
form nor the use of the whistle (quhissil) is explicit.
It is nowhere specially defined. In
1498 xiiij s. is paid for a whussel to the King.
obscure.
In the other little book already mentioned,
knov/nastheGiideamdGodly Ballates(157 8)t'heTe
are a number of
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songs converted from profane
into religious poetry.' Dr. David Laing, who
published h reprint of it in 1868, informs us
that the authorship of the work is usually assigned
to two brothers, John and Robert Wedderburn
of Dundee, who flourished about the year
1540. It is divided into three portions ; the
first is doctrinal ; the second contains metrical
The day dawis.
(Prom the Straloeh MS. a.d. 1627.)
:iqi=ftp--i,
;-¥
-^^^^^^^^
(Scots wha hae). This is not only improbable,
but is disproved by a tune of the same name
being found in the Straloeh MS. (1627). It
has no Scottish characteristics, and may have
been picked up from some of the English or
foreign musicians who were frequent visitors at
the Scottish Court. It is an excellent lively
tune, and may have been that played by the
town pipers of Edinburgh in the time of
James IV. ; if so, the note marked with an
asterisk must have been altered to C to suit the
scale of the instrument. Dunbar thought it so
hackneyed that he complains
Your common menstrallis has no tone
But Now • the day dawis and ' ' Into Joun
Thinlt ye nocht shame.
my love, leif me not
Of the other songs, Ah '
may be 'I'll never leave thee,' and 'Ane sang
on the birth of Christ, to be sung with the tune
of Bawlulalu,' may probably be Baloo my boy
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lie still and sleep, ' for in both songs the measure
and also the subject— sacred for secular—are
the same. The words, being in Bishop Percy's
ancient MS., are thought to be English, but
Dr. Rimbault considered the tune to be Scottish.
Sibbald's identifications of a few other tunes are
altogether fanciful
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: The wind blaws cauld,
furious and bauld,' with 'Up in the morning
early' ; 'My luve murnis for me,' with 'He's
low down in the broom,' and so on. Altogether
not more than a third of the whole can now be
even guessed at.
The religious troubles of this and the following
reigns would no doubt completely unsettle
whatever musical tuition might be carried on
by the Romish Church, but the introduction of
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sang schuils ' and of Genevan Psalmody would
probably soon compensate for any loss thence
arising. [SoN& ScHOOL.s.] It does not come
within the scope of this paper to consider such
changes ; but the allegation already alluded to,
that Rizzio composed some of the finest Scottish
melodies, is deserving of a more careful inquiry.
Goldsmith, at the instigation apparently of
Geminiani, chose to write an essay on a subject
of which he evidently knew very little. He
asserts that Rizzio was brought over from Italy
by James V., lived twenty years in Scotland,
and thus had sufficient time to get a knowledge
of the style, and ample opportunities for improving
it. It is well known, on the contrary,
that Rizzio came over in the suite of the
Piedmontese Ambassador in 1561, nineteen
years after the death of James V., and was
little more than five years in Scotland. That
he ever composed anything in any style has yet
to be shown. Tassoni, who was born in 1565,
and who speaks of Scottish music—ashasalready
been noticed—entirely ignores him. In truth
the myth seems to have been got up in London
early in the 18th century, probably among his
own countrymen. It is first heard of in the
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Orpheus Caledonius ' of 1725, where the editor
ascribes seven tunes to him. Two at least of
these are shown by their style to be very recent
compositions ; but the absurdity of the statement
must have been quite apparent, as all
mention of Rizzio's name was withdrawn in the
next edition of the work, 1733,
Oswald helped to keep up the falsehood.
Notwithstanding the disclaimers of mostof those
who have made any research into the question,
the belief still exists, and is from time to time
propounded (see ante, p. Ilia). For 160 years
2c
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