Annotation:Finlayston House

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 FINLAYSTON HOUSE. Scottish, Slow Air. The melody was composed by amateur fiddle-composer John Riddell of Ayr (1718-95), son of a wig-maker and his wife, and first appeared in his collection of Scots tunes published by Robert Bremner, c. 1766. It was the music for the Scots poet Robert Burns' ("rather indifferent lyric," according to Collinson {1966}) elegiac song "Fate gave the word-the arrow sped," and Burns thought much of the tune, writing in Cromck's Reliques: "This most beautiful tune is I think the happiest composition of that bard born genius John Riddell of the family of Glencarnock at Ayr" (in fact, there is no conclusive evidence that Riddell had any connection with the Glencarnock family). Finlayston House, on the Firth of Clyde near Glasgow, was the seat of the Earl of Glencairn, and is the seat of the Chief of the MacMillan clan. The tune was later published by Riddell himself in his collection of 1782 (55). A song in James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum (1790, p. 280), "A Mother's Lament for the Death of Her Son," is directed to be sung to "Finlayston House."  Source for notated version:  Printed sources:  Recorded sources:

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