Annotation:David Rae

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 DAVID RAE. AKA and see "Cuckold Came Out of the Amrey," "Struan Robertson('s Rant) [1]." Scottish, Strathspey. E Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCCCD. John Glen (1891) finds the earliest printing of the tune in Alexander McGlashan's 1780 collection. While David Rae is a common enough Scottish name and could refer to anyone, there was a historical contemporary with McGlashan, namely, the David Rae who was Lord Eskgrove, Lord Justice-Clerk (i.e. the head) of the Criminal Court (in Edinburgh) in the last years of the 18th century. Rae is remembered by Lord Henry Cockburn (1779-1854), in his book Memorials of His Time (published posthumously in 1856), as a "considerable lawyer" who became a deplorable judge, and Cockburn concludes "a more ludicrous personage could not exist." ''When I first knew him he was in the zenith of his absurdity. People'' ''seemed to have nothing to do but to tell stories of this one man. To'' be able to give and anecdote of Eskgrove, with a proper imitation  ''of his voice and manner, was a sort of fortune in society. (Sir Walter)'' ''Scott in those days was famous for this particularly. Whenever a '' knot of persons were seen listening in the Outer House to one who  was talking slowly, with a low muttering voice and a projected chin, and then the listeners burst asunder in roars of laughter, nobody  ''thought of asking what the joke was. They were sure it was a successful'' ''imitation of Esky; and this was enough. Yet never once did he do or say '' anything which had the slightest claim to be remembered for any  ''intrinsic merit. The value of all his words and actions consisted in '' ''their absurdity.  He seemed, in his old age, to be about the average height; but as '' ''He then stooped a good deal, he might have been taller in reality.  His face varied, according to circumstances, from a scurfy red '' to a scurfy blue; his nose was prodigious; the under lip enormous, and supported on a huge clumsy chin, which moved like the jaw  ''of an exaggerated Dutch toy. He walked with a slow steady step-'' something between a walk and a hirple, and helped himself on by short movements of his elbows, backwards and forwards, like fins. The voice was low and mumbling, and on the bench was generally  inaudible for some time after the movement of the lips showed  that he had begun speaking; after which the first word that was let  ''fairly out was generally the loudest of the whole discourse. It is '' unfortunate that, without an idea of his voice and manner, mere  narrative cannot describe his sayings and doings graphically. (pp. 109-110) Cockburn goes on to give several pages of anecdotes about the jurist's career, none of them complimentary (for an example, see note for "Sir James Colquhoun").  Source for notated version:  Printed sources: McGlashan (Collection of Strathspey Reels), c. 1780/81; p. 14.  Recorded sources:

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