Annotation:High Way to Edinburgh (1) (The)

Back to 

 HIGH WAY TO EDINBURGH [1], THE. AKA and see "Black Eagle (The)," "Bonnie Black Eagle (The)," "Jewel (The)," "My Tocher's the Jewel," "Lord Elcho's Favourite." Scottish, Jig. G Minor (Oswald): E Minor (Aird). Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The tune appears under the above title in James Aird's Selection of Airs and Marches, First Edition, and his Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 3, of 1788. The Scots poet Robert Burns accused Nathaniel Gow of plagiarism of the tune when the latter published a similar melody under his own name called "My Tocher's the Jewel" (which Burns maintains is "notoriously taken from the 'Muckin' of Geordie's Byre'"). Burns himself had used the tune for his own poem "My Tocher's the Jewel," which he contributed to James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum. Stenhouse (1853) debunks Burns', saying that the poet was mistaken when he made the assertion in his Reliques that "Gow, or any of his family, claimed the melody as their own composition, or 'even that it had notoriously been taken from 'The Mucking of Geordie's Byre', for it is nothing more than the subject of the old air of 'High Way to Edinburgh' thrown into treble time" (p. 304). The Gows objected strenuously as well, pointing out that Niel had found the jig in James Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion, attached in a suite of sorts to a piece called "High Way to Edinburgh (2) (The)." They characterized Oswald's jig as an "unnamed" quick jig which Niel had adapted as a slow air and called "Lord Elcho's Favourite." John Glen (Glen Collection, vol. 2, 1857) concludes "the original sin of the Gows remains for there can be no doubt that they meant to pass on [this tune] on the public as their own composition" (p. xiii) Cazden (et al, 1982) identifies the melody as a variant of a large tune family, much used for songs and airs over the years, which include the Scottish song "Gilderoy," the Irish "Star of the County Down," Chappell's English "We Be Poor, Frozen Out Gardeners" and Cazden's own Catskill Mountain (New York) collected "Banks of Sweet Dundee (The)." Bayard (1981) notes a resemblance between this tune and the American standard "Turkey in the Straw," especially to the second part of the latter, and suggests that in fashioning it the Scots tune may have been borrowed from. John Glen (1891) finds the earliest printing of the tune in Joshua Campbell's 1778 collection (p. 75).  Source for notated version:  Printed sources: Aird (Selection of Scotch, English, Irish, and Foreign Airs, vol. 3), 1788; No. 409, p. 158. Gatherer (Gatherer's Musical Museum), 1987; p. 15. Wood (Songs of Scotland), 1848-49.  Recorded sources:

Back to