Annotation:Old Woodhouselee Castle

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OLD WOODHOUSELEE CASTLE. Scottish, Strathspey (cut time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). ABB'. Composed by 'G. Duncan, Esq." Old Woodhouselee Castle, Midlothian, is situated on a high crag, overlooking a loop of the River North Esk, and is thought to have been built by Oliver Sinclair in the first half of the 16th century. During the 16th century the castle became the property of James Hamilton [1] of Bothwellhaugh when he married Woodhouselee’s heiress Lady Anne Sinclair of the Rosslyn family. Hamilton would later become infamous as the assassin of James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, the Regent of Scotland at the time and half-brother of Mary Queen of Scots, in what was the world’s first recorded assassination by firearm. The castle was burnt to the ground by Moray’s followers in an act of revenge, and has remained uninhabited ever since (see [2] for more). By the late 17th century the castle was ruinous, after it had been dismantled for building materials, and only some subterranean chambers remain.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Laybourn (Köhler’s Violin Repository vol. 3), 1885; p. 271.

Recorded sources:

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