Annotation:Sir James Colquhoun
X:1 T:Sir James Colquhoun's Reell M:C| L:1/8 R:Reel B:Cumming – A Collection of Strathspey or Old Highland Reels (1782, No. 20, p. 7) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:Emin B|GE TE>D/2E/4 GEEE|GDDB, D2 DE|GE TE>D GEEE|GABG E2 ED| GABG AGAB|DEGB, D2 DE|DEGA TB>Abe|d>BTAG E2E:| |:a|geTe>d geeb/a/|gdd>B d2 (d>f)|geT(e>d) geeg|dBTA>G (E2 E)d| e>Bd>A B>GA>B|GEGB, D2 DE|D>EG>A TB>AG>e|d>BTA>G E2E:|]
SIR JAMES COLQUHOUN. AKA and see "Black Watch's Farewell (The)," "Earl of Glencairn (1)," "Tam o' Shanter (2)." Scottish, Reel (cut time). E Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. John Glen (1891) finds the earliest printing of the tune in Angus Cumming's 1780 collection (p. 9). There were several Sir James Colquhouns, who resided in succession at Rossdhu, the seat of the Colquhoun family, which lay in the parish of Luss, Argyll & Bute, Scotland, on the banks of Loch Lomond. Sir James Colquhoun (1714-1786) built the main house in 1774 near the remains of an older tower and a roofless chapel used as the family burying place. The estate lay 3 miles south of the village of Luss and included a number of small islands in Loch Lomond. Sir James is mentioned incidentally in Lord Henry Cockburn’s (1779-1854) book Memorials of His Time (published posthumously in 1856), in a section on the deplorable Scottish judge David Rae, Lord Eskgrove, head of the Criminal Court. Cockburn wrote of Rae that “a more ludicrous personage could not exist,” and went on to catalogue some of his more egregious courtroom behaviors, including berating a tailor he had condemned for stabbing a soldier in the stomach—not the least of his crimes was that in so doing he rent the King’s property, the soldier’s sash! In another courtroom incident:
He had to condemn two or three persons to die who had broken into a house at Luss, and assaulted Sir James Colquhoun and others, and robbed them of a large sum of money. He first, as was his almost constant practice, explained the nature of the various crimes, assault, robbery, and hamesucken—of which last he gave them the etymology; and he then reminded them that they had attacked the house and the persons within it, and robbed them, and then came to this climax—“All this you did; and God preserve us! Joost when they were sitten doon to their denner!” (p. 114)