On This Day ... 1808

Crusty, objectionable, fussy .... 

Joseph Ritson, compiler of Scotish Songs 

 

Scotish Songs

The reputed Scottish antiquarian Joseph Ritson died on this day, 3rd September 1808.  If he was fussy and argumentative, it's because he was deeply knowledgeable and wanted everything to be just right.  And he had no patience whatsoever with anyone who fabricated 'historic' Scottish culture, like Macpherson's Ossian tales.


Unfortunately, that made him very unpopular with a whole lot of people.  In spite of that, spare him a charitable thought today, because he wasn't all bad - just a bit difficult to get along with!

He compiled a two-volume collection of Scottish songs which was highly thought-of in its day.  The Whittaker Library has facsimiles of Ritson's two-volume Scotish Songs.  (Yes, that is the archaic spelling!)  

• Read more about Ritson and his work, in a posting Karen wrote in 2011.
• Ritson and Robert Burns both wrote about how Scottish song should be performed.  They were quoting a third antiquarian, William Tytler.  Read that story here ...

Is this Song Scottish, or English? Is it even Genuine?

Karen has spent some time pondering these questions when she researches historic Scottish song.  As far back as the 18th century, song collectors were debating the nationality of the material they collected.  

For example, take Joseph Ritson.  He was from the north east of England, but made collections of both English and Scottish songs.  A stickler for detail, it mattered enormously to him that everything was well-documented and annotated.  The antics of other less scrupulous collectors really annoyed him.  (In fact, he called himself "Anti-Scot", but he was actually anti-John Pinkerton and most particularly, anti-James MacPherson, of Ossian fame.  He was certainly not anti Scottish music.)

A century later, the English ballad collector William Chappell similarly got himself into hot water by suggesting some old Scottish songs were really English.  You can read more about the whole issue here in 'From ‘Anti-Scot', to ‘Anti-Scottish Sentiment': Cultural Nationalism and Scottish Song in the Late Eighteenth to Nineteenth Centuries'.

William Motherwell, the 19th century ballad collector, was another person who strenuously asserted his meticulous approach to ballad-collecting. However, his friend Robert Archibald Smith said the songs in the Scotish Minstrel  were all genuine, but we know from his correspondence with Motherwell that this wasn't entirely true.  The same goes for Scottish poet Allan Cunningham.

By the end of the 19th century, attitudes were becoming more relaxed.  In later editions of Wood's Songs of Scotland (initially edited by George Farquhar Graham), there was more chance of 'Scottish songs' being accepted as Scottish by repute as much as by established origin.

Where does that leave The Ashokan Farewell and Highland Cathedral?  We wouldn't venture to comment!

Useful resources in the Whittaker Library:-

• Joseph Ritson, Scotish Songs 
• James Macpherson, The poems of Ossian
• William Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time 
• William Motherwell, Minstrelsy Ancient and Modern
• Robert Archibald Smith, Scotish Minstrel 
• Karen McAulay, Our Ancient National Airs
• Scottish songs in the Whittaker Library Catalogue  (a very long list!)

Joseph Ritson was a Cranky Old Curmudgeon

Joseph Ritson (1752-1803), Perfectionist Personified

A pernickity, fussy, argumentative old gentleman who eventually went mad and set light to his home, Joseph Ritson was not always the easiest person to get on with.

However, his Scotish Songs collection of 1794, in two volumes , was seminal and highly thought of, for several decades after its publication.  (It was by no means his only contribution to poetry and song-collecting, but it is the most useful for Scottish music students.)

We do have a copy in the Whittaker Library, but digital links are always worth having.  Here's an Internet Archive link to a 19th century reprint.  Save it to your favourites/ Diigo account!

Click here.

Grumpy Old Men: Joseph Ritson's anniversary

ON THIS DAY ...

Joseph Ritson at work

Stockton antiquarian Joseph Ritson died, 3rd September 1808.  He had gone insane.

Fussy, pernickety and grumpy to the last, he was nonetheless a major influence on ballad scholars for the next century, and his insistence on accuracy and authenticity was groundbreaking.  He collected Scottish songs, despite being English.  As far back as 1784, he signed himself ‘anti-Scot’, when he wrote in The Gentleman’s Magazine that John Pinkerton’s Select Scottish Ballads (1783) largely consisted of forgeries.  (Pinkerton later admitted this, but got his revenge by an adverse criticism of Ritson’s Scotish Songs in 1795.) 

Ritson also - as you might guess - disapproved of the poetic excesses of Highlander Joseph McPherson's Ossian epics.  Which doesn't mean Ritson disliked Scottish song - far from it.  But his own attitudes to accuracy and authenticity come through in his Scotish Songs preface.  Intrigued? Then find out more!

You can read his Scotish Songs (yes, that's correct) online on Google Books if you don’t have access to the originals:-

• Scotish Songs: Volume 1 - an 1869 reprint, Full view
• Scotish Songs: Volume 2 - digitised original, Full view
• Modern reprints in the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. 

Articles and papers by our Music and Academic Services Librarian, Karen McAulay:-

• 'Antiquarianism versus creativity in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Scottish song', in Eighteenth Century Scotland 24 (Spring 2010), pp.7-12
• 'From ‘Anti-Scot', to ‘Anti-Scottish Sentiment': Cultural Nationalism and Scottish Song in the Late Eighteenth to Nineteenth Centuries', in Library and Information History, Vol. 26 No. 4, December, 2010, 272–88
• ‘1810-1825: From antiquarian to creative artist, as exemplified by Scottish song collectors’, paper delivered at Oran 2010/2010 Sang: an International Conference on Gaelic and Scots Song, (Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Isle of Skye).

More sources of information:-

• Search Copac to find Ritson’s output in British academic and national libraries http://copac.ac.uk/
• Ritson worked with Tyneside composer William Shield, whom you can read about in Oxford Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/ (you need to be a subscriber; affiliated with a subscribing institution; or have access to a public library which subscribes)
• Read a basic biography of Ritson on Wikipedia.