Edited by Frank R. Shaw, FSA Scot, Greater Atlanta, GA, USA
Email: jurascot@earthlink.net
Robert Betteridge is Curator in Rare Books
and Music Collections at the National Library of Scotland, in Edinburgh.
He has shared this note on his work with Burns: “Robert has been working
with rare books at the National Library of Scotland since 1998. His
interest in Burns began as one of the co-curators of the exhibition
Zig-Zag: the Paths of Robert Burns which toured Scotland in 2009 and
brought together exhibits from the National Burns Collection
http://www.nls.uk/exhibitions/burns. He is an advisor on the
University of Glasgow project A Bibliography of Robert Burns for the
21st Century. He is currently cataloguing the Library’s incunabula and
has published on the early history of the Advocates Library and the
library of Newhailes near Edinburgh.” (Professor Patrick Scott)
My personal thanks to Patrick Scott, friend, mentor, and Burns scholar
for his assistance in securing this article for Robert Burns Lives! I
have looked to him on a regular basis in preparing these chapters for
publication on our website, and he has always assisted me when called
upon. Not everyone can be so lucky! (FRS: 6.08.17)
National Library of Scotland
"The Chevalier's Lament" Broadside and Robert
Burns at the National Library of Scotland
By Robert Betteridge
This short piece serves as a footnote to
Patrick Scott’s article “Burns and Broadside Publication: ‘"The
Chevalier's Lament’ at Auction in Macon, Georgia,” in Robert Burns
Lives!, no. 247 (November 2016). I am happy to be able to report that
the dealer who bought the broadside at the Macon auction sold it to The
National Library of Scotland and it is now available for consultation in
the Library’s Special Collections Reading Room (shelfmark: AP.6.217.01).
The two songs on this previously-unrecorded broadside are linked because
both relate to failed uprisings in the British Isles, one in Ireland in
1798, one in Scotland in 1746. Its acquisition adds not only to the
Library’s strong holdings of Robert Burns but also to its extensive
broadside collections. The broadside measures over 13 inches (33 cms.)
in height and 5 inches (12 cms.) wide. In the original article, the
broadside was shown in sections, but here is a photograph showing it as
a whole.
The Newly-Acquired Broadside at Full Length
Photograph courtesy of the National Library of Scotland
For those readers who have not yet seen
Professor Scott’s article, the first song in the broadside is “The
Maniac,” better known under the title 'Mary le More'. It was written by
the radical Liverpool poet Edward Rushton (1756-1814), and describes the
brutal reprisals after the United Irishmen's unsuccessful rising in
1798. It is otherwise first recorded in print in 1800 and appears in a
number of later 19th-century broadside ballads in the Library's
collections. “The Chevalier’s Lament” was written by Robert Burns in the
voice of Prince Charles Edward Stuart; it contrasts the joy felt at the
coming of spring with the ruin that defeat at Culloden brought to the
Prince's supporters. Burns wrote the opening stanza in 1788 and added a
second one probably later that same year. The song first appeared in
print in 1799, three years after Burns's death. This printing has a
number of orthographical and textual differences compared to both the
manuscript copy of the poem preserved in Burns's second commonplace book
and to other early recorded printings. Given the influence that the
collecting of Jacobite songs had on the recording of the songs of the
United Irishman and the subsequent stimulus their cause provided to the
Scots Radicals the songs make a fitting pair.
The holdings of the National Library of Scotland are increasingly to be
found in digitised form and of particular interest for broadside
material is The Word on the Street (http://digital.nls.uk/broadsides/)
which features a considerable amount of Burns’s work. A small number of
chapbooks are also available (http://digital.nls.uk/chapbooks-printed-in-scotland/pageturner.cfm?id=104184103),
as is one of the Library’s copies of the Kilmarnock edition (http://digital.nls.uk/poems-chiefly-in-the-scottish-dialect/pageturner.cfm?id=74464614),
and a general overview of Burn’s life and work is to be found at
(http://digital.nls.uk/robert-burns/) with reference to significant
printed editions and manuscripts.
For enquiries regarding the Library’s Robert Burns manuscripts please
contact Dr Ralph McLean at r.mclean@nls.uk
and for those regarding printed books please contact me at
r.l.betteridge@nls.uk. Please
note that the Library is unable to offer valuations and would recommend
that anyone with such an enquiry contact a reputable bookseller. |