Oigfhear A Chuil Duinn strathspey

First tune of Lauren MacColl’s album "Strewn With Ribbons". Definitely not a barndance. Slow tune, I think of it as some sort of slow air and there’s no category for them.

She plays it Gmin. I’ve transposed it to Emin so I can play it in tune on my F whistle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS7xStylDr4

play video

Unfortunately I don’t know anything about it. I got the digital album on Bandcamp and, as many other musicians do, she doesn’t provide any sort of digital sleeve notes with it.

By the way, if someone has an opinion about the time signature, I’m not too sure if 2/4 or 4/4…

Sometimes the Internet is fantastic 🙂 Lauren was kind enough to let us know where she got the tune from, the "Highlands Collections", published by the Highlands Music Trust. (Thank you so much Lauren!)

As I couldn’t get my hands on it (yet) I went a wee bit further back in time. It appearts the tune was originally published on William Morrison’s "Collection of Highland music, consisting of strathspeys, reels, marches, waltzes & slow airs", published in 1813. Its origin is listed as "a St. Kilda Song".

This is the transcription from the book. A bit trange.

Also, the book is out of copyright and available to download from the National Library of Scotland.
https://digital.nls.uk/special-collections-of-printed-music/archive/102744462

There is a category of Scottish fiddle tune called "slow Strathspey" which I’ve heard many times, but I’m not sure how it’s defined, nor whether the performance on that album would be considered that.

Hi Richard - I’m curious as to who you have heard playing "slow strathspeys", as it’s a musical form in the Scottish tradition which is practically extinct. Very much associated with my part of the world, the North-East of Scotland, I’ve only ever come heard one live fiddle player ever play one. I don’t think even the likes of Alasdair Fraser, or Paul Anderson play them any more.

"This is the transcription from the book. A bit strange."

Not sure what makes it strange? Perhaps it it the final barline ( given as a double barline in The Highland Collections) after the sixth bar. That could be to do with the tune being from a song, perhaps. The structure looks like a six bar refrain followed by a four bar verse and finishing off with the six bar refrain.
In The Highland Collections it says, "communicated to the Author by Miss McLeod of Rodall", though where Rodall is I have no idea.

The song is in Alexander Campbell’s Albyn’s Anthology vol.2 (1818) with the title, ‘Native Land, Adieu’. He said the song was set to ‘a St Kilda melody’, and in a footnote says he got the tune from the singing of Miss Macleod of Roudle in [the isle of] Harris, September 1815 – and that was towards the end of his song-collecting trip round the Hebrides. Campbell says that Miss Macleod herself got the air ‘from a St Kilda woman, who composed verses to suit the melody’. Campbell’s setting provided the St Kilda woman’s Gaelic verses, but also an English set of words composed by a Kirk minister.