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ballad world of Anna Gordon, Mrs. Brown of Falkland
1 online resource : illustrations (chiefly color), color maps
"This book is a biographical study of unprecedented scope and detail of the celebrated Anna Gordon, Mrs. Brown of Falkland, whose magnificent repertory of old Scottish ballads attracted the fascinated attention of intellectuals and song collectors during the later years of the eighteenth century. Her ballads--the earliest to be gathered from a named living person--were recognized by the great Francis James Child as a unique source in the Anglo/Scottish tradition, superior in quality to all other versions. Anna Gordon was a literary woman, with a strongly intellectual middle-class background, educated by her father, a professor in one of Scotland's four universities who, himself, made significant contributions to Scottish Enlightenment thinking about literacy and the nature of language. She lived at the intersection of several different worlds, reflecting balladry, oral tradition and women's culture, as well as Enlightenment debates about orality and literacy and the rapidly-expanding imperial enterprise. The story encompasses three generations of her remarkable family as they entered the wider Atlantic world, with adventures in Scotland, Virginia, and the West Indies, including an elopement and a duel, capture by pirates, and an evening party given by George Washington. The book includes an examination of the complex musical and cultural context from which Anna Gordon sprang. Threaded throughout are discussions of the ballads that brought her fame, revealing the deep importance of traditional music in Scottish society and the centrality of women as tradition-bearers in balladry, one of the great verbal and musical art-forms of Western Europe. Historically-informed audio recordings of twelve ballads from her original manuscripts with musical settings based on the notations of her gifted nephew, Robert Eden Scott, have been made for an accompanying website specially created for this book by leading Scottish folk musicians." --
This is a scholarly biography of Anna Gordon Brown, posthumously known as Mrs Brown of Falkland, an eighteenth-century Scottish ballad collector. This pioneering study takes us to the overlapping worlds of vernacular music during its rediscovery at the dawn of the Romantic Revival.
Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Visual Illustrations -- List of Musical Illustrations -- Prologue: The Literary Significance of Folk Music -- The Literary Significance of Folk Ballads -- The Folksong Flyting -- Hamish Henderson and Antonio Gramsci -- Literate Folk Singers -- Introduction: Setting the Scene-Eighteenth-Century Scotland and the Interest in Old Ballads -- Patriotism and Traditional Music -- Balladry in Eighteenth-Century England and Scotland -- Aberdeenshire as Ballad Country -- Ballad Country -- New Aberdeen and Old Aberdeen -- The Shape of This Book
1 Growing up a Gordon in Old Aberdeen -- Theodore Gordon -- William Forbes, Anna Gordon's Maternal Grandfather -- Elizabeth Bateman, Anna Gordon's Maternal Grandmother -- Humanity Castle -- King's University and College -- The Eighteenth-Century College Curriculum at King's -- King's Students vs. Marischal's Students -- Kempion'' -- Thomas Gordon, Anna Gordon's Father -- Aberdeen Stories -- 2 Musical Aberdeen -- Sang Schools -- Aberdeen Musicians -- Aberdeen Musical Society -- James Beattie -- John Gregory -- Music in Aberdeen -- Mussel-Mou'd Charlie
Musical Collections from North-east Scotland -- The Twa Sisters'' -- Singing in St. Machar's -- 3 Ballads Matter/Ballad Matters -- Ballads and Literature -- Traditional Music in Scotland -- Popular Song across Class -- Ballads as a Genre -- Ballads as Oral Poetry -- Ballads and Dreams -- Ballad Tunes -- Anna Gordon's Ballads -- What Stories Do Ballads Tell? -- National Differences in Ballads -- Eighteenth-Century Attitudes toward Ballads -- 4 Women and Balladry in Scotland -- King Henry'' -- Women's Stories -- Clark Colven'' -- Maternal Lineage in Scottish Society
Stadial or Conjectural History -- Women's Legal Position in Eighteenth-Century Scotland -- The Work That Women Did -- Scottish Women, Celibacy, and Illegitimacy -- Women's Literacy in Scottish Ballads -- Women's Education in Eighteenth-Century Scotland -- Anna Gordon's Education -- Women and Ballads -- Women as Bearers of Tradition -- Women-Composed Songs -- Ballads Collected from Women -- 5 Humanity Castle -- Old Aberdeen -- Scotland -- Europe -- the World -- Dinner in Humanity Castle -- The Transit of Venus -- Family Visits -- The Death of Lilias Forbes Gordon -- John and Elizabeth Scott
Elizabeth and John Scott in America -- Revolution and Slavery -- John Scott Dies -- The Gordon Diaspora -- Ballads and the Wider World -- Young Bekie'' -- Lamkin'' -- 6 Balladry and Enlightenment -- Reading the Past -- Collecting Treasures of the Past -- Lady Maisry'' -- Oral Cultures -- James Macpherson, Homer, and Ossian -- Literacy and Orality -- Thomas Percy and the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry -- Thomas Gordon's Papers on Writing and Signification -- The Aberdeen Philosophical Society -- Boswell and Johnson in Aberdeen -- Many Meanings of Ballads -- 7 Anna Gordon Recorded
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025]