The Song Repertoire of Amelia and Jane Harris

Folklore, April, 2004 by Ian A. Olson

The Song Repertoire of Amelia and Jane Harris. Edited by Emily Lyle, Kaye McAlpine and Anne Dhu McLucas. Edinburgh: The Scottish Text Society, 2002. xli 251 pp. Illus. 30.00 [pounds sterling] (hbk). ISBN 1-897976-17-8

This attractive production sets a very high standard indeed. Fifty-nine ballad and song texts are presented with minimal editorial intervention, but with thoroughly researched background and history, together with detailed musical analyses. Not only is the important repertoire of the Harris sisters showcased, but also informative links with a number of nineteenth-century collectors such as Andrew and David Laing, Norval Clyne, and Peter Buchan are provided via a wealth of incidental detail and in the appendices.

Those who have studied Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads (and Bronson's related writings) will be well aware that "Harris" is given as the source of a considerable number of his versions, and that Harris tunes comprise half his musical examples. Is there any need, therefore, for a further treatment of this material? The answer must be "yes," for at least three reasons: first because the Harris sisters' repertoire contained more than "Child" ballads; second because--almost uniquely for the period-they provided tunes; and third because of the collection's illuminating history.

The sisters sent Child these versions in 1873, with accompanying musical scores by the younger sister Jane (1823-97), but this was not in fact the first attempt the women had made to bring their repertoire to the notice of ballad scholars. The elder, Amelia (1815-91), had previously sent a set of their songs (without music) in 1859 to the Edinburgh professor, William Aytoun (1813-65), editor of The Ballads of Scotland (1858). Aytoun, greatly impressed, had even passed her fine version of "Patrick Spens" to the Aberdeen advocate and ballad scholar, Norval Clyne, to assist Clyne in his demolition of the "Lady Wardlaw Heresy" (that this ballad and others were fabrications). But Aytoun died before the Harris material could be incorporated into the third edition of his ballad book, and the material went missing until 1955 when the bound manuscripts were found by Hilary Corke of Edinburgh's department of Mediaeval Literature.

This meant that there were now two sets of the manuscripts, assembled separately, fourteen years apart--a rare example of oral repertoire evolution. According to the sisters, the majority of their songs had been learned from their mother, who had in turn learned them from her nurse, and this placed them 150 years back in time "by direct transmission" (the accompanying CD claims the songs are "from Perthshire tradition," but in fact the nurse's origin and the source of her songs are not known). The sisters also maintained firmly that their texts were "exactly as heard" (with any gaps in their memories shown as blank spaces) and "traditionally pure," uninfluenced by publications such as Walter Scott's. The airs were given exactly as recalled "with great purity" (although Jane had added basses for accompaniment purposes).

Emily Lyle provides an authoritative account of the manuscripts and the editing practice, and Kaye McAlpine gives a detailed account of the Harris family and their contacts (largely gained from the sisters' own descriptions). Anne Dhu McLucas discusses the music of the thirty song texts. She is somewhat sniffy about poor Jane's "sketchy" musical notation, especially with regard to time and pitch (not realising that this is the way we musically semi-literates attempt such records), and ominously states that "drastic editing" has been required "based on the editor's knowledge of the Scottish tune tradition." Reassuringly, however, and in keeping with the sensible ethos of the entire production, she gives both her interpreted notation and facsimiles of Jane's. She points out that other valid interpretations are possible, but few would disagree with her conclusion that the basses can be disregarded. A great bonus is the accompanying CD in which Katherine Campbell beautifully performs seventeen of the songs, highlighting many of this editor's musical points. It is unfortunate that only a couple of the songs are unaccompanied by a mixture of fiddle, melodeon, cello, small pipes (very effective), and a rather intrusive guitar, but the commercial dictum nowadays is that "unaccompanied singers don't sell."

This combination of deft editorial touches together with detailed and authoritative treatment of texts, tunes, and historical background has resulted in an invaluable source of material for both scholar and singer of which both the Scottish Text Society and the editors can be proud. There has been no attempt to gild the lily with jargon-laden theories in support of fashionable "isms" and no attempt to exhaust every possible scholarly approach. Instead, the editors have presented the Harris sisters and their important repertoire to the world in an informative, attractive, and highly readable manner.