The Love Songs Of

Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 11, 25 September 1931, Page 5

The Love Songs Of

| At 4YA next Tuesday evening, Mr. W. B. McEwan, Librarian at Dunedin Public Library, will give a lecturette on "The Love Songs of Burns." Mr. McEwan is a great student of the writings of Scotland’s national poet. What Thomas Moore did for Irish folk-music, Robert Burns had done for Scotland some time previously. He wrote verses of a folk-like character for many of the traditional Scottish airs. With both poets, this was a labour of love, a task which engaged their deepest feelings, and, in the case of Burns, as well as that of Moore, it is by the first lines of their poems that many of the traditional Scottish and Irish airs are now known Here the similarity ceases, for while Burns frequently took the old words and the idea they contained, recasting both in a truly poetic and much more beautiful form, Moore usual'y wrote an entirely

original poem in what he conceived to be the spirit of the melody which he had in mind. The touching melody of "John Anderson," long preserved by oral tradition, was written down in the year 1578 in Queen Elizabeth’s "Virginal Book," which is still preserved. John Anderson was a real personage, and, according to tradition, the town piper of Kelso and a good deal of a joker, The old verses about him are all of a humorous character. But Burns in composing his verses for this melody has idealised and poetized the traditional character of John Anderson, and in so doing has produced a poem which is beautifully fitted to the simple aud dignified character of the old melody. The melody of "Ye Banks and Braes o’ Bonnie Doon" is said to have been partly ‘faked’ on the black keys of the piano by a Mr. James Miller, of Edinburgh, who was greatly desirous of composing a Scottish tune. His beginning was completed by Stephen Clark, arranger of music for Johnson’s Museum. Curiously enough, the tune appears to have been based consciously or unconsciously. on

an old English air, "Lost ||

1s My Quiet Forever." The words are by Burns.

All these items will be included in this outstanding programme.