Kennedy & Boyd - Ballad Book, or, Popular and Romantic Ballads and Songs Current in Annandale and Other Parts Of Scotland

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A Ballad Book, or, Popular and Romantic Ballads and Songs Current in Annandale and Other Parts Of Scotland Collected by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (1824)


	Compiled by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. Edited by Edward Goldsmid
	ISBN 9781849210621
	SERIES Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe Collection
	Paperback 96 pages

	Published 24 September 2010 UK Price £12.95 US Price $16.00
From the introduction: "The collection of Ballads here reprinted is well known by name to all lovers of this class of Ancient Poetry, but the book itself can have been seen by few. Privately printed in 1824 for distribution among the Editor's friends, only thirty copies issued from the press. The Editor was one of a band of quaint Antiquarian Litterateurs, which included Maidment, Kinloch, J Buchan, &c., who devoted much time and labour to rescuing these unwritten traditions of the land, at the very period when they were sinking into oblivion. Gathered, as he tells us, from the mouths of nurses, wet and dry, dairy-maids, and tenants' daughters, it is not surprising if in form they are often rough and uncouth, and in ideas not always over-delicate. "Give me the writing of the Ballads, and you may make the Laws," cried Fletcher of Saltoun, and he was right. Generation after generation of our peasantry have cheered the long winter evenings, and listened with awe to the tale of Rothiemay, or the fate of "Fause Sir John". In "A Ballad Book," at least five ballads were printed for the first time, viz.- Lady Dysmal. Glasgow Peggie. Fair Margaret of Craignargat. O Errol it's a bonny place. Ritchie Stone."

Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (1781-1851) was born in Dumfriesshire in 1781 and educated in Edinburgh and Christ Church, Oxford.
His adult life in Edinburgh was reflected in his correspondence, society life, studies in literature, music and the fine arts and much published material.
When he died in 1851 he left one of the most extensive collections of antiquities ever accumulated by a private individual in Scotland.