Album Summary: The Abbotsford Collection of Border Ballads (c.1827) is an important but neglected manuscript put together mainly by the celebrated amateur singer and harper, Sophia Scott-Lockhart (1799-1837). It contains 125 songs, including tunes and lyrics not found elsewhere, plus alternative versions of classic ballads that her father had previously published in his non-musical Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802+). In 1833, her husband, John Lockhart printed 10 of these in his classic edition of the Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott. This ScotMus.com edition is currently based on those prints, but I hope to include more of this valuable collection in the future.
Album Playlist — 10 Tunes
Edition Notes: At the time of writing, the original manuscript of the Abbotsford Collection of Border Ballads is in the care of the Advocates Library and the National Library, on behalf of the Abbotsford Trust. Unfortunately, it's not currently available for consulation. However, all three institutions, along with a team of local scholars (not least at Glasgow University), are working towards a comprehensive cataloguing and assessment of Walter Scott's library, and I'm hoping that my wee edition of 10 tunes from this important manuscript will spark some further public and scholarly interest in it. If nothing else, my edition should serve to give at least some indication the significant cultural value of its contents — and help to develop our appreciation of Sophia Scott-Lockhart as an important musical antiquarian in her own right.
So far as I can tell, the Abbotsford Collection of Border Ballads has only previously received two significant published accounts, more than a century apart. The first is undoubtedly J.G. Lockhart's inclusion of 10 pieces within the Minstrelsy volumes (I-IV) of his classic edition of the Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott (Edinburgh: 1833), published in the year following his famous father-in-law's death, and on which this ScotMus.com album is currently based. However, aside from printing the pieces themselves, Lockhart is more than vague about them, and the following paragraph is the sum total of his comments —
The airs of some of these old ballads are for the first time appended to the present edition. The selection includes those which Sir Walter Scott himself liked the best; and they are transcribed, without variation, from the MSS. in his library. (Lockhart 1833:v)
Clearly, an identification of Lockhart's sources is impossible from this alone, although it's important to note that he doesn't claim Walter Scott as the author, but only as having previously been the owner of "the MSS. in his library". However, some help seems to be offered in Ailie Munro's somewhat more recent article, "'Abbotsford Collection of Border Ballads': Sophia Scott's Manuscript Book with Airs" (Scottish Studies 20, 1976:91-108). Problematically, Munro makes no direct mention of Lockhart's 1833 edition (although it is vaguely referenced in an external quote on her first page). However, she does drop an intriguing trail of critical crumbs that surely lead in the direction of the 10 tunes that Lockhart published. Firstly, she reports that, according to later Scott-Maxwell family tradition, Lockhart had a collection of seperate manuscript pages of music associated with Sophia Scott-Lockhart very expensively-bound together into the single volume that bears the title Abbotsford Collection of Border Ballads, apparently as a gift for their daughter, Charlotte (Munro 1976:91-92). Secondly, 9 of the 10 tune-titles from Lockhart's 1833 prints re-appear in Munro's list of this manuscript's contents (ibid. 104-106). Thirdly, Munro prints one full facsimile of a song-arrangement from the manuscript ("Plate III Brown Robin") which, although not in Lockhart's edition, is an intriguingly-exact match for the notational and musical style of his prints (and note that these latter do bear all the hallmarks of literal transcriptions from private manuscripts, usefully retaining all of the usual notational errors of such things, which makes the stylistic comparison fairly easy). All of this seems more than merely coincidental — if not a fully-functional "weight of evidence".
Subsequently, on making enquiries of the Advocates Library, I received a very helpful reply from the Senior Librarian, Andrea Longson, who, in consulation with colleagues, supports the identification of Lockhart's prints with the Scott-Lockhart manuscript (and it's worth mentioning that I deliberately avoided mentioning my theory to Longson, so's not to bias her response!). So, overall, I'm now 99% certain that at least 9 of the 10 Lockhart 1833 tunes are indeed in the bound manuscript that Munro describes. However, I should also admit that, being an insanely pedantic nit-picker myself, I won't be 100% satisfied until I've confirmed the identification myself by directly consulting the manuscript. Nonetheless, I'm fairly happy to provisionally publish my conjecture (supported, as it is, by wise librarians!) for the time being. So, assuming all of this as sound, what are we really dealing with here?
So far as I can tell, I'm the first commentator to claim that these song-arrangements are designed primarily for the harp. Given that Lockhart prints the instrumental accompaniments as being scored for "piano forte" (1833:passim) and Munro states that the songs are "pianoforte arrangements" (1976:92), my harp hypothesis obviously requires some explanation. As I've already mentioned, Munro doesn't directly reference Lockhart (and actually seems to be unaware of his edition), and so her claim seems to be her own, rather than being drawn from Lockhart's "authority". But equally, Munro offers absolutely no evidence from the manuscript itself to support her statement that these are piano scores — she simply states it as an apparently-self-evident fact. But is it? Because, with a little critical (and especially musicological) scratching about, the piano hypothesis soon starts looking rather clunky, to say the least.
Importantly, Lockhart claims to have "transcribed, without variation, from the MSS." (1833:v), and his prints do indeed bear all the notational hallmarks of direct transcription from a private manuscript that wasn't originally intended for public consumption (ie. short-hand "errors", not least in terms of missing rhythmic values and wobbly voicing-alignment). However, Lockhart includes instrumentation labels on every single score — "voce" on the obviously-vocal treble staff, and "piano forte" on the accompaniment's treble+bass staffs. But... In Munro's single full facsimile from the manuscript itself ("Plate III Brown Robin"; inter 98-99), no instrumentation is specified whatsoever, on either the vocal or instrumental parts. Of course, in private manuscripts, there's nothing unusual about this — it's a no-braner that the creators of such documents know what their own intended instruments are, and so it's often redundant to hammer such details onto the page. But in this case, from our point of view many years hence, the (apparent) lack of an internally-specified instrument for the accompaniment does leave the issue open to interpretation.
From the evidence so far, all we can say with absolute certainty is that the instrumental parts in the Abbotsford manuscript are written out on treble+bass staffs, and have a chordal texture. But this is actually far less of a clue to instrumentation than it might first appear to be. For example, we have the evidence of numerous scores by the Gow family with arrangements published on treble+bass clefs and with chordal textures that are specifically stated as being designed for a wide range of possible instruments. Typically, these stated possibilities include not only violin+cello (which would require the performers to ignore the chordal components), but also harpsichord, piano and, yes, harp, too (incidentally, a more famous musicological problem is that we don't even know whether Bach meant harpsichord or piano in the title of his Well-Tempered Clavier scores). Now, it's also worth noting here that even those Gow scores that are obviously designed (primarily) for violin+cello performance (because chords aren't specifically given) are even then often mis-catalogued in libraries as being for piano, simply because they're printed on treble+bass staff systems — indeed, so powerful is the association between the two-staff system and the piano in the modern mind that I've even occasionally come across scores catalogued as "piano" pieces when they actually pre-date the invention of that instrument! To read old scores accurately, we need not to leap to conclusions based on our own modern predispositions. And in the historical frame we're dealing with for the Abbotsford manuscript, there are two main chordal instruments whose scoring utilises the treble+bass staff-system that the most fashionable folks (such as the Scotts) are playing — the piano and the harp (around this time, the harpsichord and spinet are pretty-much old hat).
So, what contemporary evidence do we have for how ballads such as those contained in this manuscript were actually performed at Abbotsford? Fortunately, we have a fair bit of evidence that comes directly from the mouths of several first-hand horses. The letters and memoirs of Walter Scott, his family, friends, and visitors to Abbotsford are littered with references to the house's domestic musical activities (quotes and references to follow — there's a lot of material to sort through here!). Famously, Scott himself is the least musically-endowed figure within these scenes, not least by his own admission (although he had received basic lessons from Alexander Campbell of Albyn's Anthology fame, and was certainly capable of handling notation, although a little un-grammatically in places!). Typically for a late-Georgian aristocratic family, their domestic music is provided by the ladies — generally the daughters of the hosts and their guests, often as an after-dinner entertainment, and with popular songs as the main repertoire. Rummaging around the surviving documents, references to various instruments accompanying the singing can be found, including piano, guitar and even violin (which Sir Walter, with characteristic ahistorical flair, calls a "viol"!). But the single striking image connecting practically every musical scene from Abbotsford is this — Sophia, singing ballads, at her harp. Listening to Sophia's harp-ballads was, in fact, one of her father's greatest joys in life, and clearly also a great source of pride — not least when she performed ballads from his Minstresly.
Now, Sophia's harp is still on display at Abbotsford — appropriately enough, in the drawing-room, where she is so often mentioned as having played it. Scott seems to have bought it for both of his daughters in 1817, although Sophia's letters suggest that her younger sister, Anne was both less interested and less successful in her study of the instrument. For their tuition, Scott engaged the services of one John Frederick Pole, who I've tracked down to being a professional harp-teacher, and occasional composer/arranger of harp music (including Scottish material) based for a while in Edinburgh. He also seems to have been a minor publisher. At least after Sophia's untimely death in 1837, Pole turns up advertising his services in Court journals down in London. One way or another, his services are unlikely to have been cheap. At one point, he even offers to loan a fair few quid to Sir Walter in a moment of financial distress! I've yet to find any references to Scott having engaged the services of a piano-teacher specifically for his daughters (although it is perfectly possible, particularly in the pre-Pole period, and Campbell would seem to be a possible candidate, assuming there is one).
Neither was the harp itself cheap. Sophia records that, along with a music-stand, it cost no less than £116, which would get you a pretty decent private yacht in hard modern cash. This is hardly surprising — this particular harp is the absolute technological bee's knees of the day, a Sebastian Erard "Grecian" model, dated 1811, from the famous Parisian company's London workshops. In technical terms, it's a 43-string double-action 7-pedal machine, with gilt trimmings and lots of finely-crafted bacchic nymphs, satyrs and other "musical" pagan reprobates cavorting all over its surface in gracefully-understated abandon (hence its moniker as Erard's "Grecian" model). This instrument is, in fact, the all-time definitive landmark in the history of harp design. Previously, even the best single-action pedal-harps in common circulation couldn't play in all musical keys without a lot of complex messing about (basic open tuning of E♭, capable only of handling key-signatures between 3 flats to 4 sharps without manually re-tuning some strings, which often led to the rest going out of tune!). But Erard's 1810 patent mechanism changed all of that — with an open tuning of C♭, this machine's double-action feature allowed all 7 notes of its scale to be raised by two successive semitones, allowing all notes to be either flat, natural or sharp, and in any combination, as required. Effectively, it was a vertical keyboard, with all "black" and "white" notes available. For the first time, a harper could now (comparatively) easily tweak the instrument to modulate between any key during the performance of a single piece of music without pausing or having to remove one hand from the strings to re-tune them. With a little careful thought, it could even be tweaked to handle basic chromatic passages (an important consideration for playing pieces in the popular contemporary Germanic style). It was a historic and classic machine, and its mechanism is still the inspirational design behind the modern orchestral harp. As a Stradivarius is to the fiddle, or a Gibson Les Paul to the electric guitar, so Erard's "Grecian" beast is to the harp. Some harpers even still use it.
From this, it becomes obvious that Sophia's harp is more than capable of handling the occasional harmonic shifts in the Abbotsford manuscript that I've seen so far (actually, most of the arrangements are within the harmonic reach of the older, single-action machines, although Munro prints the melody of one piece that has four flats, "FIG.6 Hobbie Nobbie", which is a likely sign of Sophia's double-action machine). And given that Sophia's performances of ballads on this instrument are the single thread connecting almost all contemporary accounts of the musical entertainments at Abbotsford, there's every reason to conclude that what we're seeing in this manuscript is the concrete musical record of Sophia's actual harp performances. It just beggars belief that she'd be so heavily involved in a manuscript containing 125 arrangements for piano, an instrument that she barely seems to have showed any significant interest in, rather than for what was so obviously her main, and even beloved instrument, the harp — especially when these manuscript ballads are the exact same genre as those she is famous for singing along to her harp. Her arrangements can, of course, also be played on piano (but so can the Gow's violin+cello tunes, and so what?). In fact, I'm sure they probably were often played on piano, too (not least by visitors and even musical collaborators who didn't necessarily play the harp), and I'm also fairly sure that some of them would even have been written at the keyboard (just like most composers/arrangers always have — I, for one, once wrote a piece for Japanese bamboo flute, shakuhachi, at the piano, although that probably wasn't my greatest moment of methodological genius!). But I'm absolutely convinced that their primary (although not necessarily exclusive) function was to be used as Sophia's working reference notes for her celebrated harp performances. And until someone conclusively proves otherwise (and I don't think they can), I'm sticking to that theory.
So, on the basis of this theory, although I've transcribed Lockhart's transcriptions as literally as he claims to have done from his manuscript sources, I have invasively deleted the "voce" and, more importantly, the "piano" labels that he prints on every piece. As I've already indicated, this deletion accords with the presentation of the material in the manuscript itself (going on the single full facsimile provided by Munro). One obvious reason why Lockhart would have labelled them for "piano" is that, in 1833, far more of his readership would have had access to that instrument than a harp — the harp being, particularly in Scotland back then, the almost exclusive preserve of the well-heeled amateur aristocrat, generally female (qua Sophia). And since most harp music of this era can be played on piano without vast amounts of modification (including these scores), labelling it as piano music would simply make it more approachable for more of his readers — and thus more commercially-viable from his own point of view, into the bargain. In my view, Lockhart's "piano" labels are not an authoritative statement on the orignal scoring, but a result of wisely-expedient publication policy. But, assuming I'm right, and that the originals are primarily intended for harp, Lockhart knows this perfectly well, being the husband of their primary performer.
But what about the issue of authorship per se? Again, Munro's analysis of the manuscript is invaluable here. Firstly, she mentions that several melodies and/or lyrics within it are clearly labelled as having been authored by various non-Abbotsford figures, and there are also settings of original, non-traditional lyrics by Walter Scott (Munro 1976:passim). However, to my mind, the authorship of melodies or lyrics is not the real issue in a manuscript that is so obviously compiled as a collection of material from numerous sources (including traditional material) that's presented in (mostly) original arrangements. The real level of authorship we're dealing with here is that of the arranger — that's the constant that ties the whole together, and is, indeed the whole functional basis of the collection in the first place. Turning back to Munro, we also find a very useful analysis of the fact that the manuscript is written out in a series of at least 5 distinct and identifiable hands (Munro's intensively cross-referenced research in this respect is nothing short of heroic!). In particular, she identifies frequent examples of the hand-writing of Sophia's close friends, the Clephane sisters from Mull, although Sophia's own hand remains primary throughout. Significantly, many of the songs have titles written in one hand, music in another, lyrics in a third, etc. From this, we can deduce the general social contexts in which the manuscript was produced as being moments of collaboration (Munro 1976:92-97). Although Munro is wisely cautious about saying much more, the reader can easily come away from her article with the impression of an entirely multi-authored collection — including multiple authorship of the arrangements themselves. This is probably an effect of the fact that Munro largely avoids discussing the arrangements — with enthomusicologcal hat firmly on, her main focus is the melodies alone, and the various relationships between the song-lyrics (rather than music per se) and the stock reference-corpus of the Child Ballads.
However, it's also a simple fact that authorship of a document is no real guide to the authorship of its contents (otherwise, I would now be the author of 10 of the tunes, having transcribed them for my website). Just as Sophia's hand is the dominant scribal presence throughout, it is possible that the presence of other hands signifies the transcription of Sophia's performances of her own arrangements by the others present as she plays through them. In other words, she could have been (at least partly) using her friends as "scribal assistants" to record her arrangements live. She is certainly the dominant figure in the surviving records of performances of this material at Abbotsford, and I suspect that, perhaps even in most cases, what we have in the manuscript is her friends helping her by transcribing arrangements that she has already worked out at her harp, and is now running through them while others copy them down. At this stage, I strongly suspect that this could often have been the case and that, regardless of how many scribal hands are present in the manuscript, it remains (primarily) a documentary record of Sophia's work as an arranger. I could, of course, be wrong, but everything I've found so far does point to Sophia as the central figure — not least the fact that most of the musical arrangements seem to be composed in pretty-much the same, and rather characteristic style. Which would be one possible, and highly significant indicator of a common arranger. But, again, only full access to the manuscript itself would allow the kind of thorough musicological analysis required to decide the issue.
So, my other deviation from Lockhart's prints is obvious from this. Following my reading of Munro's description of the manuscript, I've supplied the missing attribution to Sophia Scott-Lockhart (et al). While John Lockhart's ommission of his wife's name might easily offend the modern reader, it is possible that, within the complex social conventions of the late-Georgian era, he wasn't actually doing his wife down here. In those days, as before, it was OK for male aristocrats to be, for example, major literary figures (from Plato or Julius Caesar through Sir Walter himself), but the musical profession (along with most other arts, not least acting) was still often considered to be not far removed from "the oldest profession" with which it was so often intimately bound in older societies — an acceptable line of work for plebs and proles, but not really for the nobs, and especially not female ones. Music was, after all, the food of politely-proverbial "love" (nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say no more) — the Apollonian art-form with routinely-"Dionysian" undertones. So John's ommission of an attribution to Sophia is probably more an affect of social modesty than anything else, and probably one that even Sophia was happy with. After all, she herself made no effort whatsoever to have her manuscript published properly, whether under her own name or even anonymously (and it's not like she wasn't well-connected within the publishing industry — and pre-eminently so!). Moreover, the fact that John published 10 of her pieces in his classic edition of Scott clearly flags her work up as being of particular artistic, and scholarly interest that also sheds important light on the already-established cultural value of The Great Scott's own work. Sophia's material itself was probably taken more seriously by the reading public of the day precisely because no "merely" female name was attached to it. So, at least arguably, by ommitting Sophia's name, John in fact nonetheless honours her work (and in a way that she otherwise chose not to). But, happily, we're not restricted by such rigid social conventions, and the honour of the name itself can be fully restored to its rightful place.
My proposed working date of c.1827 for the manuscript is necessarily semi-arbitrary. Munro wisely avoids anything specific here, but does very usefully observe that Lockhart's binding of the manuscrript includes an original watercolour vignette signed and dated "W. Allan fecit 1821", and that three paper-maker's watermarks can be found across two distinct sections, with dates of 1819 and 1823 respectively (Munro 1976:95). Obviously, then, a collective terminus for the whole has to be post-1823. But, applying my "harp hypothesis" to the problem, a couple of handy round numbers converge — 1817 as the year in which Scott bought the Erard harp, and 1837 as the year of Sophia's death. So, taking an admittedly-arbitrary average of the two, we get c.1827, which also fits Munro's primary data. If a complete musicological and literary analysis of the manuscript's contents can ever be made, it might be possible to come up with a better dating. However, a more solid and satisfactory terminus might be established by discovering the date of Lockhart's binding from external sources such as letters, or even a receipt from the binder.
So far as the lyrics to the songs are concerned, it's clear that (again) Lockhart's edition is not quite "transcribed, without variation, from the MSS." as he claims. Munro observes that the manuscript contains complete texts for the lyrics (Munro 1976:95), but Lockhart only ever prints 1st verse texts as they integrally appear beneath the vocal lines of the scores themselves. This is unfortunate not least because it soon becomes clear that Sophia's versions of the traditional songs that her father also included in his Minstrelsy generally seem to be more traditional versions per se. Walter Scott is, of course, notorious for fiddling with his sources — as are most early collectors of traditional material, particularly from Allan Ramsay on. But on the evidence so far, it looks like Sophia is less involved with "editing", and more concerned with transcribing her sources fairly accurately (and in modern terms, this makes her a better scholar than her famous dad!). She also includes traditional material that isn't in the Minstrelsy. These are just yet more reasons why the entirety of this important manuscript needs to be published — with 125 songs in total, it's a major collection of (amongst other things) traditional ballads.
At this stage, though, it's unfortunate that I obviously can't give you the full lyrics to the songs. I was vaguely thinking of adding Walter Scott's versions as appendices to each one, but that might actually be misleading in many cases. What I'd prefer to avoid is a situation where Sophia's arrangements end up being sung with Walter's lyrics. To my mind, that would be an injustice to Sophia's work. And anyway, if you really want to mangle together the two rival versions of their songs, you can always pick the Minstrelsy texts up from any number of other websites. But before we launch into a full revival of Sophia's work in performance, I hope you'll patiently await the possibility of its full publication. :-)
However, Sophia's manuscript doesn't just contain traditional material. Munro lists several new musical and lyrical compositions that make it into the collection, too, often with named authors (Munro 1976:passim). Apart from anything else, there are some settings of original poems written by Walter Scott from outside the Minstresly, as well as original settings of lyrics from within it. In the 10 pieces printed by Lockhart, "The Douglas Tragedy" stands out by miles as having a new melody in the "sub-Handelian" style that was the stock-and-trade hallmark of the popular British "parlour" style of the day. It's easily also the least successful setting in this group — for a "Tragedy", the "chaps" all sound inappropriately "rather jolly"... ;-)
But one particular musical feature shared by most of these 10 arrangements struck me instantly, and still does — the surprisingly high frequency of super-deep triads in the bass part. In fact, they partly define the harmonic style of the whole collection, almost in a mannerist way. It was immediately obvious that they'd sound pretty rough on a modern piano, which invariably makes low major 3rds sound more like dissonances than consonances. Munro noticed this too, although correctly points out that they'd have sounded a little less rough on the lighter, early pianos of Sophia's own era (Munro 1976:95). But on any kind of piano, the un-idiomatic frequency of these low chords makes Sophia's arrangements sound incompetently-amateurish, while so many of the other harmonic and textural features here come across as more than competent for amateur work (and often just sound plain good). In fact, these low chords were one of the first things that made me wonder if we really were dealing with piano music at all. So, I went on a minor musicological quest, looking for such things in professional pieces of this era. Given the dark, brooding, rumblingly-thundery "Gothic" feel that low triads have on a piano, my first port of call was obviously the Germans (all apologies to our brow-furrowing cousins for the ethno-historical stereotyping here!). So, pulling a grubby auld copy of Ludwig's piano sonatas off the shelf and thumbing through it, I did indeed find a few such chords. But that's the point — only a few. The Germanic piano style of the time reserves low bass triads precisely as Gothicky "special effects", and only applies them sparingly (not least to maximise their slightly-weirding affect). Now, the thing is that Sophia's ballad-arrangements clearly do not all have a Gothicky atmosphere, and yet still use such chords throughout. Here's where I started thinking in terms of the harp instead (incidentally, in Mozart's harp concerto, such chords, generally played fortissimo, often come across more "triumphant" than "brooding"). And, indeed, when played on a harp, and particularly when played as idiomatically-"broken" chords (which can also be a harp cliché), they instantly turn from Gothicky gut-rumbles into something more like a deep, fruity lute being strummed by a Medieval minstrel singing a ballad. Oh, right, aye, now — that sure rings a bell...! Within the 10 arrangements I've currently got online, the best example of how this minstrelly-fruity-lutey "strumming" effect can, with care, turn these low bass chords into a thematic plus is in The Battle of Bothwell Brigg, whose 1st section contains no less than 7 of them within 8 bars, emphatically grouped in pairs and very structurally-positioned to open and close each 4-bar sub-division (all of which leaves the listener in no doubt whatsoever of their very deliberate crafting). On piano, this would be un-idiomatic cack, but in the hands of a harper it's a minstrel's lute. Aye, I like this collection! :-)
In conclusion (at least for now), a few personal notes... Since quite accidentally stumbling across Lockhart's prints of 10 of Sophia's arrangements (which remain unjustifiably-obscure in the musicological annals), I've come to have a huge amount of respect for the woman and her work. In my view, her song-arrangements are not only a great listen, but also offer us important information about how Scottish musical traditions were evolving around the epochal late-Classical shift from the Baroque/Rococo legacy into the emergent early-Romantic style. Most importantly in this respect is the fact that, unlike her musical predecessors, and even some of her contemporaries, she doesn't merely give us a bass-line and leave its realisation up to us — the harmonic and textural implications of her basses are fully-scored up (and, amongst other things, demonstrate a pretty decent working knowledge of contemporary harmony, especially from an amateur). In fact, a full analysis of her arrangements could result in something of a handy handbook for how folks in general were performing such material in this period (Thomson's Burns collection isn't much use, being arranged by foreign composers, albeit famous ones). But, more than even this, her work bears intriguing comparison to another, but far earlier amateur aristocrat's private manuscript that you'll also find 'round here — The Skene Manuscript (c.1620). On listening to both arranger's styles, once you go beyond the obvious differences in harmonic language (French influences on the one hand, Germanic influences on the other), there are striking similarities of approach that seem to entirely close the gap of the two long and tumultuous centuries between them, and point towards a common Scottish method. One thing in particular comes to the fore, which is further attested by the professional song-arrangements in Bremner's Guitar Collection (1758) that lie historically between Skene and Scott-Lockhart (and adds Italian influences into the mix). It seems to be a fundamental aesthetic and technical principle across (at least) two whole centuries of Scottish song-arrangements (and perhaps even supplies some crucial missing information for the problematic gaps that follow the famously-obscure twilight of our Medieval harp traditions!). And this apparently-fundamental "rule" of song-arranging is this — keep the texture light, mirror the vocal line, and apply your own contemporary harmonic style but sparingly. After all, as one of Sir Walter's greatest heroes (whose tune Sophia is the first to give us: No.9) probably once wrote, as far back as the thirteenth century, tongue is chief of minstrelsy... ;-)
It's now my sincere hope that scholarly access to Sophia's original manuscript will soon be opened up. Because if that happens, the possibility of us learning from, and enjoying her important work (aside from the new light it casts on her father's work) could be finally realised. So, as ever, stay tuned...(?)
Acknowledgements: Firstly, I'd like to thank Larry Furlong, Custodian at Abbotsford House, for very kindly waiving the Trust's default no-photos policy to allow me to take ten trillion reference pics of the Abbotsford harp. This was crucial in determining the precise technical specifications of the instrument, and thus what its musical capabilities were. Thanks are also due to Andrea Longson of the Advocates Library, and her colleagues, for confirming the link between Lockhart's 1833 prints and the Abbotsford Collection of Border Ballads manuscript. I'd also like to thank Dr. Margaret Mackay of Edinburgh University's Department of Celtic & Scottish Studies for politely indulging me in the pursuit of an admittedly cheeky line of enquiry (even though it came to naught).