In the second of a three-volume set of The Scots Fiddle, J. Murray Neil has compiled a collection of the fiddle music of Scotland relating to Edinburgh and the Lothians, Borders and Ayrshire. It includes a selection of traditional fiddle tunes and song airs that are played and sung wherever Scots meet at festivals and on special occasions. These include many that were collected and adapted by Robert Burns and feature in the Ayrshire section, which also contains extensive notes on Burns as a fiddler, musician and songwriter. Extensive biographical sketches, narratives and anecdotes accompany the tunes and provide a fascinating insight into the rich inheritance of Scottish culture. Famous fiddler/composers and songwriters, past and present; famous characters and landmarks; history, legends and traditions; language and dialect, poetry and song are represented in a stimulating account. The selection contains over 160 tunes, including airs and pastorals, reels, strathspeys, marches, jigs, hornpipes, waltzes, polkas and minuets. There are melodies by well-known and less well-known fiddler/composers and songwriters, new and unpublished tunes, as well as compositions from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Featuring:— The Last Raid o' the Kers (Bob Hobkirk), The Copshaw Hornpipe (Tom Hughes), The Carter Bar (Jim Nagle), In the Shadow of the Pentlands (Alex J. Lawson), Dunsapie (Boyd Gordon), Thistledown (Ron Purvis), On! St Ronan's (William Sanderson, the 'Tweeside Laddie'), Hawthornden (J. Nash), Within a Mile of Edinburgh Town (James Hook), Lady Hope of Pinkie's Strathspey (Nathaniel Gow), Buff and Blue (Robert Riddell), Miss Walker's Strathspey (John Pringle), One Chopin' Mair and The Reel o' Stumpie. The Scots Fiddle is not only an excellent fiddle music reference book, it is a book about Scotland and should appeal to all those with an interest in her and her cultural traditions.
