Volume II, song 116, pages 119 and 120 - 'The Maid of Selma' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)

Verse 1: 'In the hall I lay in night mine eyes half-clos'd with sleep, Soft music came to mine ear, Soft music came to mine ear, It was the Maid of Selma. Her breasts were white as the bosom of a Swan, Trembling on swift rolling waves, She rais'd the nightly song, For she knew that my soul was a stream that flow'd at pleasants sounds; mix'd with a Harp arose her voice, mix'd with the Harp arose her Voice, She came on my troubled soul, like a beam on the dark heaving ocean when it bursts from a cloud and brightens the foamy side of a wave; 'twas like the memory of joys that are past, pleasant and mournful to the soul, pleasant and mournful to the soul.' For 'The Song Of Selma' see song 119. The 'Scots Musical Museum' is the most important of the numerous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collections of Scottish song. When the engraver James Johnson started work on the second volume of his collection in 1787, he enlisted Robert Burns as contributor and editor. Burns enthusiastically collected songs from various sources, often expanding or revising them, whilst including much of his own work. The resulting combination of innovation and antiquarianism gives the work a feel of living tradition. Robert Riddell of Glenriddell, a friend of Burns and fellow commentator on the 'Museum', noted that the words of this song 'are little altered from the original in the Poems of Ossian'. Ossian or Oisin was a mythical Irish warrior and poet, and Selma was the name of his castle. According to John Glen (1900), the tune first appeared in Neil Stewart's 'Collection of Scottish Song' (1772) and later featured in Corri's 'A New and Complete Collection of the Most Favourite Scots Songs', published in 1783.

Collection

Scots Musical Museum

Inventory Number

4503313

Title

Volume II, song 116, pages 119 and 120 - 'The Maid of Selma' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)

Object Type

PhysicalObject

Measurements

- 260 x 211 mm