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Issue 1394: Miss Anne Drummond Smith's Reel

Object
Syd Chalmers (Person)
Submitter
Finlay Forbes
Assigned to
Murrough Landon
Priority
Normal
Disposition
Being handled
Description

Syd Chalmers is definitely not the composer of this tune. The reference “Chalmers” in RSCDS Book 17 is almost certainly a transcription error. The correct reference should be “Clarkson”. This tune appears as “Miss Ann Drummond Smythe’s Reel” on Page 13 of “Clarkson’s Musical Entertainment” published by John Clarkson Senior in about 1796. As Syd Chalmers played the violin for Jimmy Shand in the maestro’s heyday, his authorship of the tune is highly improbable. As a general point, RSCDS musical references in Books 15 to 21 are strewn with inaccuracies and need to be treated with a high degree of scepticism.

Previous Actions

  • Date  March 11, 2018, 2:15 p.m.
  • User  Unknown

New issue submitted

  • Date  Nov. 21, 2018, 1 a.m.
  • User  Murrough Landon (murrough)

Assigned changed to »murrough« (previously »None«)
Disposition changed to »Being handled« (previously »New«)

Thanks for this. I have added John Clarkson as a person, assigned this tune to him and made a note in the tune entry that RSCDS book 17 is wrong.

Hunting around I found that http://hms.scot/fiddle/author/38/ shows two publications by him, Clarkson’s Musical Entertainment Books 1 and 2. However the British Library catalogue only has one entry. If there are two books, do you know which of them contains this tune on its page 13? Cheers, Murrough.

  • Date  Nov. 22, 2018, 1:08 a.m.
  • User  Murrough Landon (murrough)

I had a quick look at the British Library volume of Clarkson’s Musical Entertainment which has 20 pages of tunes and is not obviously marked as a book 1 or 2. My impression as a non-expert is that this is a collection of known tunes, not necessarily tunes composed by John Clarkson himself.

I have added an entry for this publication, but so far only added this one tune.

I also see that the database has another tune, composed by “Traditional” and called just Miss Drummond Smith’s Reel (http://my.strathspey.org/dd/tune/2589/). It is a jig, like Miss Anne Drummond Smith’s Reel. So I suspect we have a duplicate entry here.