The Blue Bassist @BlueBassist

2 posts2 participants0 posts today

**Atlas Obscura** @atlas@libranet.de · 3d

Mujumdar Wada in Pune, India

This 18th century building is said to be one of the oldest heritage mansions in Pune.#houses #18thcentury #mansions #section-Atlas
Mujumdar Wada

Atlas Obscura · 3dMujumdar WadaThis 18th century building is said to be one of the oldest heritage mansions in Pune.

#sectionatlas

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · 4d

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

@gutenberg_org

“not only is there no invocation of the free market […Adam Smith] plainly sees that government, not private industry, is the only force capable of effectively ‘erecting and maintaining’ the technically unprofitable but nevertheless indispensable ‘publick works’ and ‘publick institutions’ […] essential to every modern state.”

—Evan Gottlieb on the origins & legacy of Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand”
https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2013/05/invisible-hand-over-fist-on-the-development-and-legacy-of-adam-smiths-famous-phrase/

The Bottle Imp · May 1, 2013(Invisible) Hand Over Fist: On the Development and Legacy of Adam Smith's Famous Phrase - The Bottle Imp‘The invisible hand’ is probably the most recognizable catchphrase of economic talk today. Invoked by supporters of capitalism, it insists upon the essential wisdom and naturalness of allowing financial decisions to be made by unfettered market forces rather than by individual or institutional actors; as U.S. presidential hopeful Mitt Romney liked to tell his supporters […]

#Scottish #literature #AdamSmith

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Mar 2

Mar 2

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

Goethe, Jefferson, Diderot, Mendelssohn were all Ossian fans… Grimms’ fairy tales, the Kalevala, European Romanticism, all stem from Macpherson’s work. Much of modern fantasy literature has roots in “Ossian”.

More here! From all good bookshops, & online via Project MUSE

4/4

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/companions/ic4/

Book cover
The International Companion to
JAMES MACPHERSON AND THE POEMS OF OSSIAN
Edited by Dafydd Moore

Cover image: The woes of Ossian, 1825, by Kysfaludy Karoli (1788–1830). Budapest, Magyar Nemzeti Galeria (Fine Arts Museum).

The ancient poet Ossian sits next to a stream, head bowed, playing his harp. Behind him, giant figures of dead heroes form out of clouds of mist.

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Mar 2

Mar 2

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

“Oscar” became a popular name, especially in Scandinavia, & eventually became the name of the Academy Award too.

It wasn’t the only popular name to come from Macpherson’s works: “Fiona” is another. People went nuts for Ossian. (Will anyone be naming their daughters “Daenerys” in 250 years?)

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Title page, THE POEMS OF OSSIAN (1809 edn)

Title page of the 1809 edition of The Poems of Ossian. Test reads:

The Poems of Ossian
translated
by
James Macpherson Esq.
With the Dissertations of Dr Blair
Published by W. Crosby and Co., 1809

The illustration shows a man wearing a helmet, driving a chariot and wielding a spear. He is wearing a fanciful costume – some sort of combination of imagined Highland dress and ancient Greek.

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Mar 2

Mar 2

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

In Macpherson’s “Ossian” – derived in part from songs & legends preserved in Gaelic oral tradition – Oscar was the son of Ossian, & grandson of Fingal. Napoleon was a HUGE Ossian fan, & gave the name to his godson, who became Oscar I of Sweden

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Crown Prince Oscar of Sweden, 1799–1859

Crown Prince Oscar of Sweden, painted by Joseph Karl Stieler. Oil on canvas, no date (early 19th century). Standing against a background of sombre clouds, Crown Prince Oscar is a young man, with dark, bouffant curly hair and a small waxed moustache which turns upwards at the tips. He is wearing a dark, high-collared military dress uniform, the front of which is almost completely covered in gold frogging, tassels, and buttons. Three large cross- and star-shaped decorations are pinned to his left side. A line of dark fur runs over his left shoulder. A pale blue sash of watered silk crosses his chest from right to left.

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury

**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Mar 2

Mar 2

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

The Academy Awards are almost upon us, & no-one is sure how the Oscars got their name. Bette Davis’s first husband? Margaret Herrick’s uncle? But “Oscar” – a name from ancient Gaelic legend – owes its modern popularity to James Macpherson’s 18th-century “Ossian” poems

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from CHATTERBOX (1890)

A somewhat fanciful black-and-white late-Victorian engraving. The caption reads "Ossian finding his own son, Oscar, wounded". Ossian, a long-haired, bearded warrior wearing a conical helmet, is bending down to take the hand of his son Oscar – another long-haired warrior, although beardless – who is lying on the ground, a shield and a short sword beside him. A troop of other warriors stand in the background; one of them carries a banner on a pole.

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 31

Jan 31

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

“Ramsay ‘transformed the genre of the pastoral drama by bending it in a more “realistic” direction’. This is where Ramsay enters a rather heated and complicated British context.”

—Craig Lamont unpacks Allan Ramsay’s THE GENTLE SHEPHERD

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2023/11/classd-with-tasso-and-guarini-allan-ramsays-the-gentle-shepherd/

The Bottle Imp · Nov 16, 2023‘Class’d with Tasso and Guarini’: Allan Ramsay’s The Gentle Shepherd - The Bottle ImpOf Allan Ramsay’s many important works, The Gentle Shepherd (1725) remains his most revered. It was first performed in Edinburgh in 1729, going on to enjoy success across Scotland, England, North America and beyond over the next two centuries. New productions in the mid-to-late twentieth century brought the story back into Scotland’s cultural consciousness, with […]

#Scottish #literature #music

**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 31

Jan 31

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

The Gentle Shepherd
29 March, Edinburgh
Tickets from £16.96

Allan Ramsay’s pastoral comedy was first published 300 years ago, in 1725. Through the inclusion of traditional songs & music, Ramsay adapted his work into a ballad opera, earning it the title of “the first Scottish opera”.

This concert retelling is performed by Stephanie Stanway (soprano), Christian Schneeberger (tenor) & Derek Clark (harpsichord).

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-gentle-shepherd-tickets-1081562274879

EventbriteThe Gentle ShepherdA concert retelling of Allan Ramsay's pastoral comedy "The Gentle Shepherd" of 1725 - "the first Scottish opera".

#Scottish #literature #music

**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 25

Jan 25

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, an’ a’ that;
The coward slave—we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Our toils obscure an’ a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.

—Robert Burns

https://poets.org/poem/mans-man

#Scottish #literature #poetry

**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 25

Jan 25

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

Ellisland, 1791

Dear Sir:

Thou eunuch of language; thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed; thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms; thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution…

—Robert Burns, Letter to a critic

https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/thou-pickle-herring-in-the-puppet

Ellisland, 1791

Dear Sir:

Thou eunuch of language; thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed; thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms; thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution; thou marriage-maker between vowels and consonants, on the Gretna-green of caprice; thou cobler, botching the flimsy socks of bombast oratory; thou blacksmith, hammering the rivets of absurdity; thou butcher, embruing thy hands in the bowels of orthography; thou arch-heretic in pronunciation; thou pitch-pipe of affected emphasis; thou carpenter, mortising the awkward joints of jarring sentences; thou squeaking dissonance of cadence; thou pimp of gender; thou Lyon Herald to silly etymology; thou antipode of grammar; thou executioner of construction; thou brood of the speech-distracting builders of the Tower of Babel; thou lingual confusion worse confounded; thou scape-gallows from the land of syntax; thou scavenger of mood and tense; thou murderous accoucheur of infant learning; thou ignis fatuus, misleading the steps of benighted ignorance; thou pickle-herring in the puppet-show of nonsense; thou faithful recorder of barbarous idiom; thou persecutor of syllabication; thou baleful meteor, foretelling and facilitating the rapid approach of Nox and Erebus.

R.B.

Robert Burns | Letter to a critic, 1791 | The Works of Robert Burns, Volume 4

#Scottish #literature #RobertBurns

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 25

Jan 25

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

Robert Burns at his “make love, not war” best with “I Murder Hate” – performed here by Ghetto Priest & Positive Thursdays in DUB. From Ghetto Priest’s 2017 album Every Man For Every Man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_uE-X-XT1c

YouTubeGhetto Priest & Positive Thursdays in DUB - I Murder Hate [FULL HD]By Positive Thursdays

#Scottish #literature #poem

**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 25

Jan 25

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

I murder hate by flood or field,
Tho’ glory's name may screen us;
In wars at home I’ll spend my blood—
Life-giving wars of Venus.
The deities that I adore
Are social Peace and Plenty;
I’m better pleas’d to make one more,
Than be the death of twenty…

—Robert Burns, “I Murder Hate”

I Murder Hate
Robert Burns

I murder hate by flood or field,
Tho’ glory’s name may screen us;
In wars at home I’ll spend my blood—
Life-giving wars of Venus.
The deities that I adore
Are social Peace and Plenty;
I’m better pleas’d to make one more,
Than be the death of twenty.

I would not die like Socrates,
For all the fuss of Plato;
Nor would I with Leonidas,
Nor yet would I with Cato:
The zealots of the Church and State
Shall ne’er my mortal foes be;
But let me have bold Zimri’s fate,
Within the arms of Cozbi!

#Scottish #literature #poem

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 25

Jan 25

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

Holograph manuscript of “Address to the Unco Guid” with headnote to John Leslie, dated June 1789 – this appears to be the only known ms. of the poem in the poet’s hand. Part of the G. Ross Roy Collection at the University of South Caroline, via the Library of Congress

https://www.loc.gov/item/2021667621/

The Library of CongressAddress to the Unco Guid or the Rigidly Righteous.Robert Burns (1759-96) is best known for his poems and songs that reflect Scotland's cultural heritage. He was born in Alloway, Ayrshire, Scotland, the first of seven children belonging to William Burnes, a tenant farmer, and his wife Agnes Broun. Burns had little formal education, but he read English literature and absorbed the traditional, largely oral Scots-language folk songs and tales of his rural environment. He began to compose songs in 1774, and published his first book, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, in 1786. The work was a critical success, and its poems in both Scots and English, on a range of topics, established Burns's broad appeal. While building his literary reputation, Burns worked as a farmer, and in 1788 he was appointed an excise officer in Ellisland. He spent the final 12 years of his life collecting and editing traditional Scottish folk songs for collections including The Scots Musical Museum and A Select Collection of Original Scotish [sic] Airs for the Voice. Burns contributed hundreds of Scottish songs to these anthologies, sometimes rewriting traditional lyrics and setting them to new or revised music. Burns sent a copy of Thomas Randall's Christian Benevolence to John Leslie in June 1789, "as a remembrance of his interest in the Case lately before Ayr Presbytery." The "Case" refers to a running dispute between the Reverend William Auld, minister at Mauchline, and Burn's friend Gavin Hamilton, who was charged with unnecesary absences from church. The Presbytery of Ayr and the Synod of Glasgow ultimately found in Hamilton's favor, but the pitting of Auld Licht (conservative) against New Licht (liberal) aroused considerable interest and animosity in the vicinity, giving rise to Burns's great satire "Holy Willie's Prayer." Burns then transcribed the entire text of his poem "An Address to the Unco Guid or the Rigidly Righteous," on the endpapers and blank preliminary pages of the copy. This appears to be the only known manuscript of the poem in the poet's hand. A collation with the first printing of the poem in the 1787 Edinburgh edition shows several minor differences, and one major variant. In stanza seven, where Burns points out that "To step aside is human," the last two lines read "An just as lamely as can ye mark, / How far perhaps they rue it." The manuscript version appears to make better sense with the word "plainly" in lieu of "lamely."

#Scottish #literature #poem

**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 25

Jan 25

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

My Son, these maxims make a rule,
An’ lump them aye thegither;
The Rigid Righteous is a fool,
The Rigid Wise anither…

—Robert Burns, “Address to the Unco Guid, or the Ridgidly Righteous”

Address to the Unco Guid, or the Ridgidly Righteous
Robert Burns

My Son, these maxims make a rule,
An’ lump them aye thegither;
The Rigid Righteous is a fool,
The Rigid Wise anither:
The cleanest corn that ere was dight
May hae some pyles o’ caff in;
So ne’er a fellow-creature slight
For random fits o’ daffin.
—Solomon, Eccles. 7. 16

O ye wha are sae guid yoursel’,
Sae pious and sae holy,
Ye’ve nought to do but mark and tell
Your neibours’ fauts and folly!
Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill,
Supplied wi’ store o’ water;
The heaped happer’s ebbing still,
An’ still the clap plays clatter.

Hear me, ye venerable core,
As counsel for poor mortals
That frequent pass douce Wisdom’s door
For glaikit Folly’s portals:
I, for their thoughtless, careless sakes,
Would here propone defences—
Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes,
Their failings and mischances.

Ye see your state wi’ theirs compared,
And shudder at the niffer;
But cast a moment’s fair regard,
What maks the mighty differ;
Discount what scant occasion gave,
That purity ye pride in;
And (what’s aft mair than a’ the lave),
Your better art o’ hidin.

Think, when your castigated pulse
Gies now and then a wallop!
What ragings must his veins convulse,
That still eternal gallop!
Wi’ wind and tide fair i’ your tail,
Right on ye scud your sea-way;
But in the teeth o’ baith to sail,
It maks a unco lee-way.

See Social Life and Glee sit down,
All joyous and unthinking,
Till, quite transmugrified, they’re grown
Debauchery and Drinking:
O would they stay to calculate
Th’ eternal consequences;
Or your more dreaded hell to state,
Damnation of expenses!

Ye high, exalted, virtuous dames,
Tied up in godly laces,
Before ye gie poor Frailty names,
Suppose a change o’ cases;
A dear-lov’d lad, convenience snug,
A treach’rous inclination—
But let me whisper i’ your lug,
Ye’re aiblins nae temptation.

Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman;
Tho’ they may gang a kennin wrang,
To step aside is human: ‍‍
One point must still be greatly dark,—
The moving Why they do it;‍‍
And just as lamely can ye mark,
How far perhaps they rue it.

Who made the heart, ’tis He alone
Decidedly can try us;
He knows each chord, its various tone,
Each spring, its various bias:
Then at the balance let’s be mute,
We never can adjust it;
What’s done we partly may compute,
But know not what’s resisted.

#Scottish #literature #poem

**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 25

Jan 25

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

“On the dirt roads of Arkansas I first met Robert Burns…”

Currently on the BBC iPlayer: Dr Maya Angelou goes on a pilgrimage to the home of Robert Burns (originally broadcast in 1996 to mark the bicentenary of Burns’s death):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013vcs

“Angelou on Burns” is also available on YouTube, if you can’t watch on the iPlayer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwbuCL-Osh8

BBCBBC Two - Angelou on BurnsWriter and poet Maya Angelou goes on a pilgrimage to Burns Country in Scotland.

#Scottish #literature #BurnsNight

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 22

Jan 22

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

Byron’s poem “When I Roved, a Young Highlander”, illustrated by Currier & Ives, New York – via the Philadelphia Museum of Art

SCENE: Currier & Ives offices, mid/late-19th century

CURRIER: Remember, Lord Byron was mad, bad, & dangerous to know
IVES: Right – I’ll give him a bugle, a mini-kilt, & a shotgun
CURRIER:

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https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/263199

A hand-coloured lithograph, showing an idealised and youthful Lord Byron amid a jumble of rocks, streams, hills, and trees, and wearing a fanciful artist's idea of Highland costume – a cap with eagle feathers, a chequered neck-cloth, a plaid sash, a brightly coloured yellow, red and green kilt that is much too short with a ridiculously outsized furry ermine sporran, tartan socks, and little buckled pumps. He holds aloft a bugle in his right hand and cradles a shotgun in his left, while looking into the middle distance. A dead (? or bored) stag lies at his feet and a hunting dog stands beside him.

#Scottish #literature #poetry

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 22 *

Jan 22 *

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

“Like Burns, Byron knew how earthy values crossed social strata. But by Byron’s time, polite society was even more thoroughly committed to grinding down public festivities in fairs, sports and open air gatherings. Byron was a shock for polite, well-educated readers. He horrified his public.”

—Prof Alan Riach on Burns, Byron, & overlapping traditions

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https://www.thenational.scot/news/15987226.aristocratic-lord-byron-shares-ploughman-burns/

The National · Feb 12, 2018What aristocratic Lord Byron shares with ploughman BurnsBy Alan Riach

#Scottish #literature #poetry

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 22

Jan 22

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

Byron declared that he was 'half a Scot by birth, and bred / A whole one'. To what extent should we privilege such a claim? In what ways did Byron engage with a Scottish poetic heritage, if at all?

—Daniel Cook, “Byron’s Scottish Poetry”, The Byron Journal 50/1, 2022
Online via Project MUSE (institutional subscription required)

@litstudies

2/4

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/860879

Abstract:

Looking back on his early life in Aberdeen, Byron declared that he was 'half a Scot by birth, and bred / A whole one'. To what extent should we privilege such a claim? In what ways did Byron engage with a Scottish poetic heritage, if at all? By expanding our remit of what counts as 'Scottish' within his work, and in the period more broadly, we come closer to understanding Byron's investment in the people, poets, and places associated with his maternal country. Narrowly focusing on a small selection of Scottish poems (chiefly 'Lachin Y Gair', 'Song', and 'Golice Macbane') has obscured the many references to Macpherson, Burns, Campbell, Scott and others found across Byron's oeuvre, from the early Newstead Abbey poems to The Island. Placing Byron in an expansive reading context, I argue, entails pushing beyond a rigid Scots-English boundary in the pursuit of a philological understanding of Scottish poetry.

#Scottish #literature #poetry

**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 22

Jan 22

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred
A whole one, and my heart flies to my head,—

The great Romantic poet George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron – Lord Byron – was born on this day, 22 Jan, 1788
A

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from “Don Juan”, Canto X
George Gordon Byron

And all our little feuds, at least all mine,
Dear Jefferson, once my most redoubted foe
(As far as rhyme and criticism combine
To make such puppets of us things below),
Are over: Here's a health to 'Auld Lang Syne!'
I do not know you, and may never know
Your face—but you have acted on the whole
Most nobly, and I own it from my soul.

And when I use the phrase of 'Auld Lang Syne!'
'Tis not address'd to you—the more's the pity
For me, for I would rather take my wine
With you, than aught (save Scott) in your proud city.
But somehow,—it may seem a schoolboy's whine,
And yet I seek not to be grand nor witty,
But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred
A whole one, and my heart flies to my head,—

As 'Auld Lang Syne' brings Scotland, one and all,
Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills, and clear streams,
The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black wall,
All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams
Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall,
Like Banquo's offspring;—floating past me seems
My childhood in this childishness of mine:
I care not—'t is a glimpse of 'Auld Lang Syne.'

And though, as you remember, in a fit
Of wrath and rhyme, when juvenile and curly,
I rail'd at Scots to show my wrath and wit,
Which must be own'd was sensitive and surly,
Yet 'tis in vain such sallies to permit,
They cannot quench young feelings fresh and early:
I 'scotch'd not kill'd' the Scotchman in my blood,
And love the land of 'mountain and of flood.'

#Scottish #literature #poetry

**The Gothic Dispatch** @thewriter@gothicdispatch.com · Jan 16 *

Jan 16 *

The Gothic Dispatch @thewriter@gothicdispatch.com

I Waked One Morning From a Dream: What Is Gothic Literature?

There have been many nights when I’ve laid awake wondering: What makes a book Gothic? Who decides what is and isn’t Gothic fiction? And why, why, why do I keep reading them?

It’s time to reveal the truth about Gothic literature. Together, we’ll unravel the fragments, falsehoods and frame narratives to separate fact from fiction. Interrogate Gothic literature’s most renowned writers – including Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis. And find out why this obscure, 200-year-old genre is still haunting us today.

#18thCentury #19thCentury #20thCentury #AnnRadcliffe #AnneRice #BramStoker #Falsehood #Fragment #FrameNarrative #HoraceWalpole #MarkZDanielewski #MaryShelley #MatthewLewis #MaxBrooks #ShirleyJackson #StephenKing