Annotation:MacLauchlane's Scotch Measure

Back to MacLauchlane's Scotch Measure

---

MACLACHLAN'S SCOTS MEASURE. AKA - "McLachlan's Scotch Measure," "MacLauchlane's Scotch Measure." Scottish, Scottish Measure or Reel. D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The melody appears in Alexander McGlashan's Collection of Scots Measures (late 18th century). Emmerson (1971) believes it likely that MacLachlan was a dancer or a musician, otherwise the honorific "Mr." would have been inserted in the title.

The first appearance in print of the term 'Scotch Measure' was in Henry Playford's Collection of Original Scotch-Tunes (London, 1700) with the melody "My Lady Hope's Scotch Measure." The title refers to a cut-time dance tune similar to a reel (some say it is an older form of a reel), however having the characteristic three quarter-note pattern in the melody in either the first three or the last three beats of the measure, interspersed with measures comprised mostly of eighth notes. The genre, if indeed it can be distinguished from reels, has fallen out of favor and has been replaced by reels.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Davie (Davie's Caledonian Repository), Aberdeen, 1829-30; p. 11. Gow (Complete Repository, Part 2), 1800; p. 3. McGlashan (A Colleciton of Scots Measures), c. 1781; p. 12. Stewart-Robertson (The Athole Collection), 1884; p. 152.

Recorded sources: Rounder Records, "Traditional Fiddle Music of Cape Breton, Volume 4: MacKinnon's Brook" (2008).

See also listing at:
Alan Snyder's Cape Breton Fiddle Recordings Index [1]

---