Annotation:Lady Harriot Hay's Strathspey

Back to Lady Harriot Hay's Strathspey

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LADY HARRIOT HAY. AKA and see "Brechin Castle," "Miss Douglas of Brigton." Scottish, Strathspey (whole time). B Flat Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The melody appeared under this title in Kirkmichael, Perthshire, fiddler and composer Robert Petrie's 2nd Collection (1795). Charles Gore finds it was printed previously by Glasgow publisher James Aird in his Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 3 (c. 1790). John Bowie published a reel, presumably dedicated to the same person, called "Lady Herriot Hay." Henry Drummond, Esq. of the Grange, Hants, on 23d June, 1807, married Lady Henrietta "Harriet" Hay (1783-1854), eldest daughter of Robert Hay Drummond, earl of Kinnoul, and sister to the next Earl of Kinnoul. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe was displeased with the marriage, sniffling that Lady Harriet was "a disagreeable quean, and now ugly" (at age 24!). After studying at Oxford for two years, Henry Drummond took possession of the Grange in 1804 at the age of eighteen. Having toured Europe, he entered parliament in 1810 only to resign two years later on health grounds. In 1817, Drummond sold the Grange and travelled to Switzerland where he became a leading supporter of the Catholic Apostolic church.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Aird (Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 3), c. 1790. Robert Petrie (Second Collection of Strathspey Reels), 1795; p. 8. Robert Petrie (Third Collection of Strathspey Reels), 1802; p. 8.

Recorded sources:

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