Annotation:Miss Logan Ayr

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MISS LOGAN, AYR. Scottish, Strathspey. D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. The strathspey is attributed to fiddler-composer Biography:John French (1752-1803) of Cumnock, Ayrshire. Miss Susan Logan, of Parkhouse, to whom the title of the strathspey may refer, was sister to Major Logan, of Camlarg, and an acquaintance of poet Robert Burns, who called her the “sentimental sister Susie,” in a letter to her brother (who was a retired army officer and "a capital violinist"). She lived at Parkhouse with her brother and her mother. Burns sent her a book of poems by Edwin Beattie as a New Years gift on the 1st of January, 1787, and inscribed it to her with a poem of his own:

Again the silent wheels of time
Their annual round have driv’n,
And you, tho’ scarce in maiden prime,
Are so much nearer Heav’n.
No gifts have I from Indian coasts
The infant year to hail:
I send you more than India boasts
In Edwin’s simple tale.
Our sex with guile and faithless love
Is charg’d, perhaps, too true;
But may, dear maid, each lover prove
An Edwin still to you!

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: French (Collection of New Strathspeys, Reels, etc.), 1801; p. 1.

Recorded sources:

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