Annotation:Gordon Castle (2)

Tune properties and standard notation

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GORDON CASTLE [2]. AKA and see "Ballnadallach." Scottish, Strathspey. A Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. The Gordons were one of the most powerful families in Scotland for many centuries (see note for "Cock of the North"), whose seat was, in Gow's and Marshall's time, Gordon Castle, near Fochabers, Morayshire. The Scots poet Robert Burns visited the castle during his Highland tour, where he met Alexander, the 4th Duke of Gordon and his witty wife Jane Maxwell, the Duchess. Burns became friendly with the duke's librarian and companion, James Hoy, and commemorated the visit in his song, Castle Gordon, which ends:

Wildly here, without control
Nature reigns and rules the whole;
In that sober pensive mood,
Dearest to the feeling soul,
She plants the forest, pours the flood,
Life's poor day I'll musing rave
And find at night a sheltering cave,
Where waters flow and wild woods wave,
By bonie Castle Gordon.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Gow (Complete Repository), Part 1, 1799; p. 24. Kerr (Merry Melodies), vol. 2; No. 17, p. 5. Stewart-Robertson (The Athole Collection), 1884; p. 20.

Recorded sources:

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Tune properties and standard notation