Annotation:Place true Love thine arm around me

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PLACE, TRUE LOVE, THINE ARM AROUND ME (Cuir a choin dìlis tharam do lamb). Scottish, Slow Air (6/8 time). E Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCCDD. A Gaelic air. This tune "reports the intention of an individual, seemingly long absent, to return to the braes of Lochiel, where he could enjoy the pleasure of the chase in perfection. The circumstances of the times banished so many from their native country, that it is difficult to trace the illusion" (Fraser). Stenhouse (in notes to The Scottish Musical Museum) remarks that Fraser's tune is a 'new set' of an older tune called "Auld Jew (The)," printed in Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion (1742), although Stenhouse sniffs: "but [Oswald] has corrupted the melody in several bars with spurious interpolations, in attempting to embellish it." He is similarly merciless with Fraser's attempt to update the old air:

It consists of no less than four strains, and the two last are so very florid, that Highland lasses, with organs even more flexible than those of a Billington or a Catalani, would find it a very difficult, if not an impossible matter, to sing it with any good effect. That is is not only a modern, but likewise a very clumsy fabrication, and quite foreign to the nature of vocal composition...The Scots have often been sneered by their Southern neighbours, for their credulity in matters of tradition; and it is much to be regretted, that attempts of this description should ever afford them a handle for such sarcastic ebullitions.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Davidson (Davidson's Collection of Scottish Melody), 1860; p. 21.Fraser (The Airs and Melodies Peculiar to the Highlands of Scotland and the Isles), 1816; No. 112, p. 44. Manson (Hamilton's Universal Tune Book), 1853; p. 81.

Recorded sources:

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