Annotation:Lady Elibank's Favorite
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LADY ELIBANK'S FAVORITE. Scottish, Slow Strathspey. G Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AA'BB'. At the time of Gow's Third Collection (1792), Lady Elibank was Mary Clara, daughter of Lewis Charles Montolieu, Baron de St Hypolite. In 1776 she married her cousin, Alexander Murray (1747-1820), 7th Lord Elibank, who ascended to his title in 1785 upon the death of his uncle. Elibank was commissioned into the Third Regiment of Foot Guards in 1768, advancing to the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1769. Later he was a Scottish peer and Lord Lieutenant of Peeblesshire between 1794 and 1820. According to a letter from the Duke of Buccleuch to an unnamed correspondent, dated May 28, 1798, Lord Elibank was "a very Gentleman-like man, but has been unfortunately much reduced in his circumstances by living in a style far beyond his income." The duke mentioned that Elibank lived on an allowance of five hundred pounds per year.
Alexander and Mary Clara had four children in the course of their marriage, cut short with her death in 1802 at her home in Princes Street, Edinburgh. Alexander married again, his second wife being Catherine, daughter of James Steuart, who bore him seven children. Henry Raeburn (1756 - 1823) painted Catherine's picture around 1805 ("Lady Elibank").
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Carlin (The Gow Collection), 1986; No. 92. Gow (Third Collection of Niel Gow's Reels), 1792; p. 15 (3rd ed.)
Recorded sources:
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