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A Burns Puzzle Solved: Davidson Cook and the 'English' Original for 'It is na, Jean, thy bonie face' (SMM 333)
Editing Burns for the 21st Century (2016)
  • Patrick G. Scott
Abstract
Identifies Burns's "English" source that he put into "Scots dress'"for the song 'It is na, Jean, thy bonie face." first published in James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, IV (1792); reviews the evidence that Burns had read the source identified, in Juvenile Poems (1789), by John Armstrong (1771-1797), then a student at Edinburgh University; and explores why Davidson Cook's previous record of this identification, in 1918, has been lost to subsequent Burns scholarship. [in the original article, which was linked at http://burnsc21.glasgow.ac.uk/guest-blog-by-professor-patrick-scott-a-burns-puzzle-solved-davidson-cook-and-the-english-original-for-it-is-na-jean-thy-bonie-face-smm-333/, a brief afterword by Murray Pittock put the (re)discovery in the context of other current work on Burns attribution.] The original posting seems to have disappeared from the Glasgow project site. The copy attached here is a slightly revised version as published in Burns Chronicle, 126 (2017), 42-46.
Keywords
  • Robert Burns,
  • attribution,
  • misattribution,
  • sources,
  • Burns bibliography,
  • Scots Musical Museum,
  • John Armstrong,
  • Davidson Cook,
  • Scottish Poetry,
  • Scottish Literature,
  • Scottish Song
Publication Date
January 11, 2016
Publisher Statement
Patrick Scott, "A Burns Puzzle Solved: Davidson Cook and the 'English' Original for 'It is na, Jean, thy bonie face' (SMM 333)," Editing Burns for the 21st Century (January 2016); (c) Patrick Scott, 2016
Citation Information
Patrick G. Scott. "A Burns Puzzle Solved: Davidson Cook and the 'English' Original for 'It is na, Jean, thy bonie face' (SMM 333)" Editing Burns for the 21st Century (2016)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/patrick_scott/305/