"""This is ballad scholarship at its best." -- Wilhelm F.
Nicolaisen William Motherwell (l797-l835), journalist, poet,
man-of-letters, wit, civil servant, and outspoken conservative,
published his anthology of ballads, Minstrelsy: Ancient and Modern,
in l827. His views on authenticity, editorial practice, the nature
of oral transmission, and the importance of sung
performance--acquired through field collecting--anticipate much
later scholarly discourse. Published after the death of Burns and
the publication of Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,
ballads such as those Motherwell collected were one focus of a
loose-knit movement that might be designated, cultural nationalism.
This interest in preserving relics that suggested a distinctly
Scottish culture and nation was one response to the union of the
Scottish and English Parliaments in l707. Mary Ellen Brown's study
provides a model for historical ethnography, focusing on an
individual and illustrating the multiple ways he was richly
embedded in his time and place.
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