| dc.description | William Motherwell came to an interest in balladry and song for nationalistic and antiquarian reasons: they represented to him inherited capital, symbolic capital that Scotland was in danger of losing as she was losing her language, her laws, her history. Change was rampant and it was not good. As poet he wrote of ancient times, appropriating characters and topics from the Eddas; as editor of one of Glasgow's leading Tory newspapers, the Courier, he spoke out against the Reform Bill of l832 that would enfranchise members of the middle class and thus alter the class structure and the status quo; as citizen he joined the Orange Society to lobby against Irish and thus Catholic immigration to Scotland; as Sheriff Clerk Depute, essentially a clerical activity, he lavished attention on routine legal records by embellishing them with manuscript capitals and flourishes that gave them an "antique" flavor; and as ballad and song editor and collector, he was particularly interested in the earliest, oldest songs, songs that had certain characteristics indicating their antiquity, songs rich in formulae, structured in predictable ways, sung. And in l827 a book that had begun as a collaborative project with several friends was published in book form, having been issued sequentially in fascicles beginning in l824. In l827 an introduction, musical examples, and an appendix were added to the texts and the whole was published as Minstrelsy: Ancient and Modern. | eng |
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