The narrative ballad, “Tom Halliard,” by John Wolcot (1738-1819), who wrote under the name “Peter Pindar,” is a good demonstration of the difference between classic eighteenth-century expression and early nineteenth-century romantic style. The antithesis of The Death of General Wolfe, it has gory description and a sentimentalized death when compared to the more remote, factual, and unemotional description of the end of General Wolfe’s life. Published in 1798, the text appeared in the Harrisburg (PA) Oracle Dauphin on June 12, 1799, with the credit line “Poor Tom. A Tale, Founded on Fact, from ‘Tales of the Hay [Hoy]’ by Peter Pindar.” It appeared in at least eight American newspaper issues between 1799 and 1808. The copy in the Salem Gazette of May 21, 1799, was made from “a London paper.”
The tune for this text is specified as “Cease Rude Boreas” in the Portland (ME) Oriental Trumpet (October 24, 1799) and the Baltimore Musical Miscellany (1804) (see The Tempest). This tune acquired many names during a century of popularity from the 1720s to the 1830s, and most relate to the sea and the sailor’s life (see also A Lover’s Lamentation and Saw Ye George My Hero). In 1771 the tune gained the “Cease Rude Boreas” title from the first line of a text called “The Storm” or “The Tempest” (Universal Magazine 208). Tom’s name is nautical in itself—halliards are the lines used on ships to raise sails or flags. The tune has been credited to George Frideric Handel, but that attribution is now considered spurious (Sadie and Tyrrell 8:126). In some nineteenth-century sources, the tune for “Tom Halliard” is credited to Richard Leveridge, but we have found no proof of his authorship. The text appeared in fifteen American songsters between 1804 and 1817; nine slip ballads of “Tom Halliard” are in the Bodleian Library collection and the text was collected by W. K. McNeil as “Tom Halyard” (Roud; R. Keller, Early American Songsters and Early American Secular Music and Its European Sources,; McNeil 1:42-43).
“The Soldier’s Adieu” is another song by Charles Dibdin promoting British national service. It had some currency up to the 1850s, appearing in eighty American songsters between 1793 and 1820 (Roud; R. Keller). This time the song is intended for the army and was first performed in The Wags (1790). In 1805 Dibdin retired from the stage, having been promised a pension by the British government in recognition of his patriotic songs. Unfortunately, the pension was withdrawn by the Grenville administration in 1808 and Dibdin had to return to the lecture stage. He never regained the success he had once enjoyed.
In 1763, James Macpherson (1736-96) published Temora, an epic in eight books that he claimed were translations from the Gaelic of a third-century poet named Ossian. It created a sensation. The poems were translated into many languages and contributed to the nascent romantic movement, and the study of folklore and the Celtic languages. As it turned out, while some of the poems were based on genuine Highland traditions, most of the work was Macpherson’s own invention.
Macpherson was the first in a line of Scots who took advantage of the cult of the “noble savage” and interest in the Highlands of Scotland, participating in what Hugh Trevor-Roper has called “The Invention of Tradition.” The last stage in the creation of the Highland myth was the two-week state visit by George IV in 1822— organized by Sir Walter Scott, author of many highly romantic novels—when the entire (lowland) city of Edinburgh, including the royal visitor and his train, was “tartanized.” Highland dress became high fashion (Trevor-Roper 105-19; Hobsbawm and Ranger).
Anne Murray Keith (d. 1818?), an Edinburgh gentlewoman and intimate friend of Scott, amused herself in later life by translating Macpherson’s work into verse. “Oscar’s Ghost” is one of her poems, after a character in The Dream of Ossian. According to William Stenhouse, the music was provided by a Mrs. Tough, in a “successful imitation of the Gaelic style” (Johnson and Stenhouse 2:75). The song was published in the first volume of the Scots Musical Museum. Used as a filler on this broadside, there was room for only two of the three verses. The song appeared in fourteen songsters between 1797 and 1816 (R. Keller, Early American Songsters).
