Harris repertoire

In 1859 Amelia Harris sent William Edmonstoune Aytoun, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, a manuscript containing 29 ballads. She had heard him talk on the subject in Lerwick in 1855, and knew that he himself had published two volumes of "Antient Ballads". She enclosed a letter, which has become famous within ballad studies, for it not only presents the origin of the ballads she and her sister Jane knew, but offers the conundrum of ballads being passed from the non-literate to the literate. While the sisters knew, clearly loved, and sang the ballads, and did not re-create the tales, but sang what they knew, and were "most scrupulous in writing them exactly as I heard them, leaving a blank, when I was in doubt as to a word or line".^[1]

Aytoun was appreciative of the manuscript, and wrote to the sisters to thank them - we know this from surviving extract made by Jane Harris.^[2] He also informed other collectors, whom he was in contact with, such as the Aberdonian advocate Norval Clyne.^[3] Clyne was interested in the Harris sisters' version of "Sir Patrick Spens", as it provided evidence against the much-discussed "Lady Wardlaw Heresy", initiated by David Laing and perpetuated by Robert Chambers, which proposed that Lady Wardlaw was in fact the author of the ballad. While Aytoun's letter including the Harris sisters' version of the ballad came too late for Clyne to include it in the text of his refutation of Chambers' proposition, James Hutton Watson did use the Harris material - quoting a letter Aytoun had written to Clyne in its entirety.

Aytoun had intended to publish the Harris MS material, but did not live to prepare a third volume of ballads, but Clyne did keep the Harris ballads in mind, and when he was contacted by Dr John Stuart of General Register House, Edinburgh, who had a request from Francis James Child for advice and information on collecting ballads in Britain. Clyne advised Child to place an appeal in Notes and Queries regarding material and its location. Clyne himself became actively involved in Child's search, and was in correspondence with him. Having written to the publisher John Blackwood, to Aytoun's sisters - who were also fond of ballads - and to Aytoun's widow, who "was not on terms" with his family, and even following up leads in Newburgh, where the Harris sisters had been living when they sent the manuscript, Clyne drew a blank:^[4] the manuscript had vanished and 1873, Clyne and Child resigned themselves to the fact that the manuscript was lost and the ladies who had written it could not be traced.

On the same day that Clyne wrote to Child regarding the failure to trace either the 1859 ballad manuscript, or the women who had written it, Jane Harris was writing to Professor David Masson, Aytoun's successor as Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Edinburgh. Although she did not refer to Child's Notes and Queries appeal, it may have been the impetus for the sisters to try to contact someone about their ballads, as they had annotated their ballads and songs a second time. This letter was sent from Laurel Bank, Lasswade, near Edinburgh, which explains Clyne's failure to trace them in Newburgh.^[5]

Masson sent Jane Harris's letter on to Child and Child alerted Clyne. Clyne deduced that Miss Harris who wrote to Masson had to be the elusive Newburgh lady, and he made contact. On 26 August 1873, Clyne had tea with the Misses Harris and established an essential point of contact for Child. Clyne found that while Jane had written to Masson about the new manuscript, she had written the musical score, while her sister, Amelia, had written out the verses. The Misses Harris were clear about the origin of their ballads - they had learned them from their mother, who in turn had got them from "an aged nurse".^[6] This gave these sets an eighteenth-century provenance. He also discovered that they had sent a couple of ballads to Peter Buchan as well as Aytoun.

On the polite suggestion Jane Harris that the manuscript may be of worth, Clyne and Child agreed that some sum had to be agreed upon, and in a letter dated 15 September 1873, Amelia Harris noted that she had received a telegram from Frederick James Furnivall,^[7] whom Child was staying with in London in the summer of 1873, informing her that he had forwarded a cheque for £15 for the manuscript. She promises to send the manuscript of the ballads that afternoon, and the manuscript of the music the following day. Child was on the point of leaving for America - he had noted in his correspondence with Macmath that "from the 16th it will be safer to address me in America".^[8] We know that the manuscripts were bound - costing a further 6 shillings on top of the £15 paid. The cost in shillings indicates that this was done in Britain, and it seems that Furnivall may have taken responsibility for it. The manuscript was then forwarded to Child at Harvard. This manuscript remains in America, in the Houghton Library, MS 25241.17*, still bound in 3/4 maroon Morocco and marbled boards.