Miss Fordyce of Ayton
Notation:
Standard Notation
ABC Notation
Mandolin Tablature
Violin Tablature
legacy / Scottish
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Standard Notation
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Robert Mackintosh
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"Miss Fordyce of Ayton" is a Scottish reel in E Minor. The parts are played AB.<br> It was composed by 'Red Rob' Robert Mackintosh (c. 1745–1807), a late 18th century violinist and<br> composer.<br> The scion of the Fordyce family was an Edinburgh lawyer who bought up the Ayton<br> estate in Berwick along with several other forfeited estates in 1715 in the aftermath of the<br> first Jacobite rebellion. The head of the family at the time of Mackintosh's publication was<br> John Fordyce (1735–1809), a banker whose fortunes took a disastrous turn in 1772. Despite this<br> blow to his reputation his social life did not seem to be irreparably harmed. Boswell saw him<br> in Edinburgh in 1779 and wrote:<br> I took no manner of notice of him, as I have all along thought that his living in plenty<br> while numbers have been reduced to indigence by him, is (without going deeper) such<br> dishonesty that he ought not to receive any countenance. Besides, his manners are forward<br> and assuming, and he is a fellow of low extraction.<br> The tune presumably honors one of his daughters, Eglantine, Madeline and Catherine (the<br> youngest daughter, who married in 1803).<br> It was printed in Glen's The Glen Collection of Scottish Dance Music, vol. 2 (1895) and<br> Mackintosh's Sixty-Eight New Reels, Strathspeys and Quicksteps (1793).<br> It was recorded by Abby Newton on Castles, Kirks and Caves (2001). <br>
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