The Tea-Table Miscellany
VanDusen Botanical Gardens (Heron Lake)
The Tea-Table Miscellany is the first printed collection of Scottish songs in the Scots dialectic, though it also contains English-language songs. It features the words of 18th- century poet, dramatist and book-seller Allan Ramsay and contains poetry as well as broadside ballads. The songs in Tea-Table Miscellany were said to be sung by young Edinburgh ladies at the tea-table since drinking tea was a female social pastime. As time went on, men began attending the gatherings and drinking and political songs found their way next to the songs about wealth and marriage.
Also on the programme are songs from Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd, a pastoral comedy about a literary shepherd, which Ramsay turned into a Ballad Opera. Like John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, it was enormously popular.
