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Abstract: From the second half of the eighteenth century onwards, song collections gave dramatic presence to the distinctive landscapes, histories, and traditions of the nations and regions of Britain and Ireland. This essay analyzes some of the musical, linguistic, and cultural features of 'national airs' through case studies from Scotland and Wales. Focusing on editors John Parry, George Thomson, and Alexander Campbell, we trace crosscurrents of travel, language, and translation revealing how Romantic songs move unpredictably between manuscript and print, beyond national borders and across lines of class—powerfully shaping the cultural and political imagination of the Celtic-speaking countries in the process.
Edwards et al. (2024) studied this question.