Tools & tillage: a journal on the history of the implements of cultivation and other agricultural processes (1.1968/1971)

THE PLOUGH-SONG
A SCOTTISH SOURCE FOR MEDIEVAL
PLOUGH HISTORY

Alexander Fenton

SOURCE AND BACKGROUND
A good deal of information about the plough in
Scotland before 1700 can be picked out from a
number of scattered sources, chiefly testaments,
parliamentary records, legal documents, and
topographical literature. Where England can
boast of a whole series of writings on agricultural
subjects from Master Fitzherbert’s Boke of Hus-
bandrye in 1523 onwards, Scotland has only one
short treatise on manuring with salt in 1595
(Napier 154-158), a few pages by Sir John Skene
of Hallyards, Midlothian, ante 1666, on manuring,
liming, sowing, stacking, and the buying of sheep,
and oxen (Fenton 1963, 67-70), and two small
books in 1697 and 1699 in which ploughing
techniques, but not the implements themselves,
are described (Donaldson; Lord Belhaven). It is,
therefore, a matter of importance for Scottish
plough history that the text and music of a
Plough-Song has survived, providing the fullest
existing single source of information on the six-
teenth century plough and its team.
The Plough-Song is a three-part, polyphonic
song, one of a group of secular songs that forms
an Appendix to the St. Andrews Psalter, compiled
by Thomas Wo de, Vicar of St. Andrews in Fife
from 1575 until his death in 1592. The Appendix
is written in a different hand, presumably after
his death, and therefore in the late sixteenth or
early seventeenth century. The Plough-Song itself
was first published in 1666 by John Forbes, the
Aberdeen printer, in his Cantus, Songs and Fancies.

There was originally a set of five part-books,
treble, contratenor, tenor, bass, and fifth. The
treble (Edinburgh University Library) has an
appendix with nine secular songs, the contratenor
(British Museum, Add. MSS. 33933) has 29 extra
items, the tenor (Edinburgh University Library)
has 23, the bass (Edinburgh University Library)
has 67, and the fifth (Library of Trinity College,
Dublin, F. 5. 13) has none. The Plough-Song
occurs only in the contratenor and bass, but has
to be considered in the context of the other songs
in order that a nearer approach may be made to
its original date. The majority of the added songs
are to be found in English madrigal or lute-song
collections, and a few in Scottish manuscripts.
The Plough-Song is written in Scots, and goes
with two other three-part songs, a Christmas
carol entitled All Sons of Adam, and a secular,
lewd one, really a medley of popular songs
strung together, called Trip and Goe Hey.
One writer, C.S. Terry, thought that these
three pieces might have been inserted into the
middle of the 1666 edition of Forbes’ Cantus,
Songs and Fancies to please “nationalist” opinion,
which may have objected to the choice of ma-
terial as otherwise too non-Scottish. They were,
however, omitted from the 1682 edition of
Forbes.
Terry regarded the Plough-Song as of no value
musically, but of linguistic and social interest. It
is a monotonous kind of song, over a ground
bass, which is later worked with some ingenuity