Unclaimed Territory: The Ballad of ‘Auld Robin Gray’ and the Assertion of Authorial Ownership

Abstract

For the first fifty years of its existence the ballad ‘Auld Robin Gray’ existed as an anonymous work, the author, Lady Anne Lindsay, having decided not to assert authorship when she composed it in 1772. In 1823, at the instigation of Walter Scott, Lady Anne chose to reassert her claim to a text that had by that point moved well beyond the limits of personal control and been subjected to multiple modifications by owners and performers as varied as street singers, operatic composers, and writers of fashionable fiction. The present essay attempts to disentangle both the ballad' complicated textual history and the intricate issues of ownership arising from competing musical settings. By exploring in full detail a remarkably complex instance of contested ownership in a text that still retains its place in modern anthologies and in the repertoires of contemporary singers, the essay seeks to raise questions about anonymity and textual ownership that have far wider implications.