Bagpipes no Musick

Allan Ramsay (1684–1758) is known chiefly as the promoter of a revival in Scots poetry. This has been seen as a form of nationalist, even Jacobite resistance to post-Union anglicization and Whiggism. Ramsay’s efforts were criticized by some for ‘barbarity’; ‘Bagpipes no Musick’ was the title of a typical attack. One of his defenders was James Arbuckle (1700-42), a Glasgow/Irish poet, a unionist Whig, whose Scottish poems included Glotta (Latin for Clyde), an extended meditation on post-Union Scotland. Arbuckle’s poems were in standard English and acknowledged the influence of Pope, Addison, and Dryden. Nevertheless Ramsay and Arbuckle exchanged friendly poetic epistles, which recognized a joint enterprise of Scottish literary improvement. This chapter considers Ramsay through his relationship with Arbuckle, exploring themes in post-Union Scots culture including the poetic use of Scots, attitudes to union, Augustanism, Horatianism, and the literary patronage of the Scottish Whigs.