“The City of Glasgow Polka”, Fifth Edition, and “My Ain Dear Nell”, September 1852

On the front page of The Glasgow Herald, on Monday the 13th of September, 1852, the Greenshields Brothers advertised newly-published music which was for sale at their Piano-forte and Music Saloon, 28 Buchanan Street, at the corner of Argyll Arcade.

 

The fifth edition of The City of Glasgow Polka cost two shillings. (The Emigrant’s Song) My Ain Dear Nell, “a new Scotch Ballad” by A. Hume was one-shilling-and-sixpence. Alexander Hume (1811-59) is listed in David Baptie’s Musical Scotland, 1894, pages 84-5, where he is described as “a self-taught composer of strong, natural genius … he is now known as the composer of some excellent pieces of a higher class, as the songs. ‘Afton Water,’ a most beautiful melody, illustrating the words in a manner at once simple and elegant; ‘My Ain Dear Nell,’ of which both words and music are his own, almost equally fine.”

 

Also available at the shop, was The Haunted Well Quadrilles, which cost two-shillings-and-sixpence.