[1] Robert Riddell provided Burns with two attractive quarto sized volumes embossed with his armorial crest and bound in calf leather.

[4] Burns went to considerable efforts to get the first volume returned after Robert Riddell's death on 20 April 1794 and added extra material once it was back in his hands.

[6] One of the additions he made to Volume One upon its return was the blunt and angry epigram upon Maria Riddell on page 161 "If you rattle along like your mistress's tongue.

In 1853 when William died his widow, without permission, offered them to a private gentlemen's club known as the Liverpool Athenaeum[1] where they resided, forgotten in a box for circa twenty years, until in 1873 Mr. Henry A.

[6] The club eventually decided to sell the manuscripts in what is likely to have been an illegal transaction,[1] despite vociferous objections and the establishment of a 'Scots Committee' under the chairmanship of Lord Rosebery who intended to take action in the courts.

"[8] Sarah, the daughter of James Glencairn and his first wife Sarah, wrote on 27 October 1893 from Cheltenham to Dr. Duncan McNaught, editor of the Robert Burns Federation's 'Burns Chronicle' "I was only 12 years old at my grandmother's death (ie Jean Armour's) consequently I have little recollection of incidents or anecdotes about my grandfather... My father often said it was disgraceful the statements made out by people who lived in the Poet's time, continuing, as they did, so much falsehood and exaggeration of the events of his life.

The copyright of Currie's Life of Burns ought to have been conferred upon his widow, but it was not"[10] Messrs. Sotheby & Co. exercised their option to purchase the manuscripts on 3 June 1913 and paid £5000.

[8] Joseph W. Hornstein, a London bookdealer, purchased the manuscripts for £5000 by private treaty from Sotheby's and sold them to an American client, who was not however as is sometimes stated, J. Pierpont Morgan.

Another reference gives J. Pierpont Morgan being involved in a proposed purchase in 1903 that fell through due to adverse publicity, explaining the extreme secrecy of the 1913 affair.

[11] Some clarity to the confusion comes from the fact that the Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury reminded its readers that circa 10 years before the paper had taken the lead in preventing the Athenaneum from selling the manuscripts on that occasion, probably to J.P.Morgan.

[1] On 21 November 1913 John Gribbel purchased the Glenriddell Manuscripts and on the same day notified Lord Rosebery, Chairman of the Scots Committee, that he intended them to be a gift to the Scottish people in perpetuity and they were one of the first significant donations to the newly created National Library of Scotland in 1926, having previously been in the care of the Edinburgh Corporation from August 1914 to 1919 and the Glasgow Corporation until 1926.

[16] John Gribbel was already in possession of the first four volume of James Johnson's "The Scots Musical Museum" published between 1787 and 1790, interleaved however with some 140 pages of Burns's explanatory notes on the 184 songs that he contributed.

[19] After the cessation of hostilities John Gribbel and his family visited Scotland in the summer of 1920 and they were the honoured guests at several celebratory meals as well as being given an accompanied tour of many of the Burns related sites in Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway.

[1] An addition to the story is that he visited the Kilmaurs teacher, Dr Duncan McNaught,[20] who had been on the 'Scots Committee', was instrumental in the founding of what became the Robert Burns World Federation and was for over thirty years the editor of the 'Burns Chronicle'.

[20] John said that he wouldn't leave Ayrshire without these items and made Duncan an offer that was accepted, the amount unknown, on the understanding that they would be kept together under the name The McNaught Collection.

[1] Egerer however records fifty-seven and twenty-seven possibly as a result of Burns's having also added extra stanzas or updates that have sometimes been counted as free standing poems.

Three different hands are evident in the volumes and it has been noted that Robert Heron the writer had visited Burns at Ellisland Farm in the autumn of 1789 whilst a divinity student.

[27] John Beugo's portrait of Burns is included in both volumes of the work, known as such because he engraved the copper plate required for the printing process.