The Merry Muses of Caledonia

[1] The poems and songs were collected for the private use of Robert Burns and his friends, including the Crochallan Fencibles, an 18th-century Edinburgh club, which met at the Anchor Close, a public house off the High Street.

One is often named the 'Rosebery copy', and the other is in the G. Ross Roy Collection of Burnsiana & Scottish Literature at the University of South Carolina.

[4] The "Giblet Pye" collection, printed in 1806, contained songs and poems from The Merry Muses as well as other ballads.

[7] The '1827' is said to have been published in 1872 for John Hotten in London, with the numerals of the publication date reversed, which may have been done deliberately to confuse censors.

The title page reads: The Merry Muses of Caledonia; A Collection of Favourite Scots Songs Ancient and Modern; Selected for Use of the Crochallan Fencibles.

[2] A further edition of the poems was published in 1959, the title page reading: edited by James Barke and Sydney Goodsir Smith, with a Prefatory Note and some authentic Burns Texts contributed by John DeLancey Ferguson.

[11] In 2009, Luath Press published an edition with an additional essay by Valentina Bold and illustrations by satirist Bob Dewar.