Category Archives: Rare Books at New College Library

The ghosts on the shelves

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It’s difficult to walk around Stack III, the rare books stack of New College Library, without feeling the weight of history. On these shelves Tyndale rubs shoulders with Calvin, and fifteenth century incunabula are a few steps away from nineteenth century treatises on religion and science. So many of these texts are witnesses of strongly held beliefs, beliefs that changed the religious and the political landscapes of their day. In addition to these historic voices, we can also find the ghosts of former owners and former libraries that have been donated and absorbed into New College Library. Many rare books are inscribed by their owners, and often  a succession of owners.

As new books join the ranks on the shelves in New College Library,  and are borrowed, read and absorbed into learning, they join in the community of the written word that makes up a library and enter the conversation of scholarship that was begun by the generations before. In the minds of the scholars and students these voices from the past are still watchful, possibly censorious, always listening and still alive.

From Greek to Gaelic

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Just over 400 items which together form the Gaelic Collections at New College Library have now been catalogued online and their details can now be browsed online using the shelfmark “Gaelic Coll.”  This collection of monographs and pamphlets was put together from various sources, including thirty nine books from the bequest of the Rev. Roderick Macleod.

A contender for the oddest item in New College Library’s Gaelic Collections are a series of works by Thomas Stratton trying to prove the Celtic source of Latin and Greek, including “Proofs of the Celtic origin of a great part of the Greek language”. 1840 ; Gaelic Coll 213 and  “Illustrations of the affinity of the Latin language to the Gaelic or Celtic of Scotland”. 1840 Gaelic Coll 213. This copy has a handwritten inscription identifying it as previously belonging to the Library of the Church of Scotland.

With thanks to Patrick Murray, our Gaelic Cataloguer, for supplying details of this item.

Gaelic hymns from the Highlands

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Grant, Peter. Dain spioradail. Elgin : Peter Macdonald, bookseller, 1837. New College Library Gaelic Collections 250.

New College Library’s recently catalogued Gaelic Collections contain several editions of  “Dain spioradail ” by the celebrated hymn writer Peter Grant.

This edition at Gaelic Coll. 250  is the fifth edition, considerably enlarged and improved from earlier editions. It was published in Elgin, in the highlands of Scotland.

The title page information refers to Grant’s Gaelic name Pàdraig Grannd nan Òran, which means ‘Peter Grant of the songs’. Grant was a Baptist minister, born on 30 January 1783 at Ballintua, Strathspey, Scotland. He was a skilled fiddle player, who was able to set his poems on evangelical themes to well known tunes which were popular into the twentieth century.  This work is typical of the works in the Gaelic Collection, which contains many volumes of religious poetry.

With thanks to Patrick Murray, our Gaelic Cataloguer, for supplying details of this item.

Bagpipe music of the Isles

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A collection of piobaireachd, or pipe tunes : as verbally taught by the M’Crummen pipers in the Isle of Skye to their apprentices / now published, as taken from John M’Crummen … [by Neil MacLeod, Gesto]. Edinburgh : Printed by Alex. Lawrie & Co., 1828. New College Library Gaelic Collections 137

I’m delighted to announce that just over 400 items which together form the Gaelic Collections at New College Library have now been catalogued online and their details can now be browsed online using the shelfmark “Gaelic Coll.”

One particularly interesting and unique item in New College Library’s Gaelic Collections  is an instruction book on the bagpipe  (in Gaelic Pibroch, or, Ceol mor, or, literally, Big music). Entitled “A collection of piobaireachd, or pipe tunes”  it  includes ” Canntaireachd notation” which was a way of teaching pibroch using verbal sounds.

At first sight this looks like a collection of texts, but is actually music in the traditional ‘verbal notation’ that pipers used. It was published by Captain Niel MacLeod of Gesto, in Skye and  it has a handwritten dedication to Hugh MacQueen, a Writer to the Signet.

With thanks to Patrick Murray, our Gaelic Cataloguer, for supplying details of this item.

Seventeenth century botanical illustrations discovered at New College Library

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Exoticarum aliarumque minus cognitarium plantarum centuria prima by Jakob Breyne, 1678. New College Library Special Collections DPL 59.

Recently catalogued online and now on display in New College Library’s entrance hall is this seventeeth century botanical work, Exoticarum aliarumque minus cognitarium plantarum centuria prima.

Written by Jakob Breyne, it has full page plates drawn by Andreas Stech and engraved by Isaac Saal.

This rare book is part of the Dumfries Presbytery Library, which is currently being catalogued as part of the Funk Cataloguing Projects at New College Library.

With thanks to our rare books cataloguer Finlay West for sharing details of this item.

 

More images from this work …

Israel, the Assyrians and a shoemaker’s gift

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The sacred and profane history of the world connected : from the creation of the world to the dissolution of the Assyrian Empire …, and to the declension of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel …/ by Samuel Shuckford, D.D. Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty, George the Second. ; Revised … by James Creighton. Philadelphia, 1824.
New College Library [Special Collections] Z.2152

At todays’ opening seminar in the Divinity Biblical Studies Research Seminar series, the speaker is Dr Carly Crouch, Lecturer in Hebrew Bible, University of Nottingham, on “Israel and the Assyrians”.

On that note, here’s an ambitious work of history from New College Library’s Special Collections that covers the Assyrian Empire and  “the declension of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel”. Written by Samuel Shuckford in the eighteenth century, this edition was published in the nineteenth century and is the first American edition of this work.

What interested me the most was in fact the label inside the book (well, I am a librarian), which states:

“Presented to the Free Church of Scotland, by Thomas Aikman, shoemaker, a native of Scotland, near Sterling [sic], a citizen of the United States of America since 1794 – a member of the Presbyterian Church in full communion for more than fifty years. Burlington, N.J., 1844.”

With this provenance, the book must have been donated to New College Library as part of the first appeal for books that came with the founding of New College as the College for the Free Church of Scotland after the Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843.  It shows that Thomas Aikman, an emigrant of humble background, was following religious affairs in his homeland closely and that the principles behind the founding of New College were close enough to his heart for him to donate this book.

This book is part of the ‘Z’ Collection, currently being catalogued as part of the Funk Cataloguing Projects at New College Library.

Medieval Jewish Biblical Scholarship at New College Library

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Perush ‘al Nevi’im ahronim = Commentarius celeberrimi Rabbi Ishak Abarbanel super Iesaiam, Ieremiam, Iehazkelem, et prophetas XII. minores (1642) New College Library Dal-Chr 36

This item from New College Library’s Special Collections is a biblical commentary on the Old Testament prophets by the Portuguese Jewish scholar Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508).   Abravanel was employed by King Alfonso V of Portugal as his Treasurer and his career encompassed statesmanship, philosophy and finance as well as biblical scholarship. In his commentaries he took time to include an introduction to each book, concerning its character and the intention of the original author. Much of his exegetical work was translated and distributed within the world of Christian scholarship, and this seventeenth century edition shows that Abravanel’s work was still in circulation nearly two hundred years after it was produced.

This book is part of the Dalman-Christie collection of Hebrew books, which was recently catalogued as part of the Funk Cataloguing Projects at New College Library –  thanks go to our Hebrew Cataloguer, Janice Gailani, for sharing details of this item.  The Dalman-Christie collection was transferred to New College Library in 1946 from the Church of Scotland Hospice in Jerusalem.

A Study in Syriac

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Syriac has been taught at New College, Edinburgh, since its earliest days, as part of the family of ancient languages studied here. Today, for University of Edinburgh Students in years 3  and 4, Aramaic and related Semitic languages (post-Bibilical Hebrew, Syriac and Ugaritic) can be taken as options in Hebrew, Hebrew Bible, and New Testament honours programmes.

Schola Syriaca (1672). New College Library, Hebrew 14.

 This item, Schola Syriaca: unà cum synopsi Chaldaica et dissertatione de literis & lingua Samaritanorum (1672) looks back at the tradition of Syriac learning.

Held in New College Library’s Special Collections,  it is three books bound in one, covering Syriac grammar, syntax and comprehension passages. Despite the main language of the book being in Latin, the text reads from back to front as a book entirely in Syriac would.

One of many books presented to the library in 1924 by the widow of Rev. J.E.H. Thomson, this book belongs to the Hebrew Collection recently catalogued as part of the Funk Cataloguing Projects. With thanks to our Hebrew Cataloguer, Janice Gailani, for sharing details of this item.

 

Science and religion : a natural history

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R. Brookes. A new and accurate system of natural history, containing, 1. The history of quadrupeds …London : Printed for J. Newbery at the Bible and Sun in St. Paul’s Church Yard, 1763. New College Library Nat. 109

Today’s Opening Lecture for the 2012-13 academic session at the School of Divinity will be given by Professor Wentzel van Huyssteen of Princeton Theological Seminary, and will launch the new MSc in Science and Religion.

New College Edinburgh’s history of teaching Science and Religion goes back to the original Chair of Natural Science that was occupied at New College until 1934. The books in New College Library’s Natural History collection, now part of its Special Collections, reflect this academic past.

This volume,  A new and accurate system of natural history, containing, 1. The history of quadrupeds … contains striking animal illustrations, and is part of a series covering the whole of the natural world.

A bookplate and stamp marks the item as originating from the United Presbyterian Library. The 1900 Union of the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church prompted the amalgamation of their library into New College Library, and many volumes in Special Collections bear these marks.

Treasures of New College Library : The Dumfries Presbytery Library

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The Dumfries Presbytery Library is a collection of sixteenth and seventeenth century books that was first documented in 1710, with the acceptance of a substantial donation of books from Dr John Hutton. It was used as a lending library, for the ministers of Dumfries, for which records survive in a ledger in Dumfries’s Ewart Library. Titles are marked : “Ex libris bibliothecae presbyterii Dumfriesiensis”

In 1884, the decision was made to transfer the collection to the General Assembly Library in Edinburgh, following a gale that damaged the roof of the presbytery house letting in rain that soaked the books. With this transfer, at least some of the books were marked by the ownership stamp of the Library of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland : the symbol of the burning bush surrounded by the words “Bibliotheca Ecclesiae Scoticanae”.

In 1958 the General Assembly Library was transferred to New College Library, and the books of the Dumfries Presbytery Library were dispersed by subject as part of the New College Library collection. In 1962, New College Library came under the governance of Edinburgh University Library,  and in 1965 John Howard took over as New College Librarian. He took a particular interest in the Dumfries Presbytery Library and he reassembled c. 1500 volumes from the collection in their original pressmark order as a Special Collection.

In the summer of 2012, a project has begun to catalogue the Dumfries Presbytery Library online in its entirety. This project is one of the Funk Cataloguing Projects at New College Library.