Up in the Air' or 'The Grey Mare': A Scottish and English Prosimetrical Form of ATU 1540, 'The Student from Paradise (Paris)'

Abstract

A Scottish lawyers’ dramatic entertainment known in the eighteenth century contained a song which Allan Ramsay revised as ‘Up in the Air’ in his Tea-Table Miscellany (1723). The traditional song and air as found in Scotland and a related prose text published in an English newspaper are explored here. They provide an unusual prosimetrical form of a jocular tale which has a wide international currency but is rare in Britain.