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(... or "Maybe-not-too-familiar Guitar Quotation, singular", as per the World Wide Web Truth in Titling Act, Berne, Sept. 9, 1886, 828 U.N.T.S. 221.)

There's an electronic version of John Bartlett's Familiar Quotations out on the web. (Go to www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/bartlett - but not now!) This is the book's 9th edition, published 1901. Its full title is "Familiar quotations: a collection of passages, phrases, and proverbs traced to their sources in ancient and modern literature".

In its 1158 pages, there is exactly one quote with the word "guitar" in it. It goes like this (let me clear my throat, ahem, ahem, ahem):

Gayly the troubadour
Touched his guitar.

(Bravo! Hoorah! clap clap clap) This was writ by Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797-1839) in a work - a song, I guess? - called "Welcome Me Home".

Bayly is also responsible for other such worn-out cliches as: "We met,--'t was in a crowd," and, "Why don't the men propose, Mamma?/Why don't the men propose?"

For me, personally, Bayly has another sentimental connection with the guitar. Bayly was a songwriter and he wrote these words:

Tell me the tales that to me were so dear,
Long, long ago, long, long ago.

I believe he wrote the tune, as well, to the song "Long, Long Ago", and the arrangement by Mel Bay in Volume 1 of his "Classic Guitar Method" (page 25) was one of the first pieces I ever played with independent melody and bass lines. When I got them going, I just couldn't believe this amazing thing coming out of my guitar. I'll never forget that thrill.

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