| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
Happy Love 149
THE LAIRD O' DRUM
(Child, No. 236)
In The Songs of Scofland Pnor to Burns, edited by Robert Chambers (Edinburgh and London, 1862), pp. 440-441, there is a song with identical words, a tune, and a footnote (p 441) which reads: "This song is said to have been the composition of a woman named Jean Glover, who, strange to say, had deserted respectable, humble Scotch hfe, to accompany a very poor band of strolling players. Burns tells us, CI took the song down from her singing, as she was wandering through the country with a sleight-of-hand blackguard."" The Child version of "The Laird o' Drum," to which the Michigan text is similar, contains three stanzas of four lines each, taken from Johnson's Musical Museum, No. 397, p. 410 (Child, IV, 332). For one stanza almost identical with stanza 3 of the Michigan text see Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth, p. 300. The present version was sung m 1916 by Mr. John Laidlaw, Ypsilanti.
i A-coming o'er the crags o' Kyle
And through amang the blooming heather,
There I met a bonnie lass
Was keeping a' her ewes together.
2 Her head it was so finely drest Adorned wi' hat and feather;
Her plaid hung loose about her waist, Came sweeping through amang the heather.
3 Says I, "My lass, where is your hame,
In maur or dale, come tell me whither?"
She says, "I tend the fleecy flocks
That feed amang the blooming heather." |
||