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490 HISTORICAL NOTES |
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*lfo. 337. Twa bonie lads were Sandy and Jockie. Scots Musical Museum, 1790, No. 28}, anonymous. In Gray's MS. List marked by Burns, ' Mr. B— words,' and in Law's MS. List, ' Mr. Burns sent words to this beginning "Twa bonie lads were Sandy and Jockie."' The original of Unfortunate Jockey is a song of ten stanzas by Durfey in The Royalist, and which, according to Chappell, was printed on a broadside with music in 1682. The verses alone are in 180 Loyal Songs, 1685, 282. Of the words of Burns in one stanza in eight lines, as in our text, only the first two lines are borrowed from Durfey, the rest are original. The tune in the Museum, a variation of the English melody, can be seen in Bickham's Musical Entertainer, 1737, i. /?, as in our text; and in Calliope., 1739, i. 128; both with an embellished design representing the lovers fighting a duel. The rapier of Sawney has pierced Jockey's unfortunate body fore and aft.
*No. 338. Its up wi' the Souters o' Selkirk. Scots Musical Museum, 179,6, No. 438. The MS. is in the British Museum with a note, also by Burns, 'This tune can be found anywhere.' Tytler is his Dissertation regarded the song of the Sutors 0' Selkirk as coeval with The flowers of the forest, and stated that it was founded on the story of the Town Clerk of Selkirk conducting a band of eighty souters to fight for the king at the battle of Flodden. Ritson cynically replied that all the shoemakers of Scotland could scarcely have produced such an army at a time when shoes were so little worn there. Sir Walter Scott, sheriff-depute of Selkirk and a member of the honourable fraternity of Souters, wrote a long note in his Minstrelsy (ed. 1873, I'll. jiy) to prove that the ' souters' were an old body, but that the connexion of the song with Flodden is altogether Improbable. The fragment communicated by Burns was originally published in the Museum. He probably obtained the first four lines from Herd. The following addition is the middle stanza of the version in Scott's Minstrelsy:—
' Fye upon yellow and yellow,
And fye upon yellow and green And up wi' the true blue and scarlet, And up wi' the single-soled sheen.' Stenhouse quotes (Illust. page jpo) two double stanzas which he heard sung ' in his younger days,' containing a variation of the above verse of Scott.
Although the Burns fragment was the earliest publication in 1796, the tune with the title was printed in Craig's Scots Tunes, 1730, 28. A variation of the music is in Apollo's Banquet, 1687, entitled a Scotch hornpipe, and also in the edition of 1690 as a dance tune in nine-four time. The tune is also in M"Gibbon's Scots Tunes, 1746, ,7/; Caledonian Pocket Companion, 1743, i-J4', McLean's Scots Tunes, c. 1772, jo; Aird's Airs, 1782, ii. J07; and in the Museum with Burns's words. His name is never mentioned as the original contributor of the verses of the Souters 0' Selkirk.
*No. 339. Our lords are to the mountains gane. This, the earliest and the best Scottish version of the vigorous border ballad Hughie Graham, is from Burns's MS. in the British Museum. It was originally published in the Scots Musical Museum, 1792, No. joj, with a variation (noted in the text) of two lines in the tenth stanza. The following is in the Lnterleaved Museum:— ' There are several editions of this ballad.—This is from oral tradition in Ayrshire, where, when I was a boy, it was a popular song.—It originally had a sImple, old tune, which I have forgotten.' According to Cromek the third and eighth stanzas are original by Burns, while the rest was corrected by him, but there is no evidence for the statement. The eleventh and twelfth stanzas are obscure. Since Bams, several versions have been printed and all more or less altered by collectors. Ritson, Scott, Chambers, and others all differ from one another, and two traditional versions of the Burns set are at Abbotsford. The best selections can be seen in Child's Ballads, 1890, iv. 8. The English |
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