Troublesome Men And Troubled Women – Big Ballads

A lassie was milkin her father’s kye, when a gentleman on horseback, he cam ridin by.
A gentleman on horseback, he cam ridin by, he was the laird o the Dainty Dounby.
“Lassie, oh lassie, fit wid ye gie, If I wis tae lie ae nicht wi ye?” “
Tae lie ae nicht that will never never dee, though you’re laird o the Dainty Dounby.”
He’s catched her by the middle sae sma, he’s laid her doon whaur the grass grew lang.
It wis a lang lang time or he raised her up again. sayin “Ye’re lady o the Dainty Dounby.”
The Laird o the Dainty Dounby

The old Scots songs tell stories not only of battle, but also of sexual conflict and the abuse of women by the powerful, and of heroes and villains and heroic villains. They say much about the pleasures of alcohol, and just a little about the dangers of drinking.
At the end of the 19th Century an American scholar, Francis J Child, collected together, analysed and annotated and codified with identification numbers ‘The English and Scottish Popular Ballads’. In 1994 Scottish scholar Emily Lyle edited a collection of 83 ‘Scottish Ballads’ and ballad versions. Some of these were Scots versions of songs also sung elsewhere, many have or seem to have originated in Scotland. These narrative songs are of warfare, strife, love, jealousy, trickery, incest, magic, witchcraft, tragedy, betrayal, loyalty, injustice, seduction, rape, would-be rapers fooled, prejudice, murder, fair fights and more.
Singers refer to them as ‘the big ballads’. They have been sung and learned aurally for centuries, and collected together in print and studied over the last 200 years. They are key among the traditional song gems of Scotland. Many were printed on broadsides alongside the new compositions of catchpenny balladeers, and in parlour songbooks alongside the songs of Scotland’s national poets.
Hamish Henderson, and other Revival collectors like Peter Shepheard and Geordie McIntyre, collected and shared versions of these ballads as they were still sung by John Strachan, Jessie Murray, Duncan Williamson, the Stewart families of Blairgowrie and Fetterangus, Jeannie Robertson, Jimmy MacBeath, Davie Stewart and many more. Norman Buchan, Morris Blythman, Ewan MacColl and Alan Lomax put them into accessible non-academic print and onto recordings, and incited young singers to engage with them and sing them.
I have listed many ‘big ballads’ on the topics of warfare and strife. Other ballads address issues of sexual politics. Many of the ballads that were taken up and were and are sung in the Revival tell tales of aspiration and the misuse of superior power. ‘The Laird O The Dainty Dounby’ tells of the rape by the laird of a tenant’s daughter. When she becomes pregnant and he decides to marry her, her parents dance for joy. There are other similar ballads, but on occasion the girl pursues her rapist and gets justice, or else outwits the assailant and laughs at him.

There was four and twenty lairds and lords stood at the gates o Drum o
But nane o them put his hand to his hat to welcome the shepherd’s daughter in o
The Laird O Drum

‘The Laird O Drum’ tells of class prejudice. The laird marries a farm girl and his ‘gentlemen’ will not raise their hats to her. In ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor’ there is possible racial prejudice, his parents make him marry the Brown Girl because she has land, his beloved is killed by the Brown Girl, he kills the killer and commits suicide. ‘The Gaberlunzie Man’ asks shelter as a beggar, seduces the daughter of the house and runs off with her. He proves to be a noble man, or even the King. In ‘The Gypsy Laddies’ a gypsy seduces and tempts away the lord’s wife, for which he and his brothers are hanged. For bearing (and in some versions killing) a child by ‘the highest Stuart of all’, Mary Hamilton of ‘The Queen’s Four Maries’ is executed, lamenting her actions and fate. No punishment seems to fall on the man. This ballad has a tangled skein of historical source elements that link the courts of Scotland and Russia.
As well as the men behaving abominably towards women, there are politically touched ballads of heroic or tragic men, and of heroic villains. Sea captain ‘Sir Patrick Spens’ is sent to Norroway to bring home a princess, and the ship founders with all hands. ‘Young Beichan’ sails to Turkey for adventure but is imprisoned, freed with magic by the gaoler’s daughter, and marries her at last.

The Laird o Hume is a huntin gaen, through the woods and the mountains fleein
And he has ta’en Hughie the Graeme for stealin o the bishop’s mare
He has taen Hughie the Graeme, led him doon through Carlisle toon
The lads and the lassies stood on the walls, cryin “Hughie the Graeme must not gae doon”
Hughie The Graeme

The reprieve was comin ower the Brig o Banff, tae set MacPherson free
But they pit the clock a quarter afore and hanged him frae the tree
MacPherson’s Rant

Ye hielans and ye lowlans, whaur hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl o Moray, and laid him on the green
The Earl o Moray

‘Johnnie o Braidislie’ and ‘Hughie the Graeme’ go poaching. Johnnie fights off the King’s Foresters, but Hughie is hanged. The King sends the Earl of Huntly to arrest ‘The Bonny Earl of Moray’, Huntly kills him instead. Hardly any of the ‘big ballads’ have comic elements, but giant ‘Lang Johnny More’ who lives on the top of Bennachie goes seeking work in London, is to be hanged for falling in love with the princess, and is rescued by his giant uncles.
Some ballads sung by People’s Festival Ceilidh singers appeared on broadsides but not in the Child collection. Jimmy MacBeath not only sang but told the detailed story of how outlaw and fiddler James MacPherson was captured by trickery, unfairly tried and condemned, and cheated of a retrial by the laird in 1700 in the town of Banff. Robert Burns rewrote this ballad, and Scotland’s traditional fiddlers still play the air as ‘MacPherson’s Rant’.
Glasgow baker ‘Jamie Raeburn’ was unfairly sentenced to transportation for theft. Duncan Campbell, aka ‘Erin Go Bragh’, clearly was an active sympathiser with Irish political aspirations, who escaped from the Edinburgh bobbie and ‘sailed for the North’. His story reminds us that Scottish support for political rights in Ireland was no new thing. He is of a clan identified with Protestant support of the Crown, yet has the look, manner and actions of a Fenian rebel against English rule, and his blackthorn stick identifies him with Ireland.
Seeded through this book are references to songs that tell of the pleasures of social drinking with people with whom one agrees politically, or why people should drink and forget about politics. Most of Scotland’s folk clubs were run in the back rooms or lounges of pubs, so it is not surprising that temperance songs were less present. Jessie Murray’s ‘The Ale House’ was little sung in the Revival, but another warning of the social evils of drink, ‘Nancy Whisky’, was a firm favourite, sung rousingly in the pubs where the message of the song was missed.
Of the big ballads I have named, only ‘Sir Patrick Spens’ did not enter the repertoire of Scots Revival singers.

O laith, laith were oor gweed Scots Lords, to wat their coal-black shoon
But lang ere a’ the Play wis dune they wat their hats aboon
Half ower, half ower to Aberdour, where the sea’s sae wide and deep
It’s there lies young Sir Patrick Spens wi’ the Scots Lairds at his feet