Annotation:Lord Lennox's March

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LORD LENNOX'S MARCH. Scottish, March. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The melody appears in the James Gillespie's Gillespie Manuscript of Perth (1768) and was printed by Edinburgh music publisher Neil Steward in A Select Collection of Scots English Irish and Foreign Airs Jiggs & Marches (1788). Under the title "Lord Linaxce's March," the tune can be found in the c. 1780-c. 1804 music manuscript copybook of musician John Fife, who may have been from Perthshire and also may have made entries at sea (the ms. contains references to Battles in Caribbean and the Mediterranean). A manuscript version, probably from the latter 19th century, is also to be found in Manuscript 5, p. 27 of the Dunn Family Collection [1] (which contains material from Irish collector Francis O'Neill but likely entered by by Michael J. Dunn or his son, Michael J. Dunn, Jr. Dunn received materials from Chicago uilleann piper James Early, so it is possible some of the work could be Early's). Another manuscript version, from c. 1833, is in the hand of musician Lionel Winship [2] (Moat Hill, Wark, Northumberland).

"Lord Lennox's March" is mentioned by Robert Burns is his poem "Halloween":

He whistl'd up Lord Lennox's march,
To keep his courage cheery;

A song, "Oh my sad heart is wae," was set to the air of "Lord Lennox's March" and appears in James Archibald Sidy's Alter Ejusdaem (Edinburgh, 1877). It begins:

Oh, my sad heart is wae,
Oh, my sad heart is wae,
And sair wi' it's sorrow sad the burden o' it's care;
For dool is the day,
Oh, dool is the day,
When I maun leave the hame I may never see mair.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Mooney (A Collection of the Choicest Scots Tunes for the Lowland or Border Bagpipes, vol. 1), 1982.

Recorded sources:

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