Annotation:My Heart is Sair for Somebody

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MY HEART IS SAIR FOR SOMEBODY. AKA - "For the Sake of Somebody." Scottish, Fling and Air (whole time). G Major (Harding): B Flat Major (Cameron). Standard tuning (fiddle). AA (Harding): AB (Cameron). A song by Robert Burns (1759-96), printed by Johnson in the Scots Musical Museum (1796, No. 436), set to the tune of Allan Ramsay's "For the Sake of Somebody". Ramsay's lyric was adapted by Burns, who borrowed two or three lines of the first stanza:

For the sake of Somebody,
For the sake of Somebody;
I could wake a winter night
For the sake of Somebody.
I am gaun to seek a wife,
I am gaun to buy a plaidy;
I have coft three stane o' woo'--
Carlin, is thy daughter ready?

Reworked by Burns as:

My heart is sair--I daurna tell--
My heart is sair for Somebody!
I could wake a winter night,
For the sake o' Somebody.
Oh-hon! for Somebody!
Oh-hey! for Somebody!
I could range the world around,
For the sake o’ Somebody.

Ye Powers that smile on virtuous love,
O, sweetly smile on Somebody!
Frae ilka danger keep him free,
And send me safe my Somebody!
O-hon! for Somebody!
O-hey! for Somebody!
I wad do-what wad I not?
For the sake o' Somebody.

The song is thought to predate Ramsay.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: George Cameron (Cameron's selection of violin music : containing all the most popular airs, marches, strathspeys, reels, hornpipes, jigs, country dances, quicksteps, quadrilles, polkas, &c.,), Glasgow, 1859; p. 12. Harding's All-Round Collection, 1905; No. 168, p. 53.

Recorded sources: Victor 120138 (78 RPM),

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