Annotation:Colonel Montgomery's Welcome Hame

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COLONEL MONTGOMERY'S WELCOME HAME. AKA - Colonel Montgomerie's Welcome Hame." Scottish, Jig (6/8 time). G Dorian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. Glen (1891) finds the earliest printing of the tune to be in biography:John Riddell's 1782 collection (p. 19), printed in Glasgow by James Aird. Scottish soldier and politician Colonel Hugh Montgomery (1749-1819, later the Earl of Eglinton) resided at Coilsfied in the parish of Tarbolton, Ayrshire. He was the employer of Mary Campbell of Campbeltown, Argyllshire, who was a dairymaid on the estate. It was while she was working that poet Robert Burns met her, and immortalized her as his "Highland Mary." Burns also wrote lines for his friend and neighbor Montgomery, whom he called 'Sodger Hugh', in a stanza of his "Earnest Cry and Prayer to the Scottish Representatives":

Thee, sodger Hugh, my watchman stented,
If bardies e're are represented,
I ken, if that your sword were wanted,
Ye'd lend your hand;
But when there's ought to say anent it
We're at a stand.

Riddell's 'welcome hame' title may refer to the Colonel's return from Parliament, as he was elected MP for Ayrshire in 1780. Hugh may also have been the "Colonel Montgomery" who was evicted from Dumfries House after being found "behind the curtain" with the Earl of Dumfries wife (see note for "annotation:Dumfries House."

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: John Riddell (Collection of Scots Reels, Minuets &c., for the Violin), Glasgow, 1782; p. 19.

Recorded sources:

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