Annotation:Mary's Dream (1)

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MARY'S DREAM [1]. Scottish, Air. The song is generally credited to Scottish writer John Lowe (Kenmore, Galloway), who is said to have written it in 1772. The eldest son of a gardener, Lowe improved himself and attended the University of Edinburgh, and eventually found employment as the tutor of the children of Mr. M'Ghie of Airds, where he wrote a number of works of poetry, many lost. Mary was on of the daughters of the M'Ghie's, engaged to Alexander Miller, a surgeon, who was lost at sea. This sad event inspired the song "Mary's Dream". Lowe emigrated to America in 1778, in the midst of the American War of Independence, where he became the tutor to the brother of George Washington. He later became a minister in the Church of England and married a woman from Virginia, "whose gross misconduct broke his heat, and caused his untimely death, in 1798, in the forty-eighth year of his age." Versions of "Mary's Dream" in Scottish dialect, states George Farquhar Graham [Songs of Scotland, p. 55], supposedly an older form, were declared by C.K. Sharpe to be a forgery of Allan Cunningham.

It is also said (by Stenhouse) that the song is the work of transplanted Austro-Hungarian composer Christoff Schetky, who embraced Scottish society in the late 18th century, and who composed many works in the national idiom of his adopted country. So assimilated did he become, and so jovial a company did he find, that he even founded in 1787 the 'Boar Club' at his favorite inn, Hogg's Tavern. The members of this convivial organization were all 'bores,' who 'grunted' their conversation in the comfort of their 'sty,' or room. The jar of punch became the 'pig', the old name for an earthenware crock. However Graham notes: "...this however, is flatly contradicted by a member of Mr. Schetky's family, to whom the Editor referred the question."

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Graham (Songs of Scotland), 1861; p. 55.

Recorded sources:

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