Annotation:Yellow Haired Laddie (2)

Back to Yellow Haired Laddie (2)

---

YELLOW HAIRED LADDIE [2]. AKA and see "Brown Haired Boy (The)." Scottish, English; Air or Waltz. G Major (Carlin): D Major (Gatherer, Huntington, O’Farrell, Sumner). Standard tuning (fiddle). One part (Gatherer): AABB (Sumner/Gibbons): AA'BB' (Carlin, Huntington, O’Farrell). A very popular and rather old air, dating at least to the early 18th century. The melody was used three times for songs in Allan Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany (c. 1724), and was printed in Adam Craig's Collection of the Choicest Scots Tunes (1730, p. 15). It subsequetly appears as both an air and a song in a great many publications thoroughout the rest of that century, and well into the 19th century. Robert Chambers, in his Songs of Scotland Prior to Burns (1890, p. 314) gives the song, the first two stanzas of which go:

The yellow haired laddie sat on yon burn brae,
Cries, Mild the ewes, lassie, let nane o' them gae;
And aye she milked and aye she sang,
The yellow haired laddie shall be my guidman.

The weather is cauld, and my claithing is thin,
The ewes are new clipped, they winna bught in;
They winna bughtin, although I should die,
O yellow-haired laddie, be kind unto me.

The air was the vehicle for songs in 18th century ballad operas, including Ciber's Patie & Peggy, or the Fair Foundling (1730), Phillips' The Mock Lawyer (1731), Thompson's The Disappointed Gallant, or Buckram in Armour (1738), and Allan Ramsay's The Gentle Shepherd.

Source for notated version: the 1823-26 music mss of papermaker and musician Joshua Gibbons (1778-1871, of Tealby, near Market Rasen, Lincolnshire Wolds) [Sumner].

Printed sources: Carlin (Master Collection), 1984; No. 178, p. 103. Gatherer (Gatherer’s Musical Museum), 1987; p. 27. Hamilton, Select Songs of Scotland (1848). Howe (Musician's Onmibus, No. 2), p. 116. Huntington (William Litten's Tune Book), 1977; p. 45. McGibbon (Scots Tunes, book III), 1762; p. 85. Napier (A Selection of Favorite Scots Songs), vol. 1, p. 66. O’Farrell (Pocket Companion, vol. II), c. 1806; p. 153. O’Farrell (Pocket Companion, vol. III), c. 1808; p. 36. O'Neill (Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies), 1903; No. 155, p. 27. Ritson (Scottish Songs, vol. 1), pp. 125 126. Sime (The Edinburgh Musical Miscellany), pp. 52 53. Sumner (Lincolnshire Collections, vol. 1: The Joshua Gibbons Manuscript), 1997; p. 53 (originally set in the key of F major, noted for two instruments). Thomson (Orpheus Caledonius), p. 12. Thumoth (Twelve Scotch and Twelve Irish Airs with Variations), London, 1742, pp. 4-5.

Recorded sources:

---