Annotation:Lass of Livingstone (The)
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LASS OF LIVINGSTONE, THE. AKA and see "Bonny Lass of Livingston (The)." Scottish, Scottish Measure. F Major (Gow, McGlashan, Playford): G Major (Geoghegan). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (McGlashan): AAB (Gow): AABB (Geoghegan). As "The Lass of Leving-stone," it appears in London publisher Henry Playford's 1700 collection of Scottish dance tunes (A Collection of Original Scotch Tunes, full of Highland Humours [1]). Bruce Olson finds it was used for one of the songs in the ballad-opera The Highland Fair or Union of the Clans (1731), written by Joseph Mitchell and published in London by J. Watts. Later, the melody appears in the 1768 Gillespie Manuscript of Perth.
There was a song called "The (Bonny) Lass of Livingstone" with risque verses, rescued by poet Robert Burns and printed in his Merry Muses of Caledonia (1800), his collection of bawdy songs. The lyric he printed begins:
The bonny lass o' Liviston,
Her name ye ken, her name ye ken;
An ay the welcomer ye'll be,
The farther ben, the farther ben,
An she has it written in her contract
To lie her lane, to lie her lane,
An I haewrittenin my contract
To claw her wame, to claw her wame.
The bonny lass o' Liviston.
In America, "Lass of Livingstone" is included, along with other Scots songs and dance melodies, in the music manuscripts of Setauket, Long Island, painter and fiddler William Sydney Mount (1807-1868). Mount played a good amount of music for dancing and his own pleasure, and had access to both printed and local sources. The tune was in use in the United States some years before that, however, for it appears in a commonplace book of 54 square dance instructions from around the year 1795, probably from a New Hampshire enthusiast (New Hampshire Historical Society). The tune is actually given under the name "Revenge," with the "Lass of Livingstone" a secondary title.
See also the derivative Scottish tunes in the "High Caul Cap"/"Hielan Laddie (1)" tune family, and Playford's own "Cockleshells." Gow (1817) directs, "Slowly."
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Geoghegan (Compleat Tutor for the Pastoral or New Bagpipe), c. 1745-46; p. 26. Gow (Complete Repository, Part 4), 1817; p. 13. McGlashan (Collection of Scots Measures), 177?; p. 8. Oswald (Caledonian Pocket Companion, Book 3), 1760; p. 7. Playford (A Collection of Original Scotch Tunes), 1700; No. 34, pp. 14-15 [2].
Recorded sources: