Annotation:On Ettrick Banks

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ON ETTRICK BANKS. Scottish, Air (4/4 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The Ettrick is a river in Selkirkshire, and flows northeast for thirty miles (during which it receives the Yarrow) before it empties into the Tweed near Melrose. "On Ettrick Banks" is air by an unknown composer appears in Allan Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany of 1724, and it was inserted into the Orpheus Caledonius (1725) with the same stanzas that later appeared in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum. Ramsay's lyric begins:

On Ettrick banks, in a summer night,
At glowming when the sheep drave hame,
I met my lassie braw and tight,
While wading, barefoot, a' her lane:
My heart grew light, I ran, I flang
My arms about her lily-neck,
And kiss'd and clapp'd her there fou lang;
My words they were na mony, feck.

Robert Burns used it for his verses "On Ettrick Banks," which he sent to Mrs. Stewart of Stair.

On Ettrick banks on a summer's night,
At gloaming when the sheep drove hame,
I met my lassie bra' and tight
Cam' wading barefoot, a' her lane.
My heart grew light, I ran, I flang
My arms about her lily neck,
And kiss'd and clap'd her there fu' lang
My words there were na' mony feck.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Graham (Songs of Scotland), 1887; pp. 102-03. Neil (The Scots Fiddle), 1991; No. 39, p. 50.

Recorded sources:

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