Annotation:Jeanie's Black E'e
Tune properties and standard notation
JEANIE'S BLACK E'E. Scottish, Air (4/4 time). B Flat Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. The words to the song were written by Hector MacNeill (1746-1818), a composer of verse (remembered for his songs) who was born in Edinburgh. He had a career in the navy, becoming an assistant secretary to two admirals, and lived much of his life in the west indies on the islands of Guadaloupe, Grenada and Jamaica before returning to the city of his birth in 1800.
The sun raise sae rosy, the grey hills adorning;
Light sprang the laverock and mounted sae hie;
When true to the tryst o' blythe May's dewy morning,
My Jeanie cam' linking out owree the green lea.
To mark her impatience I crap 'mang the brakens;
Aft, aft to the kent gate she turned her black e'e;
Then lying down dowylie, sigh'd by the willow tree,
"I am asleep, don not waken me."
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Neil (The Scots Fiddle), 1991; No. 36, p. 47.
Recorded sources: