Annotation:McFarlane o' the Sproats o' Burnieboozie

Back to McFarlane o' the Sproats o' Burnieboozie

---

McFARLANE O' THE STROATS O' BURNIEBOOZIE. Scottish, Air ("Bothy Ballad") (2/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. Composed by Willie Kemp. It is the melody for a bothy ballad, or a song composed and sung by laborers at the end of the 19th century. These laborers were itinerant workers who lived for an agricultural season in small rooms, called bothies, which were sparse and bare with only the simplest of furnishings.

The first chorus goes:

I dinna like McFarlane, I'm safe enough tae state
His lug would cast a shadow ower a sax fit gate
He's saft as ony gorblin and sliddery as a skate
McFarlane o the Sprots o Burnieboosie.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Hunter (The Fiddle Music of Scotland), 1988; No. 364. Neil (The Scots Fiddle), 1991; No. 72, p. 96.

Recorded sources:

---