Annotation:Donald Caird
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DONALD CAIRD('S COME AGAIN). AKA - "Welcome Royal Charlie." Scottish, Air (4/4 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. The melody is mentioned by Alexander Campbell in Albyn's Anthology (1812) when he states in a footnote, "This air is a dancing measure or slow strathspey, danced by two highlandmen with appropriate gesture, but without the fling or gambol peculiar to the quicker strathspey or reel." "Donald Caird's Come Again" is the name of a poem written in 1818 by Sir Walter Scott, that begins:
Donald Caird's come again!
Donald Caird's come again!
Tell the news in brugh and glen,
Donald Caird's come again!
Donald Caird can wire a maukin,
Kens the wiles o' dun-deer staukin';
Leisters kipper, 9 makes a shift
To shoot a muir-fowl i' the drift:
Water-bailifs, rangers, keepers,
He can wauk when they are sleepers;
Not for bountith, or reward,
Daur they mell wi' Donald Caird.
Donald Caird's come again!
Donald Caird's come again!
Tell the news in brugh and glen,
Donald Caird's come again!
Scott's lyric was originally adapted to an older melody called "Malcolm Caird's Come Again," however, that air was deemed (by George Farquhar Graham, for example) to be "by no means a good specimen of Highland melody, while the harmonical arrangement given to it is as barbarous as possible." It was substituted by a melody adapted in part from an air by George Frederick Handel from the overture to his opera of Alcina (1735). Graham opines: "There was no style of his time that Handel could not imitate and improve. That air, in his overture to Alcina, shews how open Handel's ears were to all styles; like the ears of every great musician. In it he has not only imitated what Doctor Burney called the 'Scots snap', but has composed a very pleasing air, which might easily pass with many persons as Scottish.." "Welcome Royal Charlie" is also an air to which this song is sung.
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Graham (Songs of Scotland), 1848; p. 133.
Recorded sources: