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Description: | Verse 1: 'There was ance a May, and she loe'd na men; She biggit her bonny bow'r down in yon glen; But noe she cries dool and a well-a-day! Come down the green gate, and come here a way.' 'Biggit' in this instance means built and 'dool' means utterances of sorrow or grief.
The 'Scots Musical Museum' is the most important of the numerous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collections of Scottish song. When the engraver James Johnson started work on the second volume of his collection in 1787, he enlisted Robert Burns as contributor and editor. Burns enthusiastically collected songs from various sources, often expanding or revising them, whilst including much of his own work. The resulting combination of innovation and antiquarianism gives the work a feel of living tradition.
According to Burns, in his notes on the 'Museum', 'Lord Hailes, in his notes to his collection of Ancient Scots poems, says that this song was the composition of Lady Grissel (Grissell) Baillie (1665-1746), daughter of the first Earl of Marchmont, and wife of George Baillie of Jerviswood.' The tune, meanwhile, is considered to be old, although any occurrence of it before William Thomson's 'Orpheus Caledonius', first published in 1725, is not known. | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 | Publisher: | National Library of Scotland | Temporal: | 1787-01-01 - 1803-12-31 | Source: | Burns Scotland | Identifier: | Volume II, song 121, page 126 - 'Were na | Go to resource |
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