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Description: | Verse 1: 'Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands, Oh! Where have you been? They have slain the Earl of Murray, And they laid him on the green! They have slain the Earl of Murray, And they laid him on the green.'
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.
The Earl of Murray's family seat is at Blair Castle in Perthshire. The family line at this time was quite old and well established. The Murray family, however, as one of the greatest landowners in Scotland, had always been heavily embroiled in the politics of their time. Although the date of this song's composition is not known and the Earl is not specifically named, it has been posited that the lyrics refer to the murder of the Earl in 1592 by the Earl of Huntly. These dates, however, do not all strictly match, and the first recorded occurrence of the song was not until 1762. | 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 177, page 185 - 'The Bon | Go to resource |
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