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Description: | Verse 1: 'There liv'd a man in yonder Glen, ' And John Blunt was his name O; He maks gude maut, and he brews gude ale, And he bears a wondrous fame, O.' 'Maut' means malt whisky.
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.
There seems to be some doubt as to the origins of this song. According to Stenhouse (1853), the song is the original of 'Get up and bar the door', which appears in Volume III of 'The Scots Musical Museum'. John Glen (1990) says this is unlikely, however, since he considers it unlikely that copies of a song would appear prior to publication of the original. Glen believes that neither the lyrics nor the tune for 'Johnie Blunt' had been printed until it appeared in Volume IV of 'The Scots Musical Museum'. Conversely, the melody for 'The Barring of the Door' appeared in Aird's 'Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs', published ten years before the appearance of 'The Scots Musical Museum'. | 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 IV, song 365, page 376 - 'Johnie | Go to resource |
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