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Description: | Verse 1: 'Ye Banks and braes o' bonie Doon, How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair; How can ye chant, ye little birds, And I sae weary fu' o' care! Thou'll break my heart thou warbling bird, That wantons thro' the flowering thorn: Thou minds me o' departed joys, Departed never to return.'
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.
Johnson has included a note attributing Burns as the author of this song. Whilst 'The Banks o' Doon' is generally considered to be the work of Burns, the information provided by Johnson has not always proved to be accurate. In some instances songs that were revised or collected by Burns for the 'Museum' have been wrongly attributed to him, whilst many of those written by him bear no name. | 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 374, page 387 - 'The Ban | Go to resource |
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