School of Critical Studies

STARN: Scots Teaching and Resource Network

Back to Criticism & Commentary

Criticism & Commentary

Drumdelgie to the Goodnight Loving Trail

First of all I have to say that I cannot call myself an ethnomusicologist or an expert of any kind. I am first and foremost a singer who is interested in song tradition and in the people who carry it on. The two kinds of song I am concemed with in this paper I came to understand through hearing them sung, and I am convinced that there is no substitute for this. This may seem an obvious statement but I have spent hours at conferences listening to papers on various types of song, given by people who have little or no first hand experience of hearing them sung or of singing them. All kinds of "problems" seem to arise as a consequence of this. I am also convinced that traditions are not carried on solely by singing stars, but by hundreds, even thousands, of ordinary people who love the songs and like to sing them. This word "ordinary" deserves some comment. When I was putting together my book The Sang's the Thing, many of the singers in it said to me, "I'm just an ordinary person." meaning they did not consider themselves worthy of note. A lot of them also said, "I'm no a singer, ye ken." Neither of those things turned out to be true. None of them could be described as ordinary and all of them were singers. They may not all have been stars, but they were all tradition bearers.It was their modesty and lack of pretence that made them so. This is something that many of our present day singers, brought up on the values of the world of show business and mass entertainment, could do well to ponder on. The bothy chiel taking his turn to raise a song for his comrades to enjoy and the cowboy singing in the saddle or round the campfire to cheer himself or his companions or calm his cattle, were also tradition bearers.

While there seems to be quite a contrast between the lives of Scottish bothy chiels and American cowboys, in that the former worked on small, labour-intensive farms and the latter drove herds of cattle over vast distances, there are also many resemblances between them that are highlighted in their songs. They were both working closely on a daily basis with animals, in particular horses and cattle, about which they became exceedingly knowledgeable and with whom they developed strong bonds. They both worked according to the season and were constantly affected by weather conditions. Their work often made it hard for them to have a social life and any entertainment they had to create for themselves. They sang about their working conditions, their masters, their animals, their sweethearts and their hopes and dreams.

I must confess not to have properly appreciated cowboy songs until I heard a cowboy singer called Buck Ramsay last year in Los Angeles at the opening reception of the International Ballad Conference in UCLA. My picture of cowboys and their songs had been based on the Hollywood version, which is about as close to the real thing as the kilted caricature of a Scotsman that we are only too familiar with here. Here was no handsome, beautifully costumed figure riding a white horse and toting a six-gun : this was a big strongly built, craggy-faced man, dressed in working clothes, sitting in a wheel-chair. He had been a working cowboy all his life until an accident with a horse robbed him of the use of his legs. Apart from a shabby stetson, he wore a checked shirt and jeans, no fancy fringing, no rhinestones. Across his lap lay a battered Gibson guitar. When he sang, in a deep, gentle, relaxed voice, to the strum of his guitar, you could feel the motion of the horse as he followed the trail and you could imagine him singing as he went, almost smell the cattle and feel the hot sun or driving rain..As I listened to him I realised I was hearing something as authentic as I had heard from the late Charlie Murray or Tam Reid, two of our best bothy singers,whose singing evokes the ferm touns and chaumers of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. This was the sound of a man singing about a life he knew, a life he had lived, work he had actually done. I realised that from Drumdelgie to the Goodnight Loving Trail, there are singers with this unmistakeable authenticity that cannot be faked. Over the years our folk clubs have been full of urban singers singing about country life, Fifers and Dundonians singing about Carolina and Ohio, people from one tradition trying to imitate another of which they have little experience. The honesty of singers like Buck Ramsay and the late Charlie Murray serves to highlight the truth of the words of the late Ewan MacColl, that you sing best about what you know best.

But that was not the end of my discoveries in Southern California: in the house I stayed in at Riverside, while visiting my friends Keith and Rusty MacNeil, I came across a book called The Whorehouse Bells were Ringing : songs that cowboys sing. That is, not songs about cowboys but songs cowboys actually sing, recorded unexpurgated from The lips of living singers. Here again was reality: the earthy and often raunchy humour of the man working among men, far from home influences. I am sure this had parallels in the all-male bothy, and is probably one reason why bothy life, apart from the actual living conditions, was described as rough. I am reminded of the anecdote told me by Mabel Skelton of Arbroath about bothy lads who conducted a mock funeral for a large turd left by the farmer, caught short in the byre. Incidentally one of the songs I found in the cowboy collection was The Keyhole of the Door, which many of us in Scotland have heard sung by our Queen Among the Heather, Belle Stewart. This shows that the source of songs for both cowboys and country folk was the song sheet, since this song appeared in this form on both sides of the Atlantic. Another cowboy song with a familiar ring is The Cuckoo's Nest, familiar in Scotland from the singing of Jeannie Robertson.

Another book which showed me something of the cowboy tradition was Alan Lomax's collection of Folk Songs of North America, given to me by Keith and Rusty MacNeil on their first visit to my house with their annual party of students from the University of Southern California some years ago. I looked at it with new eyes after hearing Buck Ramsay sing, I also heard Sam Hinton from Texas, who was in Los Angeles for the California Traditional Music Society's Summer Solstice festival. In addition to that I had the McNeils' tape on Cowboy songs , one of a series they are making on American history through song tradition for educational use. Between this material and the Greig Duncan Song Collection, Ord's Bothy Ballads and my own recordings of bothy singers, I have a good basis on which to make a comparative study of the two traditions. Finally, at the ballad conference in LA,I met up with Ed Miller of Edinburgh who has lived for many years in Austin Texas and we have agreed to collaborate on this project.

It isn't possible in the time available to do more than dip into the possibilities of comparison which, anyway, I have only recently begun to do systematically. As a first step I started finding parallels between the lives of cowboys and bothy chiels, and I looked for songs that bore resemblances to each other, whether in subject matter, words, tune or viewpoint. The first pair that attracted my attention were The Railroad Corral and Fareweel tae Tarwathie, which share a tune. Tarwathie is a whaling song but as Gavin Greig wrote in his column in the Buchan Observer about this song, "Sea songs we have in plenty and of these the rustic singer is very fond", which shows that the division which existed between the farming and the fishing communities in the North-east did not stop them singing each other's songs. The tune must have crossed the Atlantic and found its way into the repertoire of the cowboy singers, who had strains of every race and nationality among them, including Scots . While the Railroad Corral tells of the way cattle were driven to the Kansas railheads from the plains of Southern Texas and Tarwathie is about the North east whalers setting out for Greenland, the songs do have something in common. Both cowboys and whalers "hoped to find riches" and both their journeys were hazardous and full of hardships. It is possible to imagine the same kind of man doing both. Another pair of songs is The Wild Rippling Water and what must be the English original of it, To Hear the Nightingale Sing. While not originating in the bothies, it found its way there probably through a song sheet. It is not unusual to find English songs in the repertoire of bothy singer like for example Perthshire ploughman Jock Lundie who has a fine version of the Morpeth Butcher' learned in the bothy. With this pair of songs the parallel is more complete, as it is not just the tune but the words that are similar, and similar enough to indicate a common source. Apart from the substitution of a cowboy for a soldier and Mexico for India, as the place he will betake himself to when he has had his will of the girl,there are no differences in the story : he takes out his fiddle and plays her a tune in both, illustrating the wide prevalence of the sexual symbolism of musical instruments in folk song, and in both cases he has wife at home. Cf.

"O soldier, O soldier will you marry me ?"
"O no " said the soldier,"that never can be
I have another wife at home in my own counteree
And she is the prettiest little thing you ever did see."

She said,"Dear cowboy will you marry me ?"
He said, "Dear lady that never can be
I've a wife in Arizona and a lady is she.
One wife on a cow-farm is plenty for me."

Working conditions for cowboys and bothy chiels were often not ideal and masters were often demanding and harsh. This is also celebrated in song and two that provide a good comparison are Swaggers and On the Trail to Mexico. In Swaggers the warning comes right at the beginnning :-

Come all ye jolly ploughman lads
I pray you have a care
Beware o going to Swaggers
For he'll be at Porter Fair.

The farmer's nickname suggests an ostentatious character who makes a great show at the hiring fair of being genial and prosperous :-

He'll be aye lauch-lauchin
He'll aye be lauchin there
And he'll hae on the blithest face
In aa Porter Fair.

In the same way in On the Trail to Mexico, "a highly noted cow-drover came steppin up" to the cowboy in question and asked :-

How do you do,young fellow, and how would you like to go
And spend one summer pleasantly on the trail to Mexico ?

In both cases the employer gives the impression that to work for him will be a pleasure, in order to attract the worker to take on the job. Both the farmhand and the cowboy need the work and the pressure is on them to find it quickly: you didn't draw the dole in those days when you couldn't get a job. Also if you were taken on, you had to work hard or be replaced. As Swaggers pointed out

I pay ye aa guid wages
And sae ye maun get on,
And gin ye are not able
There's anither when ye're done."

Of course the worker always promised to work hard, as the cowboy did when he struck his bargain :-

Now me bein out of employment,boys, to the drover I did say
"A-goin to New Mexico depends upon the pay.
If you'll pay me good wages and transportation too
I think,sir, I will go with you and stay the summer through."

Of course the bothy chiel could break his fee, even though that was looked on as something of a disgrace, but the cowboy could less easily decide in the middle of a long trail that he was quitting. The songs describe how the first impressions proved to be false, when the engaged workers went to the farm in question or went on the trail.

He'll tell ye o some plooin match
That isna far awa;
And gin ye clean your harness richt
Ye're sure tae beat them aa.

Swaggers works by flattery, but he is really a slave-driver:-

But he'll aye be fret-frettin
He'll aye be frettin there
And he'll gie ye regulations
That are worn aa thread bare .

But at least he pays at the end of the term, which is more than the drover does. When the cowboy goes for his wages, after taking the cattle through storms, thornwoods and Indian country where they were ambushed, the drover reneges on the contract ;-

The summer season ended and the drover would not pay
Said we had been extravagant, were in debt to him that day.

But while the bothy chiel goes down the road rejoicing in being "oot o the tyrant's clutch" the cowboy is not so forgiving, for he says, "We left that drover's bones to bleach out in New Mexico." This highlights a great difference between the two societies, one where the rule of law - even the unwritten law of the farming community - was accepted, and the other where the law was still to be established with a struggle. Rough justice was common in the West, but in the North East of Scotland a farm worker could be fined for cowping a cart or staying out too late. This was partly the result of one being a vast young country where people were coming from all over the world to work and settle and the other being a small, country with a long history with a largely homogeneous population, who had farmed the same land for generations.

Another feature in common between the bothy and cowboy traditions was the celebration which followed the completion of a season's work : the harvest, in the case of the farm workers and the round-up, for the cowboys. There are many songs about harvest homes and even songs about the toil and hardship of farming year have verses at the end about the "rantin rovin fun" enjoyed when they had "gotten winter" to use one of the phrases used to signify a completed harvest. The cowboys looked forward to the end of the trail and getting cleaned up and dresses up to go into town for a spree. Not the least of the attractions of these occasions was the chance of feminine company. Examples of these songs include The Hairst o Rettie, The Band o Shearers and The Harvest Home in Ord and When the Work's All Done this Fall, and I'd Like to be in Texas When they Round up in the Spring, from the McNeil's tape.

Now we hae gotten 't in aboot
And aa oor thingies ticht,
We gather roun the festive board
To spend a jolly nicht.

Wi Scottish song and mutton broth
To drive all cares away,
We'll drink success to Rettie
And adieu to Willie Rae.

In the manner of many bothy singers, Charlie Murray's version of this had as a last line, "And my bandster, Annie McLean."

Similarly, the version of the Overgate sung by Belle Stewart, no doubt picked up by her father from hearing some bothy chiel singing, has verses added to it about some of the workers on the farm.

There is a man upon oor fairm
Will Garthhill is his name,
And he'll drink aa the pints ye gie him
But he will pey for nane.

There are songs in both traditions about the animals the men worked with on a daily basis, both horses and cattle. To take the song Drumdelgie itself, like many bothy ballads using the name of the farm as a title, there is the verse :-

But we will sing our horses' praise
Though they be young and smaa
They far outshine the Broadland's anes
That gang sae full and braw..

The ploughmen, like the cowboys, relied on their horses day after day, knew them as individual characters and were generally proud of them. It was not just in ploughing matches that this was evident. Jock Lundie, a Perthshire ploughman for fifty years, never took part in ploughing matches because, he said, he was too busy working. But he tells great stories with pride and affection, of horses he has worked , never blaming the horse for any trouble, believing it always to be the fault of the person handling it. The ploughman took pride in horses that could work hard, obey his commands without fail and also look good. Cowboys liked horses with spirit and the fiery mustangs they rode had plenty of that. Their competitions were with bucking broncos and their boasting was about how their horse could buck and pitch, "That hoss could pitch more ways than a Chinaman could write." Cowboys spent more time with their horses than they did with other human beings, so the bond was also strong between them.

We're alone Doney Gal in the rain and hail
Drivin them dogies on down the trail.
It's rain or shine, sleet or snow,
Me an my Doney gal are bound to go.

I used to think dogies was just another name for the cattle, from lines like "Git along little dogies", but I have learned that it has a more precise meaning. The dogies are the orphan calves, whom the cowboy has to pay special attention to, if they were not to perish on the trail.Of course they represented money to the owner and therefore to the cowboy, but this kind of consideration does not seem to be behind the songs sung to the little creatures weakened by too early a diet of grass and having to be carried across the tough cowpuncher's saddle pommel. One of these songs turns out to be a version of another song with roots in Scotland and Ireland :-

Hush-i-ci-ola, little baby lie easy
Who's your real father may never be known
It's weeping, wailing, rocking the cradle
And tending a baby that's none of your own.

Alan Lomax's father got this version from a gipsy woman in Fort Worth, Texas in the early 1900s. Lomax himself eventually heard the original ballad sung in Cork by Seamas Ennis in 1950. The song is of course well known in Scotland.

There are obviously going to be many aspects of the two song traditions to be explored, but I have touched on a few which illustrate, as all folk song ultimately does, the common humanity underlying the songs. The connections between the two traditions can be accounted for by history, which made it possible for one of the best known trails celebrated in song The Old Chisholm Trail to bear the same name as the man who was a standard bearer at Culloden. Exiles and victims of the Clearances carried words and tunes across the Atlantic, while the old songs continued to be sung at fairs and markets, in bothies and farm kitchens. As for The Goodnight Loving Trail, the reason I mentioned it was because it shows that the wheel can come a full circle. Buck Ramsay was very intrigued to hear that this song which he'd sung about a cattle trail he'd worked on, was also a favourite with singers at the Glenfarg Folk Club in Scotland.