STARN: Scots Teaching and Resource Network
Back to Criticism & Commentary
Criticism & Commentary
The Northern Muse
Back to 'The Northern Muse' contents
The Ballad Tree 1
Our Scottish ballads are amongst the finest and most under-rated and neglected products of our traditional culture. The truth is that today people don't understand the meaning of oral tradition. At school I was told that ballads were passed on by word of mouth and the words changed because singers forgot the words. It was only in the Folk Song Revival of the 1960s that I came to realise what nonsense this was. People who sing ballads with anything up to a hundred verses or more don't have bad memories. In school of course they are taught as poetry, which of course they are, but poetry created and sung to tell a story. Different versions of ballads have arisen because the singers were creative storytellers. Nowadays, we hear the term "ballad" used in the world of pop music to describe any slow sentimental song. How things change! The word "ballad" comes from a Latin word "ballare" that means to dance. They still dance the ballads in the Faroe Islands. For ballad tradition is an international phenomenon. I've been to several international ballad conferences and am constantly learning more and more about the different forms ballads take in different parts of the world. But everywhere I go I find our Scottish ballads are looked on as among the best and something very special. What a pity they're so neglected in their own country.
Among the oldest ballads are those based on supernatural belief and witchcraft. Nothing paints a more vivid picture of these old superstitious times than a ballad like The Wife of Usher's Well.
There lived a wife at Usher's Well
And a wealthy wife was she ;
She had three stout and stalwart sons
And she sent them owre the sea.
They had not been a week from her
A week but barely ane
When word cam tae the carline wife
That her three sons were gane.
They hadna been a week from her
A week but barely three
When word cam tae the carline wife
That her sons she'd never see.
I wish the wind may never cease
Nor fashes in the flood
Till my three sons come hane tae me
In earthly flesh and blood.
It fell aboot the Martinmas
When nichts are lang and mirk
That the canine wife's three sons cam hame
And their hats were o the birk.
It neither grew in syke nor ditch
Not yet in ony sheuch
But at the gates o Paradise
That birk grew fair eneuch.
Blaw up the fire my maidens aa
Bring water from the well
For aa my hoose shall feast this nicht
That my three sons are well.
And she has made tae them a bed
She's made it large and wide
Amd she's taen her mantle her aboot
Sat doon at the bedside.
It fell aboot the waukrife oor
When cocks begin tae craw,
The eldest tae the youngest said
"It's time we were awa."
The cock it hadna crawed but yince
And clapped its wings ava,
Then the youngest tae the eldest said,
"Brither we maun awa."
"The cock doth daw, the day doth daw,
The channerin worm doth chide'
If we be missed oot o oor place
A sair pain we maun bide."
Sae fare ye wen, ma mither dear,
Farewell tae barn and byre,
And fare ye well the bonnie lass
That kindles my mother's fire.
This ballad with its ghostly revenants goes a long way to explaining why such beliefs persist even to this day. We can easily understand how a bereaved mother might be willing to do anything to get her three sons back from the dead. If she was a witch, she might well bring call up storms and tempests to turn the world upside down. But in the end the inevitability of death has to be accepted. How marvellously this ballad expresses the tragic side of human life.
Many ballads reflect historical events and people and its true to say that most ballads are based on real life stories, however far they may have become altered through time, like pebbles washed hither and thither by the waves of the sea. One that has been heard in Perthshire, sung by our own Belle Stewart of Blairgowrie, is "The Bonnie Hoose o Airlie", about the burning of this noble house during the seventeenth century by the Campbells of Argyle, while its laird was away fighting for King Charles 1, in the English Civil War. I heard an American version of this sung recently as "The Plundering of Arley" which show how ballads can travel.
O it fell on a day a bonnie simmer's day
When corn grew ripe and yellow
That there fell oot a great dispute
Atween Argyle and Airlie.
Lady Margaret she looked from her high castle waa
And 0 but she sighed sairly
Tae see Argyle and aa his men
Come to plunder the bonnie hoose o Airlie/
"Come doon, come doon, Lady Margaret," he said
"Come doon an kiss me fairly
Or I swear by the mune and the stars abune
I winna leave a stannin stane in Airlie."
"I'll no come doon," Lady Margaret she said,
"Nor will I kiss thee fairly.
I'll no come doon, ye fause Argyle,
Tho ye winna leave a stannin stane in Airlie."
"If my good lord had a been at hame,
As he's awa wi Charlie,
There wadna come a Campbell frae Argyle
Daur plunder the bonnie hoose o Airlie."
"I have borne him seiven bonnie sons,
The eighth ne'er saw his daddy,
Buy if I had them aa again
They wad aa be men for Charlie.
But poor Lady Margaret was forced tae come doon
And 0 but she grat sairly,
An afore Argyle and aa his men
She was ravished on the bonnie green o Airlie.
Argyle in a rage he kinnled sic a lowe
It rose tae the lift red and clearly
And poor Lady Margaret and aa her bairns
Were smoored in the dark reek o Airlie.
The Ballad Tree 2
Ballads are stories told in song and however well they may be read or recited by skilful actors, they can never exert the magic that they undoubtedly do when they're sung. Their words are clearly written as song lyrics, to which the music adds emphasis, and whose repetitions and recurring refrains appeal to the emotions of the listener. Just as with the present day media, the kind of stories that seemed to predominate in ballads are tragic ones. Apparently our forebears liked a guid greet just as much as we do. It's a strange but true fact that in school poetry books tragic and violent ballads are the ones included - although not, I must add, those with any hint of sex in them. One of the darkest and most harrowing of ballad stories is that of The Cruel Mother: it is also one of the most timeless. Even in these supposedly more caring times, it's possible to read in the papers or hear on radio or TV, of poor desperate unmarried girls who murder their babies, because the social consequences are too dire. It's one of the aspects of life in which inequality of the sexes still prevails : the man can still walk away scot free. This was one of the first ballads I heard sung and it knocked me sideways, because it seemed to vibrate with the reality of the girl's situation:-
THE CRUEL MITHER
A minister's dochter in the North
Hey the rose and the lindsay 0
She's fa'en in love wi her faither's clerk
Doon by the greenwood sidey 0.
He's coorted her for a year an a day
Till this young man did her betray.
She's laid her back against a thorn
An twa bonnie bairnies has she borne.
She's ta'en oot her wee pen knife
An twined these bonnie boys o their life.
She's howkit a grave by the licht o the mune
An their she's laid her bonnie babes in.
She's left them aneth a marble stane
Thinkin tae gang a maiden hame.
As she cam by her faither's haa
She spied twa bonnie boys at the baa.
0 bonnie balms gin ye were mine
I wad cleed ye in the silk sae fine.
0 cruel mather when we were thine
Ye didna prove tae us sae kind.
0 bonnie balms come tell tae me
Whit kind o a daith I'll hae tae dee ?
Seiven years a fish in the flood
An seiven years a bird in the wood.
Seiven years a tongue tae the warning bell
And seiven lang years in the flames o hell.
But the stories weren't all grim. There are, if you look for them, comic ballads. The Forester is a Scottish version of a type of ballad found all over Britain and Europe, in which there is a seduction in which the two involved are pretending to be who they aren't and the comic twist to the story comes when their identities are revealed :-
THE FORESTER
I'm a forester o the woods as you can plainly see
It's the mantle o your maidenheid, bonnie lass, I'll hae fae thee.
CHORUS; Wi my di-di-io, sing fal-al-la-lo, sing di-di-io-i-ay.
Since ye've lain me doon come pick me up again
An since ye've taen your will o me come tell tae me your name.
Sometimes they caa ye James and sometimes they caa ye John
But when I'm in the king's high coort it's Gillimie is my name.
They neither caa ye James nor do they caa ye John
Gillimie, that's a Latin word, it's William that's your name.
When he heard his name cried oot he's mounted on his steed
She's kilted up her petticoats and efter him she's geed.
He rade and she ran the lang simmer's day
Until they cam tae the water that they caa the River Tay.
Dae ye see the castle standin on yonder green
And dae ye see the maidens there that wad dazzle your een ?
Yes I see the casstle standin on yonder green
And yes, I see the maidens there the bonniest ever seen.
0 the watter it's owre deep, my love, I fear ye canna wide
But afore he's got his horse weel oot, she's at the ither side.
And when she cam tae the king's highh coort, she's doon upon ae knee
There is a chancellor in your coort an he has robbit me.
Did he steal your mantle or did he steal your fee
Or did he steal your maidenheid. the flower o your bodie ?
He didna steal my mantle nor did he steal my fee,
But yes, he stole my maidenheid and that's the worst o three.
If he be a single man then mairrit he sal be
An if he be a mairrit man I'll hang him fae yon tree.
I wish I'd drunk the watter the nicht I drank the wine
Tae think that shepherd's dochter should hae been a love o mine.
But when they cam tae the waddin they lauched tae see the fun
For she's the Earl o Airlies dochter an he's but a blacksmith's son.
Which all goes to show that social pretension can often land you right in it.