A Note on the "Herb" and Other Refrains of Certain British Ballads
by A. G. Gilchrist
Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Vol. 8, No. 34 (Dec., 1930), pp. 237-250
A NOTE ON THE "HERB" AND OTHER REFRAINS OF CERTAIN BRITISH BALLADS
THE refrains of our British ballads fall mainly into four classes. There are (1) those which are relics of occupational song-spinning, weaving, grinding, etc.; (2) mere vocables belonging to the dance; (3) seasonal refrains, or a reflection of some aspect of nature; and (4) those which seem to have a more or less direct connection with the subject of the ballad to which they belong or have become attached.
The first class is suggested by such refrains as "Hey with a gay and a grinding," "Tweedle, tweedle, twine O," "Line, twine, the willow and the dee," "Threedy-weel [Thready e weel or tread the wheel], dan, don, dill, do." Examples of the second class are probably represented by "Fal de ral laddy di," "Lilliburlero," "With a down derry down" or some such meaningless syllables. For the third, one may instance "As the sun shines over the valley, Among the blue flowers and the yellow," "Down by the greenwood side O," "On a cold and frosty morning," "Under the leaves of lind." The fourth class, and the subject of the present note, show some more or less apparent connection with the ballad itself, either by original relation to its theme or adaptation to it, as in the "All alone and aloney, Down by the greenwood sidey" of the Cruel Mother's crime. The last two classes at any rate are paralleled in the Scandinavian ballads-where there may be either a double refrain such as
The woods are early green
Where the hart goes yearly
or a single line directly bearing upon the story, as in the ballad of Marsk Stig's daughters, with its melancholy and appropriate burden
"And out in the wide world they wandered."
In the case of the two ballad-groups about to be discussed there is some suggestion, as I shall try to show, that certain refrains attached to them once indicated some sort of charm or invocation against evil or sorrow.
I. THE HERB REFRAIN
The group of ballads classed by Professor Child as "Riddles wisely expounded" is characterized by various forms of refrain in which certain plants are named or invoked, presumably on account of their protective magic. The Scottish fisherman in the presence of uncanny foes calls out "Cauld aim!"--which is the next best thing to being able to lay hold of the metal itself. In the earliest known version of the duel of wits ballad-Child's "A" version from an MS. of c. 1450--the maiden assailed invokes the aid of Jesus Christ that she may answer the Evil One's riddles wisely, and prays to be shielded from the power of the foul wight. In this version no refrain is present (it may have been omitted from the MS.), but in the last verse the mention of the devil by name, thus discovering the maiden's knowledge of his identity, is sufficient to put him to flight. And the carrying or invocation of magical herbs seems to be the pagan prescription for defense against the same peril of falling into the power of an evil spirit.
Miss Broadwood has already dealt with the herb refrain in the Journal, Vol. III, p. 13 et seq., but some additional notes may be of interest. In the riddle ballad, the elfin or demon suitor attempts to conquer the lady by posing her with questions, failing to answer which she will fall into his' clutches. And as Miss Broadwood has suggested, the herbs named in the refrain are evidently considered of magical virtue in protecting their wearer or invoker against evil. This refrain generally belongs to one of two types:
(a) Lay the bent to the bonny broom
(b) Jennifer gentle and Marjory.
The Rev. E. A. White asks whether this northern form (a) may be due to the use of the ballad as a song of labour by broom-makers. But as both bent and broom are accredited with magical properties it does not seem needful to look further afield for their occurrence in the refrain. It seems quite likely that in this instance "bent" is the later form of "bennet "-i.e. herb-bennet (Herba benedicta), a name given to the common avens (Geum urbanum) because according to traditional belief "where the root is in the house the devil can do nothing and flies from it; wherefore it is blessed above all other herbs. If any should carry this plant about on his person no venomous beast can hurt him, etc." (see Friend's Flowers and Flower-Lore). Other English plants are known as herb-bennet, but it is not of much consequence which particular Fuga demonum is here intended, though herb-bennet seems, I think, more likely than bent grass, as cited by Miss Broadwood. For the use of broom flowers as a protective charm, see "The Broomfield Hill "-- numerous versions of which have appeared in the Journal.
In the second form of refrain (b)
Jennifer gentle and rosemary
As the dew flies over the mulberry tree
Miss Broadwood explains gentle as hawthorn, but though the hawthorn is known by this name in Ireland, I do not think this is the meaning here. The curious
Jury flower gent the rose berry
of one of Mr. Sharp's Appalachian songs, though at first sight a much decayed form, probably comes quite near the original in sound if not sense, for "gelofir gent" is a description, c. 1500, of the gilliflower. The line runs, in more intelligible versions, Gilliflower gentle and rosemary. The line "Gilliflower gentle or rosemary" occurs in a lyric by Sir Thomas Philipps (temp. Henry VIII) in company with " Marjoram gentle or lavender " and "Camomile, borage, or savory." At that period and later herbs were classed as quick or gentle according to their degree of pungency of taste or smell. One of the cries of London was " Rosemary and bays, quick and gentle! " and Turner, in his Names of Herbes, 1548, includes "Baum [balm] gentle." So that "gentle" as it occurs in the refrain seems to be merely a descriptive adjective, and not the name of a plant. Prof. Child's guess that "gentle" should be "gentian" goes further astray, for gentian, though a common simple in America, is an unlikely plant to figure in allusions to old English herbs, and as far as I am aware has no magical uses.
The gilliflower ("July-flower" is a false etymology) is of course the clove carnation, though the name was later loosely given to wallflowers and stocks, the word being ultimately traceable, through French girofle and Latin Caryophyllum, to an Arabic word meaning clove. It seems to have been believed that any plant or flower with an aromatic or pungent scent would frighten evil spirits away. And gilliflowers in balladry are flowers of heaven.
From these considerations, I suspect that all the forms of this herb burden beginning with "Jennifer gentle," and all the "Gentle Jennies " which or who follow her, derive from the gilliflower refrain. But another development is seen when the herb-names are transformed in to the Christian names of three sisters. When the refrain has (apparently) been borrowed, with the tune to which it belongs, for another ballad of three sisters (also in mortal danger), such as "The Banks of Fordie" (Babylon), we not only find it unaltered as thus-
There were three sisters on a road,
Gilly flower gentle rosemary,
And there they met a banished lord,
And the dew it kings over the mulberry tree-
(Motherwell's MS.)
but in another Motherwell version the plant names have become the names of the three sisters:
There were three sisters lived in a bower,
Fair Annet and Margaret and Marjorie,
And they went out to pu' a flower,
And the dew draps aft the hyndberry tree
a hindberry (raspberry) bush being less exotic than a mulberry in Scotland, w here the whitebeam is or was sometimes ignorantly called a mulberry. In a third version, in Herd's MS., the hyndberry or mulberry is lost altogether:
There wond [dwelt] three ladies in a bower,
Annet and Margret and Mariorie,
And they have gane out to pu' a flower,
And the dew it lies in the wood, gay ladie.
There has apparently at some period been a confusion between "dew" and "doo" (dove), e.g. "As the dew flies or 'hings' over [or lies under] the mulberry tree," or between "dow" (dew) and "dow" (dove), in the second refrain; and if we may see the idea of the amulet in the first of these antiphonal refrains, there is also a hint of a symbolical contest in the second, in the opposition of dew and bush, or dove and fruit-tree (the ring-dove (wood-pigeon), a greedy bird, devours berries as well as grain and nuts), particularly if one recalls the old song (re-written by Burns) in its earlier form (see Songs from Herd's MS., p. 98):
0 if my love was a bonny red rose,
And growing upon some barren wa',
And I myself a drap of dew,
Down in that red rose I wad fa'.
and again:
O if my love was a pickle of wheat, [1]
And growing upon yon lilly-white lee,
And I myself a bonny sweet bird,
Away with that pickle I wad flie.
And similarly if she were a coffer of gold and he the keeper of the key, "into that coffer I wad be." Compare also the transformations in the " Twa Magicians" during the pursuit of the maiden. In a French version, the girl to avoid her amorous pursuer will turn into a rose, whereupon he will become a bee and kiss her; she will turn quail and he sportsman, and so on. Now if the dew lying upon the tree, or the dove flying over it are symbolical of conquest and possession, then in the first refrain we may probably see the utterance of a protective charm, and in the second the poetically veiled threat which meets it. The same idea may be latent (see footnote further on) in the "Savory, sage" charm versus the vow "Then you shall be a true love of mine"; and perhaps also in the magic numbers of the "Devil's Nine Questions" (see infra), where the obscure retort of the second refrain "And you're [or and I'm] the weaver's bonny" somehow in the end leaves the victory with the girl.
In the type of contest which as in "Whittingham Fair" and Child's "Elfin Knight" lies in the imposition by the demon suitor of impossible tasks, matched by the lady with equally impossible ones, we find a variant of the herb refrain. Child thought that the elfin (in his "A" version) was an importation from another ballad and that the suitor should properly be a mortal-but if so, whence and why the herb refrain, except as an indication of a more than human combat. [2] One may quote a verse from Mr. Kidson's version, "Scarborough Fair," in his Traditional Tunes:
Tell her to make me a cambric shirt,
Savoury sage, rosemary, and thyme,
Without any seam or needlework,
And then she shall be a true love of mine.
Mr. Kidson writes "savoury sage," but obviously it should be "savory, sage." Savory occurs in the Tudor lyric above quoted, and is a herb still cultivated in England, though less than formerly. In Gammer Gurton's Garland (1810 ed.), the line runs "Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme," and in Mr. Kidson's second version "Rue, parsley, rosemary, and thyme." This "savory" refrain has also been greatly corrupted, e.g.
Every rose grows merry in time
Let every rose grow merry and fine
Every rose grows bonny in time, etc.
finally reshaped as "Every grove rings with a merry antine" ["anthem"]! In a version from the State of Maine, in which "Scarboro"' becomes "Strawberry "-the refrain consists of the following gibberish:
Fum a link a link, sup a loo my nee,
Redio, tedio, toddle bod bedio,
Fum a lum, etc.
which one can hardly assumet o be any form of incantation! The English form of this " Lover's tasks" song rather points to a Scottish or north-country origin, as Scottish "sark" and "wark" are better rhymes than "shirt" and "work," -and so are " feather" and "ether" than "feather" and "adder." So, too, the "thimble " and "well" of an American version may have been "thimmel" and "well " originally.
II. OTHER CHARM REFRAINS
American texts of the riddle-contest ballads are rare, but a single version has lately been recovered in Virginia (see Traditional Ballads of Virginia, 1929, edited by Arthur K. Davis). It is known locally as "The Devil's Nine Questions" (though there are but eight)-which is as unequivocal a title as the mid-fifteenth-century Inter diabolus et virgo. The devil begins without preamble:
If you don't answer me questions nine,
Sing ninety-nine and ninety,
I'll take you off to hell alive,
And you're the weaver's bonny.
And the ballad ends:
You have answered me questions nine,
Sing ninety-nine, etc.
You are God's, you're not my own,
And you're the weaver's bonny.
This version is akin to that in Alfred Williams' Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames, which however has a different refrain or chorus:
Bow down, bow down, sweetheart and a bonny lass,
And all things shall go well.
In this version also the knight that comes to the gate is quite plainly the devil.
If thou canst not answer me three times three,
In ten thousand pieces I'll tear thee!
And on the lady answering all the questions (which should be nine but are only six) the discomfited demon clapped his wings and aloud did cry,
In a flame of fire he flew away.
The spell, if any, in the Virginian version seems to lie in the multiplication of the mystic number nine, often found in charms and spells. What "weaver's bonny" may be corrupted from I have no idea, but there is a suggestion in this double refrain, as in the " Savory, sage " pair of lines, of antiphonal intention, the maiden uttering the magic formula and the demon his threat, alternately. The " Bow down," which may have been borrowed from the "Cruel Sister" in its English form, falls next to be considered.
III. VARIOUS 'TWA SISTERS' REFRAINS
The " Bow down " refrain, which seems to belong to the English as opposed to the Scottish versions of the " Twa Sisters," offers another field for speculation, especially since a valuable contribution from America of a group of about twenty variants, mostly collected in Virginia, provides a greater mass of material on which to base a guess at its significance. Before I had seen these American versions it seemed to me possible that the refrain alluded to the younger sister's prayer to the elder to bow down and draw her out of the water. But there seems to be something else latent in this closely linked set of American refrains, and here possibly is to be found another instance of allusion to magical charms, in this case pointing to some kind of divination. Virginia, one may recall, was the first lasting colony established by the English in America, and these versions may belong to an early stream of tradition. The last part of the American refrain is like the English:
I'll be true to my love, if my love'll be true to me,
and the first part has the usual "Bow down, bow down" of our English copies; but after this follows one of the curious forms here given:
The bows they bent to me
The bow has been to me
The boughs [? bows] were given to me
Bow it's been to me
The bow is unto me
For the bows bent to me
Bow down, you bittern, to me
Bow you down to me
Bow and bend to me, etc.
The complete refrain in a version from Maine (see British Ballads from Maine, edited by Barry, Eckstorm and Smyth) runs:
Bow down, bow down,
The bow is bent to me,
Prove true, prove true,
Oh, my love prove true to me.
From comparison of these little varying versions, with which we may perhaps collate the refrain already quoted:
Bow down, bow down, sweetheart, and a bonny lass,
And all things shall go well,
I would hazard the suggestion-still in the realm of magical custom-that they all originally had reference to the consultation of an oracle, to ascertain whether the lover will prove true. A wide-spread belief has long existed in the miraculous bowing of a sacred image in token of favour to the suppliant, and in similar signs given in the world of nature. One may cite from another ballad, "Lord Dingwall," in Christie's Traditional Ballad Airs, a perhaps connected refrain:
A-bowing down, a-bowing down,
And aye the birks a-bowing.
In the case of the English "Cruel Sister " it seems possible that there may be an allusion to the country practice of divination on St. John's Eve by "Midsummer Men" - a name given to the flower-stems of the fleshy-leaved plant otherwise called orpine or livelong (Sedum Telephium). A pair of Midsummer Men were stuck up in wet clay on a slate or stone by a girl to see whether the one named as her lover would bend in the direction of the other, representing herself. Hannah More tells how Sally Evans would never go to bed on Midsummer Eve (this was in i8oo) without sticking up Midsummer Men in her room, as the bending of the leaves to the right or the left would never fail to tell her whether her love was true or false. An old ring, apparently of fifteenth-century date, found in 1801 near Cawood in Yorkshire, had for device two orpine plants joined by a true-love knot, with the motto Mafiance velt (translated as My sweetheart wills or is desirous [or should it be-bends over or turns ?]). The stalks were bent to each other in token that the pair they represented were to come together in marriage. Another allusion to this species of divination is to be found in No. 56 of The Connoisseur, an eighteenth-century periodical:
"I likewise stuck up two Midsummer Men, one for myself and one for him. Now if his had died away we should never have come together, but I assure you his blowed and turned to me."
So it would seem that in this oracle-known in England from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century-we may have a possible explanation of the refrain
Bow down, bow down,
Bow and bend to me,
with its accompanying promise of mutual constancy. Whether it originally had any connection with the "Twa Sisters" ballad or not, it would obviously be found appropriate to the story of the two sisters who loved the same knight, he preferring the younger, and she (in the finer forms of the story) refusing to give him up to the jealous elder, even at the price of drowning for her faithfulness. The odd variant "Bow down, you bittern, to me" is rather a hard nut, but "bittern" conceivably should be "bidding": "Bow down, as bidden " (or "at my bidding") "to me." Mr. Kidson noted a Driffield (Yorkshire) version with the refrain:
Low down, derry down dee,
Valid we ought to be,
And I'll be true to my love, etc.
but the Lancashire version printed in Harland and Wilkinson's Songs and Ballads of Lancashire conforms to the usual type:
Bow down, bow down, bow down.
"Valid we ought to be" must be a corruption. There is another curious word "britan" in this version. See Journal, Vol. ii, p. 285.
One may remark that it would be well to discard the name "The Berkshire Tragedy" for the English forms of the "Twa Sisters." Mr. Kidson pointed out in the Journal twenty-five years ago that this name was first and incorrectly given to it by Thomas Hughes in his book " The Scouring of the White Horse," 1859, whereas it properly belongs to a broadside entitled "The Berkshire Tragedy or the Witham Miller, being an account of his murdering his sweetheart" -which is a different story. For versions of this see Journal, Vol. vii, p. 23, "Hanged I shall be," and p. 44 "The Prentice Boy." Irish and American versions are also known, under various names: "Johnny McDowell," "The Lexington Miller," "The Wexford Girl," "Poor Omie," etc. In an Edinburgh chapbook the miller is John Mauge, hanged at Reading in 1744. An Irish tune for the ballad is No. 693 of the Complete Petrie Collection.
IV. THE REFRAIN AS PART OF THE BALLAD STORY
There seems to be no connection between the "bow down" of the English form of the "Twa Sisters" and the "Bonny bows of London" of two Scottish versions. These bows belong to the same group of refrains as "The bonnie mill-dams of Binnorie" or "Balgonie," the "Bonnie banks of Fordie" or "Airdrie" or "Loch Lomond," and may have meant the windings or bends of a river (Sc. bows). "Hey with a gay and a grinding 0" - the first line of the "Bows of London" refrain suggests that the song was sung at the hand-quern. As for the triple refrain of some versions:
Hech Edinbruch! how Edinbruch! (or Edinboro', Edinboro')
Stirling for aye!
So proper[3] Sanct Johnston stands upon Tay.
(or Bonny St. Johnston stands fair upon Tay)
this was sung as inappropriately to the "Cruel Mother," and was probably borrowed with the tune from a ballad of different character, as it suggests partisan or rallying cries. A "Twa Sisters" burden quoted by Buchan "Even into Buchanshire, vari, vari, O" is now equally obscure. There can indeed be little doubt that many old ballads in rhymed couplets of a common length of metre, interlined with refrain-an old and especially a pt form of construction for communal singing as solo and chorus borrowed their tunes from still earlier ones, retaining the refrain-- an integral part of the tune*-but sometimes adapting it, as in the case of the transformed herb-names, more closely to the subject of the fresh ballad.
Another burden associated with the "Twa Sisters," besides the well-known "Binnonie"-which both Scott and Jamieson substituted for Mrs. Brown's "Edinburgh" one (though using her version) presumably because they liked it better--is found in some Scottish and Irish versions:
Hey ho, my honey (or Annie) O
Where the swan swims bonny O.
A " fragment " of fourteen verses with this refrain was sent to Scott from Ireland as obtained from Miss Brook, who had noted it from an old woman, and in whose Reliques of Irish Poetry, 1789, it is presumably to be found. This was "intermingled" by Scott with Mrs. Brown's Fifeshire version for his Minstrelsy copy, but this refrain also was discarded. This Irish fragment began:
0 sister, sister, reach thy hand,
Hey ho, my Nanny O,
And you shall be heir of all my land,
While the swan swims bonny O.
A scrap of this version (text without tune) has been noted in Virginia. It was said to have been sung in "broad Scotch." See Traditional Ballads of Virginia (1929), p. 104.
The miller's daughter went out one day
Hey ho, my honey O,
To get some water to bake her bread,
And the swan swam bonny O.
* * * * *
The miller went out and stopped his dam,
Hey ho, etc.
And placed the king's daughter on dry land,
And the swan, etc.
The Irish version noted by Mr. Kidson (Journal, Vol. ii, p. 285) continues the story with a harper passing by, who makes a harp of the maiden's breast-bone, and strings it with her hair
Where the swan swims so bonny O.
The part telling how the harper appeared at court at the sister's wedding feast is missing, but one verse tells how the harp began to play alone, another that it sang:
"And there does sit my false sister Anne,
Hey ho, my Nanny O,
Who drowned me for the sake of a man,
Where the swan swims bonny O."
An Irish fragment, to another tune, in the Complete Petrie Collection gives the anterior verse-the first line apparently forgotten:
Heigh ho, my Nancy O,
Heigh ho, my Nancy O,
" Yonder there's my mother the queen,"
And the swan she swam so bonny 0.
The interest of these incomplete versions is in the swan-in which I think we may see a hidden allusion to the drowned girl, whom the miller's daughter took for a mermaid or a swan as she floated in the dam. In the Virginian "I" variant the verse runs:
0 miller, 0 miller, here swims a swan,
And never did you see a fairer one.
In some versions the girl is said to have swum up and down, trying to gain the bank. There is a possibility that this swan refrain was an adaptation from the one sung to the very old romantic ballad of " Sir Lionel," in its Scottish form of "Isaac-a-bell and Hugh the Graeme" (see Christie's Traditional Ballad Airs)
Hey nien nanny, -
And the norlan' flowers spring bonny.
"Hey nien nanny " may have been turned into " Hey ho, my Nannie" as the name of one of the sisters. The allusions to the swan would be particularly apt in the climax-well developed in Scandinavian forms-where the enchanted harp begins to reveal the dreadful secret in the presence of the guilty bride and the court. The device of indirect denunciation, addressed to the ear of the secret ill-doer, is found in the cante-fable of "The Robber Bridegroom," whose name in the English tale is "Mr. Fox." His intended victim escapes, and afterwards puts to him in the company of others a riddle in which the digging of her grave preparatory to the intended murder is described as " the hole the fox did make." See Journal, Vol. ii, pp. z97-9. Thus the refrain discarded by the editors of Scottish ballad collections in the early years of last century seems to offer more interesting possibilities than the melodious sighing of "Binnorie, O Binnorie."[5]
Below are assembled some less known "Twa Sisters" tunes, with the various refrains that have here been discussed. In Last Leaves of Aberdeen Ballads collected by Gavin Greig, and edited by Dr. Alex. Keith, there is a group of "Binnorie" variants noted in Aberdeenshire, three of which are related to "Binnorie No. I," and three to "Binnorie No. 2 " here printed. Other references are given in Journal, Vol. ii, p. 286; and the so-called "Barkshire Tragedy" (or "Bow down") version somewhat cheapened, like the printed seventeenth-century copy, by burlesque- is in English County Songs, to a variant of the first tune below-" A Farmer there lived in the North Countree." For variants of the herb refrains see Journal, Vol. iii, p. 13.
A. G. GILCHRIST
_________________
Footnotes:
1. In Hallow E'en divinations, if a girl sent out to gather an ear of wheat in the dark returned with one whose " top pickle " was lacking, it was a sign of loss of virginity.- A. G. G.
2. Mr. Baring Gould (see his note on this song in Songs of the West) was informed that this ballad used to be sung in Cornwall as a dialogue between a young man and a girl. This dialogue may have begun abruptly, as in the Gammer Gurton's Garland (1810) version: "Can you make me a cambrick shirt?" The young man left the room, to re-enter it in the character of the ghost of a dead lover, the girl remaining seated. Her spectral visitant sets her the impossible tasks rehearsed in the first part of the song, and but for her resourcefulness in countering his demands would-so it was understood-have claimed her and carried her off. So it would seem that where the meaning of the dialogue was still remembered the menacing and malevolent had their
part in it.-A. G. G.
3. Fine, handsome.
4. The "Gilofer gentle" refrain, more or less corrupted, appears sporadically attached to the "Cruel Mother" and "The Wife wrapt in Wether's Skin."
5. Wordsworth borrowed this place-name (if it be such) for his poem " The Seven Sisters; or, The Solitude of Binnorie," but rhymed it with " moumfully," showing that he had never heard it pronounced, and did not know that the accent fell on the penultimate syllable.-A. G. G.
-----------------------
A FARMER THERE LIVED IN THE NORTH COUNTREE.
SUNG BY THE REV. F. D. CREMER,
Noted by A. G. Gilchrist. FEBRUARY 12TH, 1909.
A
1. A farmer there lived in the north countree,
Baa, bo, (or Bow down), bee, bo,
A far - mer there lived in the north coun -tree,
And bow down.
he had daughters one - un, two, three,
Sing-ing I'll be true unto my true love, and my love'll be true to me.
AYE THE BIRKS A-BOWING.
[LORD DINGWALL.]
CHRISTIE'ST RADITIONALB ALLAD AIRS,
VOL. II, P. 10.
A - bow-ing down, a - bow-ing down,
And aye the birks a - bow - ing.
BONNY SAINT JOHNSTON STANDS FAIR UPON TAY.
[THE CRUEL MOTHER.]
CHRISTIE'S TRADITIONAL BALLAD AIRS,
VOL. I, p. -104.
~~IJ J>1--r r r~~lr-:-:S--j
E - din - bro'1 E - din - bro' I
Stir - ling for aye!
And bonny Saint Johnston* stands fair upon Tay.
* Perth.
Nom-.This tune does not quite fit the usual metre of the " Twa Sisters," though several
copies have an " Edinburgh " refrain as above.
248
BINNORIE (I).
FROM STOKOE AND REAY'S
SONGS OF NORTHERN ENGLAND.
1. There were twa sis - ters sat in a bow'r, Bin - nor - ie 0 Bin -
nor - ie, There cam' a knight to be their wooer, By the
_w ~~~T I d-s ..
bon - nie mill - dams o' Bin - nor - ie.
BINNORIE (2).
FROM THE- RYMOUR CLUB Miscellanea.
Noted by Gavin Greig. VOL. i, p. 200.
There were twa sisters lived in a bower, Bin - nor - ie,
Oh and Bin- nor - ie,
There came a knight to be their wooer,
On the bonnie mill-dams o' Bin - nor - ie.
THE BONNY BOWS O' LONDON.
CHRISTIF.'S TRADITIONAL BALLAD AIRS,
VOL. i, P. 42.
1. There were twa sisters in a bower,
It's hey wi' the gy and the grinding;
And a King's son has court-ed them baith,
At the bonny, bonny bows o' Lon-don.
ISAAC-A-BELL AND HUGH THE GRAEME.
[SIR LIONEL.]
CHRISTIE'S TRADITIONAL BALLAD AIRS,
VOL. I, p. 110.
Hey nesn nan-ny
And the Nor - lan' flowers spring bon - ny.
THE SWAN SWIMS BONNIE 0.
MOTHERWELL'S MINSTRIELSY, 1827.
1. There lived twa sis - ters in a bower, Hey my bon -nie An - nie 0,
There cam' a lo vve r them to woo
And the swan swims bonnie 0,
And thes wan swims bonnie 0.
HEIGH 0, MY NANCY 0.
SUNG BY JAMES MOYLAN, GARDENER,
FROM THE COMPLETE PETRIE COLLECTION.
Heigh ho, my Nancy oh,
Heigh ho, my Nancy oh,
Yonder there's my mother the Queen
And the swan she swam so bonny 0.