Bonny Lad, Highland Lad- Russell (Upwey) 1930
From: Love Songs and Ballads
by Frank Howes, H. E. D. Hammond, A. G. Gilchrist, A. Martin Freeman, RalphVaughan Williams
Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Vol. 8, No. 34 (Dec., 1930), pp. 192-213
20.- BONNY LAD, HIGHLAND LAD.
[MY BOY WILLY]
1. Do you wish to know her age, bonny lad, Highland lad,
Do you wish to know her age my brave Highland laddy 0?
She is twice six seven, twice twenty and eleven,
Isn't she a young thing, lately from her mam -my!
This tune is a variant of "My boy Billy," the usual words of which, attached to another tune (a poor one not worth printing here), were also collected by Mr. Hammond in Dorset.- F. H.
This is an interesting tune, evidently derived from the same original as "Johnny comes marching home "-a marching-song popular in the American Civil War which I have not traced earlier. This latter tune seems to be connected with "John Anderson, my jo." A Scottish form of this is printed in Johnson's Museum set to "The Maids gaed to the Mill." [See Below] It is here appended. The " My Boy Tammy" of Scottish song-collections was probably another traditional tune for "My Boy Willie."
The marching-tune "Bonny laddie, Highland laddie," otherwise known as the quickstep of the Forty-Second Highlanders(Black Watch) regiment, may also have been a "My Boy Willie" tune. For other "My Boy Willie" tunes see C. J. Sharp's One Hundred English Folk Songs and Sir Richard Terry's Shanty Book, Part I, p. 2 (" Billy Boy ").
Hector Macneill's song " My boy Tammy" is founded on the old ditty which G . F. Graham calls a "silly old song." He gives a specimen verse of this despised original:
"Is she fit to soop [sweep] the house,
My boy Tammy ? "
" She's just as fit to soop the house
As the cat to catch a mouse,
And yet she's but a young thing,
New come frae her mammy."
Hector Macneill (b. 1746, d. 1810) himself aroused the scorn of the critics of a bygone age by the affected simplicity, as they deemed it, of his re-cast of "My boy Tammy" Whitelaw being absolutely repelled by it "for the want of common manliness of expression!" "From the language used," he declares (Essay on the Song-Writers of Scotland) "one would be led to conclude that the 'boy Tammy' had not reached the era of breeches, and that his bride was yet in her pinafores." Alas for the "silly old songs" under the cold eyes of such literary gentlemen!
In the Songs from Herd's MS. is a fragment (p. 105) of a different version, apparently without the burden "My boy Tammy'
I am to court a wife
And I'll love her as my life
But she is a young thing
And new come frae her Minnie
She's twice six, etc."
-A. G. G;
