Volume IV, song 332, page 342 - 'Bonie laddie Highland...
Volume IV, song 332, page 342 - 'Bonie laddie Highland laddie' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)
Verse 1: 'I hae been at Crookieden, My bonie laddie Highland laddie, Viewing Willie and his men my bonie laddie Highland laddie. There our faes that burnt and slew, My bonie laddie Highland laddie There, at last, they gat there due, My bonie laddie Highland laddie.' 'Fae' means 'foe' in the Scots dialect and 'gat' is 'got'.
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.
Robert Riddell, a very good friend of Burns, asked Burns to write commentaries on some of the songs he had collected for the 'Museum'. Burns duly obliged and recorded notes on the interleaving pages. Sometimes, however, Riddell recorded pieces of information himself. He wrote of this song, 'This Jacobite song was written as a satyre on William Augustus Duke of Cumberland'. Although the tragedy of Culloden had been played out many years before the publication of the 'Museum', Jacobite sympathies and politics would still have been prominent during Burns's generation's childhood. This song is thought to have been accompanied by the melody 'Highland Laddie'.
Volume IV, song 332, page 342 - 'Bonie laddie Highland laddie' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)